In class we were talking about different museum exhibits and the meanings behind them. We talked about ones with racist themes (a whip area for slaves) and one representing museum guards. We talked about how that exhibit included 4 headless when dressed in nothing noticeable which was a symbol for how almost everyone ignores museum guards and doesn’t interact with them but they’re still discretely present, watching over everyone. In the next class we went to the Musem of Fine Arts to the Nubian exhibit. Everyone thought that it was Egyptian as it had monuments like the sphinx and the way people dressed in it was similar. However, no one had ever heard of Nubia as Egypt had conquered it and people thought these artifacts were Egyptian. It got us to thinking that maybe other egyptian artifacts were orginally stolen from elsewhere. Additionally, the Nubian exhibit was very empty and the colors on the walls were very dull. This made it feel like the museum did that on purpose to show that the Nubian exhibit was inferior compared to the Egyptian one.

This connected very well to the Black Panther clip we watched in which Killmonger who is an actual Wakandan native corrects the museum guide about where the artifacts are from and she does not even know about the existence of a place like Wakanda. He then proceeds to threaten the museum guide and tells her how all these items were in fact stolen from Wakanda and about how he wants to take them back. He then proceeds with the robbery with the other mercenaries.

After reading the articles assigned to us, I boiled them down to two major arguments about the topic of should previously stolen museum artifacts be returned to the original country/people. he argument against the return seems to be that keeping these exhibits will help people from around the world understand people from distant and/or obscure lands. the argument for the return mainly involved misrepresentation of the artifacts and the interpretation of people outside the cultures could be much different.

Personally, my thoughts lie in the middle of this. These artifacts were stolen a long time ago and might not be as significant to the people anymore as they might have changed. However, the artifacts that are really significant should be returned so they are not misinterpreted which could hurt the culture of those people. Minor artifacts should be kep in museums so people who visit these museums can learn about cultures different from them.