Who Tells the Story

Who Narrates the Story

It has long been assumed that a museum is a place where the viewer encounters authentic history, presented as it is. To support this, museums provide documentation: records, lists, and photographs. But who decides which parts of history deserve attention, how that history should be presented to the viewer, and do museums have the right to express their opinion?

Behind every exhibition lies its own narrative—a story that has often been rewritten by the individuals who acquired the object. Historically, the museum and the collector received primary focus, while the history of the object’s acquisition and its original owners remained peripheral. Today, museums, researchers, historians, and indigenous communities are offering new perspectives on established cultures.

In this research, I examine how new trends in decolonization are transforming museum exhibitions and displays across the nation. For this study, I draw examples from countries such as the Netherlands, Australia, and Brazil, focusing on the idea of how the context shifts when the periphery is brought to the foreground and allowed to tell its own story. One of the central questions is: who has the authority to tell a story, and how does this influence our contemporary understanding of art?

Behind a museum lies the crucial decision of which exhibition to host, which artifacts to feature and which to omit, the sequence in which objects should be presented, and what accompanying text should accompany each piece—this is precisely what shapes how the public perceives history. In The Birth of the Museum (1995), Tony Bennett writes that a museum is more than just a repository of knowledge; it actively influences how people conceive of culture, society, and national identity. This implies that an exhibition doesn’t just present the past directly; it constructs and curates it for the public in a specific manner. However, any one of these presentations highlights one aspect while obscuring another. A museum can extensively detail an object’s material and manufacturing techniques or its religious significance, but it cannot reveal whether it was purchased, received as a gift, recovered during a military expedition, or taken without the owner’s consent.In Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (2012), Amy Lontri notes that for a long time, the narratives about Indigenous peoples in museums were largely constructed by outside specialists rather than by the communities themselves. She understands decolonization as a process that requires not only changing the language of the exhibit but also frankly addressing the consequences of colonization, historical trauma, and the right of communities to explain their own culture. Bennett helps us understand how museums shape public knowledge, while Lontri explains why we must re-evaluate not just the content of the exhibition, but also the structure of power within the museum itself.

In his book Orientalism (1978), Edward Said illustrates how Western perceptions of the East were constructed through dichotomies—civilized versus exotic, modern versus backward. His famous quote, «The Orient was almost a European invention, ” points to the influence of Western assumptions on the image of other cultures.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, critiques the ways knowledge is produced, where Indigenous peoples often become subjects of study without having control over the research direction. A decolonial approach requires re-evaluating who creates knowledge and whose perspective is considered authoritative. Decolonization encompasses investigating the origins of objects, revising historical narratives, involving communities in curatorial work, and repatriating cultural artifacts. It is crucial not just to change labels, but to acknowledge historical violence and its consequences.

The exhibition «Unfinished Pasts: return, keep, or…?» at the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, opening in 2025, explores the origins of museum collections and the issue of restitution. Objects from Asia, Africa, and Oceania entered European museums through various means, including colonial violence and removal without owner consent.

Investigating the provenance of these items helps reconstruct the history of their movement, yet archival documents do not always reflect the positions of the communities themselves. In the report «The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage» (2018), Felwine Sarr and Benedict Savua examine the return of African heritage as an opportunity to redefine the relationship between European institutions and African nations.

Unfinished Pasts demonstrates that the question of returning objects is tied not only to property rights but also to cultural memory, spiritual values, and historical responsibility.