The myths of museology: on deconstructing, reconstructing, and redistributing

Abstract

Museology was invented as a way to look at the diversity of museums through a single “scientific” lens. Behind the assumption that museology could be a science – one that was in the foundation of this international committee (ICO-FOM) – there was the idea promoted by some of our founding figures that one single branch of knowledge could serve the study of the plurality of museums. A claim of universality, according to which “the embryonic nucleus of museology must have existed since a long time [ago]” (Sofka, 1987, p. 7) was a founding myth that may hide the fact that museology, as a body of mixed knowledge and methods, can be as diverse as the reality of the museum experience. Based on the recent debates proposed by ICOFOM on the decolonisation of the study of museums, in this synthesis I will suggest that in the process of defining itself as science , museology had to assume a universal and neutral point of view, consequently excluding other subaltern subjects and their situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988). Its core purpose was the production of one single conceptual basis with defined theoretical centres for the investigation of museums, both in theory and in practice. Decoloniality calls that universality into question. Looking at the basis of museum theory, I will stress that the decolonisation of museums and that of museology as a disciplinary field is dependent on a three-fold and interrelated process that encompasses deconstructing , reconstructing , and redistributing , necessarily in that order. The problem with today’s discourse on the decolonisation of museums is its restricted focus on the last part of this complex and difficult process, disregarding its more fundamental procedures.