“University of Oxford museum hides African mask that ‘must not be seen by women’”, reports Craig Simpson in the Telegraph:
A University of Oxford museum will not display an African mask because the culture which created it forbids women from seeing it.
The decision by the Pitt Rivers Museum is part of new policies in the interest of “cultural safety”.
The museum has also removed online photos of the mask made by the Igbo people in Nigeria, which would originally have been used in a male-only ritual.
Masks are a central part of Igbo culture, and some masquerade rituals carried out by men wearing the ceremonial objects are entirely male-only and carried out in secret away from female spectators.
The new policy, a first for a major British collection, comes as part of a “decolonisation process” at the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is aiming to address a collection “closely tied to British Imperial expansion”.
I am not necessarily against the curators’ decision. Most of us can think of items that are literally or metaphorically sacred to us that we would not wish to see displayed to the crowd. What I do not understand is why the desire of long-dead Igbo men to conduct certain rituals away from the female gaze is to be respected, but the desire of living British men to do the same is to be scorned.
Related post: In defence of all-{insert variable of choice} clubs
I have trouble getting to grips with the idea that some masks are to be hidden from some people.
Perhaps put another mask on top of the mask?
A surgical mask, maybe?
BTW weren’t the Igbo sort-of a market-capitalist/anarcho-capitalist society?
Or is my memory at fault?
Heh. This reminds me of one Greek monastery, which is on a narrow isthmus. The isthmus is fenced-off, and women are not allowed – “No females but the cats”. It’s been over a thousand years since women were allowed out on the isthmus.
The Elders say it’s to honour Virgin Mary. The real reason why it’s still in force though, is the obvious one – monks hitting-on female visitors. Shocked? – I was… 😉
Interesting shift in the intersectional league table. Primitive ethnic bullshit outranks female entitlement – for now at least.
I think we need to defer final judgement until stonewall have spoken.
To impose foreign cultures upon Britain (changing street names and so on) is not “decolonisation” it is COLONISATION – cultural colonialism.
That is the simple truth – the left, which dominates all institutions, supports modern colonialism, the colonisation of Western countries.
If the curators are so protective of Igbo culture, then they must return the mask to the Igbo. It is a lot more hateful to the Igbo for the mask to be displayed in a foreign museum, while possessed by foreigners, than any other kind of insult. Of course, the Pitt Rivers Museum know this, but there is just so far they will go playing the game of the cultural sensitiifs.
Ed Snider, the article does not mention any modern day Igbo person or group asking for the masks back. Or, indeed, caring whether the masks are on display to women or not. They are mostly Christian nowadays, so probably most would formally reject the belief that only men can see the masks, although I have also read that many Igbos practice syncretism between Christianity and traditional beliefs.
Incidentally, if anyone seeks to learn what an actual genocide looks like, study what happened to the Igbo breakaway state of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War.
The Nigerian Civil War was probably the first genocide that i was aware of, by way of newspaper headlines. I was a little kid, and probably had not yet heard anything about the Holocaust.
Snorri – it was indeed horrible.