This past Fall, I watched Mati Diop’s Dahomey (2024), a film about the repatriation of 26 Benin Bronzes looted from the Royal Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin) by French colonists. The film, which I would describe as made in the style of documentary, but haunted by the spirit of phantasmagory, follows the Benin Bronzes as they commence their homeward journey from the Musée du quai Branly in Paris through the logistical underbelly of museum crating, shipping, condition assessments, public debates, and their ceremonial unveiling  through public exhibition.

How can museums better engage with children in ways that are inclusive, respectful, and fun? Chun-Hui Wang reflects on how her work in children’s museums in Taiwan has been influenced by Dr. Monica Eileen Patterson and details two talks Dr. Patterson gave in 2024 at the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts and the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts.

Kacper Dziekan (TTTM Affiliate/Postdoctoral Fellow) reflects on what it means to be "emerging" in the field of museum research and the benefits of non-traditional academic career paths.

TTTM Affiliate, Karine L’Ecuyer, reflects on her visit with Mashteuiatsh Ilnu Museum team members in February 2024.

In “Blackening the Louvre Museum: Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and the Legacies of Slavery” , art historian Ana Lucia Areujo argues that Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s music video for their song Apeshit – in which the duo and Black dancers perform in the Louvre’s empty halls and in front of some of its most famous pieces – is an example of Blackness being celebrated in a space in which it is not usually present, namely the Louvre. I had never been to the Louvre before, but I had heard that it was a massive space, so when I came face to face with the famous glass pyramid in July of 2023, I was grateful to have something to orient my visit. I took note of the pieces that Areujo mentions – ones that (however inadvertently) engage with legacies of slavery – and I decided to keep an eye out for additional instances where celebrations of empire and European creativity could have made room for the acknowledgment of the legacies of colonialism and imperialism.

A short text and photo essay created by TTTM’s Emerging Scholars and Practitioners Committee (ESPC) Representatives, Rebecca Friend and Karina Roman Justo, reflecting on their experiences:

In light of Anishinaabe-kwe curator Wanda Nanibush’s recent, troubling, and abrupt departure from the Art Gallery of Ontario, we are sharing this interview from the forthcoming book Beyond Museum Walls (Jagiellonian/Columbia University Press), in which Thinking Through the Museum’s Heather Igloliorte converses with Nanibush about the tremendous Indigenous and decolonial accomplishments Wanda and her colleagues realized at the AGO during her tenure. The interview was conducted in 2019 on behalf of the Beyond Museum Walls research project (funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada), but the publication was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic; the book will now be published in early 2024.

Three short texts written by members of TTTM’s National Heritage and Traumatic Memory Cluster, reflecting on their experiences.

This graphic recording is a collaborative project emerging from work between Museum Queeries Cluster Research Assistant Mika Castro and graphic recording artist Devon Kerslake at the University of Winnipeg.