Museum are an integral part of the spread of culture, and the sharing of ideas, and the understanding of foreign societies. They put on display some of the intricate details and nuanced inner workings of events we can place ourselves in. Museums allow us to put ourselves into our own history which has passed us by and allow us to come the closest to experiencing our collective history. At least that is the ideal version of how a museum works. However, I think that it might be a bit different in practice. On one hand I do believe that museums are extremely important and are beneficial, and therefore the items on display in them deserve to be there. On the other hand, I think its difficult if not impossible for museums to take everything into account when displaying historical artifacts and works, also I think that those who control these museums are not always in tune with the societies and cultures from which these prices originate. I think it is these two which i think can lead to irresponsible and insensitive handling and contextualizing of historical pieces.

I feel very split on this issue, mainly because I can still see many of the benefits of a museum. For example, although museums may sometimes get the way they represent certain aspects of history, there is no doubt that a decent amount of accurate. Furthermore, many of the historical artifacts were acquired in ethical ways with permissions from the groups or countries where they originate. However, there is all the cases where those cases aren’t the truth. Also, there is the problem of the fact that the majority of museums are organizations which are interested in getting money whether it be for staying open or getting more artifacts to increase or add exhibits. This means that inherently, the way they show history and the things they display and which exhibits they have available alter the amount of money they make which could easily skew how things are represented in a museum. Not to mention all of the cases where various historical pieces were not attained ethically from a group, such as many African artifacts which exist in non-African museums, and were gotten either though slavery or colonization. In cases like these, I think it is possible for the unjust owners of these objects to properly represent them and therefore should be returned.

In my head museums are extremely important, but they are also flawed, and I think a big part of recognizing this, and providing better understanding to historical exhibits would be recognizing that things like this have happened, and better expressing that as part of the history surrounding these items. I also think representing the history of all historical artifacts and pieces more accurately involves greater honesty and transparency of how they got to the place there are currently, as well as more honest representation of the meaning and context of items according to the peoples who produced said historical artifacts.