 Okay, good afternoon from London and good evening from Singapore everybody. My name is Steven Murphy I'm the moderator for today's this evening session depending on where you are. I'm senior lecturer at curating a museology at SOAS and one of the co organizers of the lecture series, along with my colleague Conan Chong from the ACM he's also one of the speakers tonight but yeah this is the third lecture in the series and the decolonizing curating and the museum in Southeast Asia. As I said it's jointly run by both the Asian civilizations Museum in Singapore and the Southeast Asian Art Academic Program here at SOAS. And also today this lecture series is part of the ACM talk series supported by the Chris Foundation. So again many thanks to them for their support as well as of course Alphawood Foundation and the Asian civilizations Museum. Before we get on to today's talk just a quick overview of the series. We have. This is the third, as I said but we have three more coming up in the next on the next three Thursdays. So do look out for them you can scan the QR code here or go to either the ACM's website or the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at SOAS to sign up for them and some of you have asked before the these are being recorded so they will be hosted on the SOAS website this is the link to it tonight's one because it's actually been broadcast from ACM will also be on their Facebook page and I think it's also been streamed live on Facebook now as well. So there's two locations where you'll be able to access that. Okay without any further ado. Let me introduce today's speakers and the talk itself. So we have tonight's talk is must we to colonize the museum sacred and ritual art on the Raffles Museum collection in Singapore. We are very lucky to have two active curators at ACM who are going to talk to us today so we're going to have hopefully some insight insight I think it's really important in this session and this series that we're also hearing from practitioners of people actively working in the museum in Southeast Asia, as well as academics and so forth. So yeah we have Conan Chung who is the curator for Southeast Asia, and Faisal Hosni who is the assistant curator for Southeast Asia at the Asian Civilizations Museum, and they will speak for about 40 minutes. And then we have our fellow friend and colleague Sujata Arndati Magima from NTU Singapore and she will lead two electors respondent and the discussion. So just a little bit of background Conan, as I said he's recently promoted as curator full to full curator of Southeast Asia. Congratulations there special he specializes in Hindu Buddhist art. He received the MA in art history and archaeology under the Alfred scholarships. So as the University of London in 2018. He's been at the ACM since 2013 and his most recently. He's most recently curated living with ink the collection of Dr. Tante, Tante Chow 2019 and fashionable in Asia 2021. Faisal Hosni is a assistant curator for Island Southeast Asia at the ACM. He holds MA in research from the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University here in Singapore. His research interests include multi religious and multicultural heritage and spaces of worship, as well as religious art and traditions of Southeast Asia with a focus on Karamat graves in Singapore and the Malay world. So without any further delay, I will hand over to both of you for tonight's talk. I think Conan, are you a first? Great. Okay, thanks. Great thanks. Thanks even for that introduction and hello everyone thanks for tuning in today it's great to see you all. I would like to thank the Alfred Foundation, the Chris Foundation for the generous support of this lecture series co-organiser Stephen, colleagues Denise and Jeff at ACM and of course all our speakers and discussants for making this collaboration between SOAS and ACM on decolonising curating in the museum such a productive one. Let me just share my screen. So my colleague Faisal and I today, we are going to approach this question, you know, must we decolonise the museum? And I guess in some way it is a bit of a rhetorical question as curators of the ACM in the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. In terms of you know how can we enact decoloniality in our curatorial work. And so decoloniality following Walter Mignolo as you know Stephen, Dara and Pamela in the previous talks in this series have subsided. It involves the linking from colonial structures of knowledge of which museums have been a part of to recent local, indigenous and community experiences. The big part of curatorial work for me, the work of exhibition making really involves narrativisation, using artwork, objects, material culture, as nodal points to create narratives about culture civilisations and history. And I think this is part of how museums have been increasingly acknowledging our own subjectivity that it is impossible to have an objective or a neutral exhibition space or gallery space. You know, Cristian Alatas in his, he's a me some complication talks about how the image of the native constructed by colonialism has been an impediment to a profound and genuine understanding of native life. And, you know, he, you know, Alatas kind of analyzes rhetorical images. But these images of natives of colonised peoples I should say are often embedded in objects in museum collections, how they were collected and studied and exhibited. So to me that's why it's crucial in our work at the ACM to bring local, indigenous and community voices in the way that we create narratives with objects. So the ACM, we are a national museum, centered on global connections and cross cultural exchanges in Asia. But we also inherited the, what was called the ethnological collections of the 19th century raffles library and museum. And with some transformation of the raffles museum library into the National Museum, when Singapore gained independence in the British. And this shift from colonial narratives to narratives that would serve the fledgling Singapore State. And so this can be kind of considered a state directed decolonisation. I work on Hindu and Buddhist art at the ACM. And actually most of our collection of Hindu and Buddhist art. In our ancient religions gallery on the second floor were in fact not inherited from the raffles museum library and actually acquired by the ACM after it was conceived in the 90s with a mission to represent the ancestral cultures of Singapore. And of course, religion is regarded as a key aspect of heritage of Singapore, the heritage of this new newly created citizens of Singapore. So they were acquired really to represent Buddhists and Hindus in Singapore. The notable exception actually the Bujang Valley finds from Kedah, which were excavated by Dorothy and H.G. Parts Wales in the 30s and 1921. And these case ceilings from the time of independence alone. Right now we have them in a showcase in our ancient religion galleries, called Southeast Asia, the arrival of Hinduism and Buddhism. And they're kind of being used to show the earliest traces of Hinduism and Buddhism in Southeast Asia and this display is something that I've been trying to reassess. And I kind of want to talk about these clay tablets to illustrate the kind of research that perhaps curators and other interested researchers can do on the collection in documenting the histories of how objects were really collected and interpreted. And through doing this we can perhaps identify the colonial narratives that may be embedded in them. And then depart from these narratives or to put other narratives, community voices, local voices in dialogue with them. So very briefly because this is not going to be the main subject of my talk. What are these ceilings? They are images of the Buddha, made in large quantities by the application of molds to wet clay to create merit for better rebirth for Buddhist practitioners. And they're often also stamped on the back with the so-called Yedama stanza, which is a teaching of the Buddha about causation as Peter Skilling has written about. And many of them on the time of independence were found in the caves. And there's something about these tablets in the Raffles Museum's collection, this is just sort of what is in the collection. And even though they form such a small proportion of its collection, and you know the Raffles Museum was focused on zoology and ethnography. They received kind of this proportionate amount of attention as objects of study. Often referred to in scholarly journals of the time, the colonial period, and were frequently the subject of inquiry in correspondence with the museum and one example I found some Raffles Museum correspondence from 1939. Where E.H. Johnston, who a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford, is kind of desperate to borrow objects from the Raffles Museum. He can use to show how the Malay Peninsula was actually part of a greater India. You know the very tenacious idea that Southeast Asia was colonized and civilized by ancient India in the sort of golden age. But you know Evan Chazan, the director of the museum at the time, says Indian antiquities so scarce in the Malay Peninsula here that they all treated as very precious stones and he wishes that he's asked for anything else, even gold. Which I find quite interesting. So how do we really make begin to make sense of this? So Evan Carroll has identified the pattern of British scholarship in the Malay Peninsula in the 19th century, where Islam was dismissed in favor of Hindu Buddhist elements which were taken as signs of civilization. Native native or Aboriginal elements, which kind of tied in with the idealization of the noble savage and folklore studies which are very, you know, gaining ground at the time. And so this Hindu Buddhist, these Hindu Buddhist elements that were found by men like Marsden and Raffles, plugged the Malay Peninsula into these the international network of antiquarians who were studying these things. And so how does it really play out at the raffles museum itself so you know first of all is Carol notes significant Hindu Buddhist archaeological remains monuments were actually not found in the Malay Peninsula. And so there are very few opportunities opportunities to collect with the multiple exceptions that I've already addressed. And the museum was divided into zoology and ethnology, the galleries were organized as such. And at the same time the search kind of continued for for material remains of Hindu Buddhist presence in Malaya to try and link contemporary malaise to the Indian civilizations and so even though these clay tablets when they entered the collection they were usually classified under ethnology. They didn't quite fit. And they were seen as something greater some as traces of this civilizing mission of the greater India. And I find this sort of discharge quite interesting and how these these objects were seen. This is the first period where we really see the tablets coming into the rifles museum collection is at the turn of the 20th century, around 1893 to like you know for collected by Kenesley Vaughan Stevens, and AD Machado and you know be this kind of collecting was very opportunistic. It was a kind of casual collecting that took place where these colonial administrators these explorers prospectors for engaged in other forms of activity. They were zooming in on these two tablets and I can't find them in our collection right now. But they were sort of not, you know, they don't seem there isn't really a record of them at the moment, but they were given actually by the 10 prospector AD Machado by all accounts of most enthusiastic give up objects to the rifles museum. And this is a list of what he donated in 1896. You know this, the Siamese coins and images which probably include these two. And other things like mineral logical specimens, gold quartz and or Chinese guns, the skull of a pangan aboriginal baskets and so on. And it seems like a very eclectic range of objects, and not everything that was published in these records can be found in our records today, including the skull. But here are some of the things that he donated to the museum, just collected in Pahang, these are objects that associated with tribal communities living in Pahang at the time. Machado was prospector associated with the Malayan Pahang exploration company. And so this is how he kind of came into contact with these tribal communities and collected these objects. So, you know, from this kind of little case study, you know, it's kind of reflective of a wider context of scholarship in the Malay world of the Malay world at this time. And so, you know, this is one of the two new century with the growing interest in studying wild tribes or pagan races as these communities were called, and to be more correct, we should refer to them by the by the names, you know, the semi Tamiya Batek and other communities. And here as well, where the British scholar administrators believe that the original culture, the original culture of the many minutes slow was actually dying out to contact, not just with the West, but also the Indian Chinese and even, you know, Malay civilization. And, and this also kind of the Raffles Museum was kind of caught up in this as well. These developments in 1903 rooms in the upper floor of the museum were actually refurnished and open to the galleries, open to the public as ethnological galleries and you know in the bulletin set to be the best lit and ventilated rooms in the museum together with new showcases and the appear much more attractive than the other galleries. In 1906. This is the publication of the research of Skeet and bloodbuns, pagan races of the Malay peninsula, which was the first attempt by professional researchers to kind of systematize. All these observations made by by colonial administrators and travelers of these community tribal communities so it reflected a kind of turning point in how they were being studied. So moving on to another set of fragments in our, in our ACM collection that were collected in the Raffles Museum period. So these fragments that were found in Perlis. And it's interesting because it appears that according to Gibson Hill was the director of the Raffles Museum as well. In the display in the label. We kind of mixed up 17 objects, 17 of these fragments given by born Stevens in 1893 so part of this period that we've been talking about. So mixed in with 22 collected by HD colleagues who was a curator at the Raffles Museum in 1937. So I've not really been able to inspect these in person yet. So, in formal terms, you know, they look exactly the same, made of this reddish clay and also impressed with these Buddhist motifs. This later collection by colleagues actually reflects a shift in how the Malay Peninsula was being studied and studies. Collings had, you know, collected these in in Paris, which is a British protectorate at the time. And as part of a major three year archaeological survey of the prehistory of the Malay Peninsula. And this is because in the 1935 Congress of prehistory into the Far East held in Manila, the Raffles Museum was actually selected to be kind of the repository for prehistoric objects from the whole of the Far East. And coming with us was also funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The museum was actually awarded 12,000 US dollars at a time, 20,000 in the streets currency for the museum to do this three year prehistoric survey. And part of the money also funded new showcases for a new hall of Asiatic prehistory. And the motivation behind this is, you know, kind of out of my scope for now but suffice to say that this connection with, you know, Asiatic prehistory plug the museum into another far ranging scholarly network and record show that in the next fossils cast of ancient man, type of logical series of stone implements, but started to circulate in from from the Para Museum, the Australian Museum, Oyama Institute in Japan, and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge among others to furnish these these new galleries. So, Collins actually sends, well, actually, Collins actually send these fragments he found to George Sedes at the EFEO in Hanoi. And so this is a reply where he identifies and kind of classifies these objects, these fragments are published in the bulletin for that year. And that's a page from Collins's archaeological report in the bulletin. And, you know, this is indicative of this connection that was forged through the Hindu Buddhist interest in the Buddhist elements of the military peninsula. Sedes known, you know, more for his known most for his popularization of the Indian Indianization theory of Southeast Asia, wrote a much cited comprehensive survey article in 1926, which was titled, Siamese voted tablets where he, he furthered Fousheh's theory that these tablets are souvenirs for pilgrims. So I don't really have time to critique this theory and in any case, Peter Skilling again has done, done so on a series of articles. So what I want to point out today is that at the end of the article, Sedes writes that it was Prince Damron, who's known as the father of modern art history, or art history in the Western tradition in Thailand, was the one who actually consolidated all the tablets, all such tablets, and this first in private collections in Thailand, which you can imagine, coming also from different temple collections into the National Museum collection so the Museum of Royal Institute is the National Museum of Bangkok today. And, you know, Damron and Sedes was interested in these things as art historical objects and tried to classify them according to scientific principles. But, you know, this actually to me hints at how they were actually collected and valued all over Thailand, you know, even before, before this consolidation. And so, you know, in the last, the last, the last, the final part of my presentation, I just want to use this chance maybe to hint at some alternative narratives about these great habits that can be read in dialogue with the Hindu Buddhist traces. Aaron Dale, who was an ethnologist in 1904, reports how the local people in Yala province who were Muslim actually believed that these Hindu pariah spirits made these Buddhist tablets that were found in many of the case. In 1954, Alastair Lam, who in the 60s did a number of excavations in the Malay Peninsula, also looking for Hindu Buddhist elements, tried to do a scientific examination of a cave in Perlis where these great habits were found, which was solely disappointed because nearby Buddhist monks, regarding the great habits as sacred, actually collected all of them and remove them to the temple where they ground them up to serve as material for a new image. So, you know, he came away very disappointed not being able to determine the static graphic relationship of the tablets in the cave, the rest of the cave as he says. So it's interesting to me how these are hints in the record of these, you know, academics and scholars in the articles of alternative viewpoints, alternative narratives that they kind of chose to downplay or to ignore. Of course, you can't avoid talking about the connection of these clay tablets to the, you know, the popularity of the cult of amulets in Thailand, which actually kind of arose in the reign of Mongkut and Chua Longkwon. You know, the clay tablets were not originally used as amulets, of course, but they became kind of incorporated into this new cult of amulets. So, you know, as you know, Patarotong Chua Poverty who spoke in our first lecture of the series, wrote, they are kind of the practice of stamping these noted tablets actually, you know, continues in this new passion for amulets. So we have our 2012 exhibition Enlightened Ways, which was curated by Heidi Tan, and, you know, where we borrowed many objects from museums in Thailand. We also, you know, had a section on these living traditions that are in Thailand, in Buddhist Thailand, and with the showcase of these amulets. So, you know, it's really important to show the continuation of these traditions in contemporary form. So, just to kind of finish on this slide actually, I just wanted to say that, yeah, so in 2018, the ACM we've completed a sort of major renovation and renewal of our primary galleries. And just we inaugurated our second floor faith and belief galleries, with galleries that he did not just to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jnism, but also the ritual sacred ritual art of other religions, major religious in Asia and Southeast Asia, Christianity, Islam, Daoism and Confucianism and communities like the Bataan, Dayak and so on. And, you know, we are working very closely with local communities in Singapore for showcases on Sikhism, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. And so perhaps this could be a good transition to Faisal's presentation to say that we've been working and, you know, other departments at ACM as well, including our audience team, and it is really wonderful video featuring members of the interreligious organization in Singapore, you know, reacting and kind of adopting our objects in our collection. As a possibility to how we can kind of encourage the insertion or the incorporation of multiple narratives multiple voices in our, the way we talk about sacred ritual art at the museum. So with that, we pass the time on to Faisal. Okay. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. I'd like to firstly thank Alphawit Foundation and the Chris Foundation, like Conan has mentioned, also to Sowas and Steven and all our colleagues, including especially Denise for helping us with this. I have been an assistant curator here at ACM for barely a year actually November will be my first year. However, I still hope I can offer some insights into what we do and what we have done and all our approaches and our aims to decolonize the collection and the museum. And to the title must we decolonize the museum as Conan mentioned, you know, it's a rhetorical question so in my opinion, yes, we should the question is, how, as Conan has beautifully described the history of raffles library and museum collection I don't have to go through it again, because as I did I wouldn't have been able to do it as elegantly. But one thing I wish to highlight is that some of the records of the, some of the objects have records that include payments or purchases or mentions of purchases. And by records I mean it would usually just say it was bought by so and so from so and so. However, if these can be accepted as factual and correct and you know there are some objects that were actually purchased. Though this was not information that was available for like all of the objects is only some if you're lucky. This is with regards to the raffles library and museum collection. And also that means I can't make both claims about looting or violent means of acquiring these objects in the past but we can just acknowledge the possibility. Besides, even if the acquiring is in violent the way they were displayed and categorized can be argued as violent. And there also seems to be a tradition of traveling and collecting and contribute that contributed to the amassing of this collection so individuals connected to the library museum would go around Southeast Asia and collect objects and bring them back and and in the collection we also have ethnographic photographs that are undeniably problematic. These are just the evidence of ethnographic anthropological endeavors, and these could also have led to the collecting of objects. Another thing I wish to add also is that ACM currently resides in, and what is what was an old colonial governmental office building and in it used to house a number of governmental offices and departments including ironically or not. The immigration department at some point and I'm still trying to figure out which room or gallery this space was because it'd be interesting, a space to conduct curatorial interventions on the other and who gets othered in a threat history. So, yes, the Southeast Asian collection is dripping with colonial legacies and histories and we have to really work hard to address and decolonize the collection at the museum and this also goes for objects that are quiet after the division of the Raffles library and museum collection and also the transformation of ACM. And as I mentioned I'm very new to this role. So my work and these approaches are still in the beginning stages, or haven't seen their fruits yet. But I shall share some of the initiatives ACM has done that are in line with the efforts and ethos of decolonizing and also some examples from other institutions organizations that I feel are worth emulating. So really working on a project that we have unoriginally called the National Collection Research Project and this is something that a few museums in Singapore are doing with our heritage and conservation center. For those who may not know, most of the museums in Singapore are national museums so all of our collections are part of the Singapore's national collection which are then subdivided into the different museum collections and one of the aims of this project at least for us at ACM is to research on the old Raffles library and museum collection within ACM's larger collection. And we have a couple of researchers who are working on this with me, a little shout out to them, Shaoqing and Cairo Japanese Jukri, and what they've been doing is to relook at write ups meant for the online database based on newer scholarship and also local and regional scholarship. I'm seeing some instances where earlier often very old writings or curated notes that may be uninformed to put it gently. And I've seen for example earlier older notes from the collection describing an image from Java as an ogre when it's most likely actually one of the comedic archetypes of the Japanese theater traditions. So the example I like to use is that is the chili because it's the simplest to illustrate this problem, the chili from Bali. Firstly, it has been labeled as rice spirit. And this is obviously not correct, or at the very least it doesn't correctly describe what a chili is, which is an offering but it's also it could also be a form of residence for a deity not a spirit by deity, the goddess Dewi Shree namely. At the same time, there may be people within the Balinese community who may not view the form as being specifically for dedicated to Dewi Shree, because the Balinese traditions and the traditions of Balinese Hinduism is diverse and very plural. And the religious and ritual complexity of the object is absent and cannot be described in rice spirit. The entry will eventually be updated to use the term rice to use a term chili as the object name and then a write up that reflects the newer and local scholarship of the material because there have been so much research on such materials since this object was acquired in 1918 apparently. And it's a no brainer right that we have to keep updating such content but it can, I have to admit it sounds pretty daunting if you have if we have such a large collections. Another reason why looking at local scholarship, I feel is so important is that they often involve committee in interviews, surveys and most importantly perspectives, and these are lacking in most earlier western scholarship, especially the perspectives and the voices. We should also look at writings and research in local original languages specifically with the chili for example. The research in Bahasa Indonesia was very very useful from some of the universities in Indonesia. I remember having a discussion with this with some people and someone mentioning what if we just can't assess the language we don't know the language. I think that's where collaboration come in. I think it was Professor Nancy from Binghamton University who pointed out that in the field of heart sciences and medicine, for example, collaboration is instinctive expected even so I think our field should. It should be the same for our field you know we should collaborate across the globe. You'll also find with regards to study of objects in this region, you can find the same claims being made of certain objects about something and then discover that it reaches all the way back from citation to citation from publication to publication to Western sources or colonial writings that may or may not have taken into consideration community perspectives and the diversity of these perspectives. And sadly, these claims often become solidified and taken as fact. So the chili again, you'll often read about how the chili image like on this landmark is representative of the Goddess Dewi trees, but thankfully through local research that actually engage with the Balinese communities will realize that it's not a homogenous believe at all that some people have differing opinions within the community about who the who or what the figure represents. And another thing this project has highlighted is also the fallibility of translations, especially to English. Firstly, I think this prioritizing of English, English terms specifically needs to stop we, we can be okay if we can be okay with terms like kimono to be untranslated we can work toward towards chili for example being untranslated or even salawa or hampatong or we could use those local words and terms first and then spend time and texts explaining them after make this way of education a norm. Because often you can't translate things perfectly in just a word or two as substitutes. And sometimes in doing so you layer additional meaning over the subject. For example when translating raksasa to demons words which describing the goddess Randa as the witch, which doesn't work and also the words come with so much baggage from Western traditions. Another word I think we should stop using with regards to Southeast Asia is magic. And I've seen this use concerts times to describe traditions, especially religious traditions in Southeast Asia. And that comes obviously with so much problems. Another word, and Conan has mentioned this earlier as well that tribe is another word I, I often avoid for very good reasons. I've also encouraged the researchers to use regionally appropriate or specific terms where possible or relevant. So a Chris blade, for example, say from Clinton the community might refer to to it as be like Chris. However, communities in Java, for example, depending on the community they might call it a wheeler wheeler Chris. The she collectively they might often be called sorrow but depending on the communities in Indonesia they might specifically call it a war on car. So, yeah, I think this those specificity is very important. And, and then we'll just add the English term as a means of explaining but not replacing those local terms and those very specific terms but yes the priority is on the local terms. I actually want to go further than this and end the italicizing of non English terms but I've been told that's way too radical for now, but there is a logic to it. It's one of the small ways in which writing, you know, writing others a community. So maybe we should. Anyways this project is currently ongoing but it's grounded in our aims to decolonize the collection and the museum. And that's to ensure that we don't only rely on certain sources of knowledge and Conan again has mentioned this earlier. And when I mean rely on certain sources of knowledge I mean like Western sources colonial sources or even just scholarly sources in general. So we work with communities and we have as we mentioned earlier, I worked with the interreligious organization, I RO here in Singapore where possible to ensure that the objects that are the different states and religions are presented and represented as sensitively as possible. So just working with communities is useful and necessary so that we don't repeat this top down approach, or we know better approach of colonial museums and scholarship or older museums and scholarship, because we don't always know better right sometimes even our visitors and our audience can be our teachers and experts as well. So something I've been trying to do is to reach out to a few communities in Southeast Asia organizations within the regions that are locally run or work closely with the communities. I have to admit starting some of these relationships during the pandemic has been difficult. I've been successful in some attempts and I've been able to gain community perspectives and information. But I'm still working to gain their trust so that we can eventually work together and work with them on future collaborations where all parties have a say and stake in it, and how they benefit from these collaborations and not just the museums benefiting from it. So the organizations I wish to highlight include run a well in foundation a nonprofit organization that helps communities in Kalimantan but also work in educating people about traditional practices of the different and diverse diet communities, and also they focus a lot on environmental preservation and protection. Another organization is threats of life that does work with different local textile makers and highlight their practices and stories. My efforts are still in the infancy stages many other institutions have done very successful collaborations with communities and I won't go into too much details on them because my friend Boing would take up an entire hour. I do encourage you to look them up. The first is the Ohio State University Center for folklore studies and they have very interesting community collaborations with committees from Appalachian Ohio. They are talks by Dr. Jasper walk was about you can easily find on YouTube that describes initiatives in detail, and the ethos behind behind these collaborations is that the researcher is a learner and an apprentice, and not the expert and that the relationship is reciprocal, and a focus from just being an observer to a relationship where exchanges can happen. These initiatives encourage students and student researchers to work with and for different community organizations to assist in building local archives that would serve the communities be accessible to the communities easily, and could be easily run by these communities and the researchers would have to leave. Another initiative that I really admire is that they, they found ways to bring bring local community members as experts where non academics would often not be able to assess like conferences or lectures. So if we ever have future iterations of the program that we have today. We should consider bringing in members from the different communities and have them talk and speak. The amazing initiative I admire is the re entanglements project, which is a collaboration or partnership between so as led by Dr. Paul da Sue and other institutions including University of Niger and Suka it boosts studies initiative University of Cambridge Institute of Benin studies and University College London as soon as studios National Museum Legos, University of Benin out cheaply attacking British libraries on archives of pit rivers museum the Royal Anthropological Institute the Royal Botanic Gardens QN UK National Archives I feel like it was it's only fair that I mentioned all of them. Anyway, one of the projects from this initiative is the faces voices project where all anthropological photographs from surveys of Nigeria and Sierra Leone are presented to contemporary participants from the communities to respond to them. Who they think the people in the photographs were what they did how they felt giving voice to the voiceless and my favorite bit was also a part where these participants were presented with the photographs of the anthropologist anthropologist himself. And ACM has a collection of ethnographic photographs and I've been trying to figure out how to address them and work with them. And this project has, I think provided one solution, one possible approach. Another way we have been working with communities and working to make sure that their voices are presented, especially as experts is through the acquiring of objects from them, not just from auction houses or dealers and this has been a part of the collection strategies of ACM over the lifespan of ACM. And it still is. One significant example is from one of our earlier research projects where video documentation was done on the making of this very plantanese Chris made by Nick Rashidi Nick Hussein who is the brother of Nick Rashidi Nick Hussein who is a renowned and acclaimed Chris maker and would cover up and the good thing about collecting from the community is that we get the names of the maker so we can highlight them. This sets the methodology a bit apart from the colonial approaches of collecting from the community where the makers often remain anonymous. Instead the collectors are the ones highlighted. Documentation also allowed us to show the process to view the process and document the process. We also get snippets of conversations of the makers while they chatted as they work. If you can understand plantanese Malay of course it is I admit a little voyeuristic so I have to admit that, but it does reveal interesting perspectives of these makers. They had very appointed opinions for example of young Malay youth in Singapore, and our director Kenny Ting is very supportive of what we call collecting the contemporary. And these include objects from the communities. It also allows us to compare older objects with their newer counterparts to discuss possible evolutions of traditions. Essentially the ancestor and rituals gallery here at ACM has this monumental responsibility of housing objects from Southeast Asia, excluding the ones that are Hindu Buddhist Islamic Islamic it and Christian. And our approach currently at the moment is to display the objects of each culture or community in its own space and this, the aim is to allow each culture to be able to be addressed within their own context they're still acknowledged possible communities and to not present a homogenous Southeast Asia or hodgepodge approach or what they Singaporeans or people of the region would call Roger. But of course the downside is that some of the connections between the different communities become diminished. And some of these communities have been interacting with one another way before colonialism came to the picture they were trading they were into marrying they were sometimes in conflict. We are always aiming to improve our approach, but I guess even if the perfect approach is not reached at the moment the space is so valuable in initiating conversations, perspectives and even criticisms, and these are all valuable information we are constantly absorbing. I especially appreciate talking to students about the space because the younger generation of academics and researchers, they're so much more in tune with conversations about colonialism and decolonizing of museums and knowledge in general, and they're very interesting take on things. I also feel that galleries and exhibitions cannot show that everything or the heavy lifting of decolonizing tours are very useful ways to help push out alternative narratives. These are wonderful docents I encourage them to relate alternative narratives and invisible connections between the different communities when you know spatially in the gallery the objects of these communities might be far apart. Lectures like what we have today is another way we we could do that. We have programs where we bring out objects and give longer talks about them when labels do not have the sufficient textual real estate to do so. And many museums have done this we're not the only ones, hardly the first one as well. One of the my favorites it's a curator's corner by the British Museum. But of course the methodology of the programming here it's not where the decolonizing happen it's the knowledge and it's information, they need to be current as fast possible, and also from local and regional scholarship as much as possible, especially those that work with local communities and in their languages, because decolonizing cannot happen if the community voices and agencies are still bottled and not part of the process they need to be participants in this and not just subjects of study. And that's where I end. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, I thank you. I was getting to caught up in your talk you caught me on a whereas. Yeah, that's great thank you to both Conan and Faisal for their excellent overviews within the very short time limit. And yeah, we're going to have about a 20 minute discussion and response. And then turn to the Q&A is from from the audience so and without so I'd like to end up no introduce our discussant for today it's professor assistant professor Sujata on that team and Gima. She's at the Daniel, Daniel and technological Institute in Singapore she trained at Temple University Japan Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley. Prior to joining NTU she worked at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the editor of Sri Lanka connected art histories that's Mumbai 2017. And she has published articles in Art of Asia, Asia and archives of Asian art. Currently she is completing a book manuscript on the transnational Dravidian tradition of architecture in the Indian Ocean so. Sujata over to you. Thank you Steven introduction and good morning. And good, good afternoon good evening to all of you who are joining from all over the world, and a big thank you to Steven Conan and Faisal for inviting me to be part of this exciting conversation on decolonizing museums in Southeast Asia I'm going to try to give you a brief comments as part of a response and then have a conversation with Conan and Faisal about their thought provoking talks and just try to figure out how to share my screen. Okay, I think that's done. My very first encounter with the Asian Civilizations Museum was in 1999 when I was passing through Singapore on my way back to my then job and home at the Art Institute of Chicago. The ACM was then located at the town and school of the former town and school, a three story building from 1910, funded by Chinese merchants, as well as through a public donation drive. This is the home of the first modern Chinese school on this island. I was seeing the ACM two years after its opening at this location on Armenian Street. Then in 2003, the ACM moved to its current location on the banks of the Singapore River to a national monument dating to 1867 the Empress Place building is a colonial garment structure, as was shared before by the curators which was built by Indian convict labor. As Dr. Kenson quark the first director of the ACM says court, the Asian Civilization Museum is both a very young and a very old museum and of court. He of course is alluding to the many lives of this museum who see collection as we heard from both Conan and Faisal began with the Raffles Library and Museum. The ACM certainly has had many lives and its identity is still changing as we heard in the current director Kenny Ting's call for decolonization at the beginning of this webinar series. So in my ruminations today I will briefly trace this many lives and then at the end I'll hope to have a conversation with Conan and Faisal about some of the issues that they brought up in their talks. We often read that unlike other museums of the wider region, the ACM is not a museum that focuses on telling a story about the nation state, but is instead dedicated to presenting Asian art and culture. And yet from its inception, it was to promote a great appreciation of the ancestral cultures of Singaporeans. The next incarnation at the former town on school, the emphasis was on Chinese civilization, which was justified but then director Kenson quark, due to availability of loans from Hong Kong, as well as the demographics in Singapore. The next incarnation as an Asian art museum at the Empress plates, the ACM followed the traditional organization of most Asian art museums in the world. It was organized into four regional clusters, China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The cultures were compartmentalized and displayed with clear boundaries. These divisions also invoke the CMI or model Chinese Malay Indian and other, although the other was not present. This diversity management technique, or a tool of social control has been present on this island since the British colonial period. In the term national is not part of the ACM's formal name. The idea of the nation was, and is still very much present, not only in the mission of museums mission but also on the ground in the physical galleries. In the ideas of Asia in the museum, Sonya S. Lee points out how most museums are organized by court geography with intention of reflecting the works perpetrated place of origin and of court. In the second incarnation, the ACM clearly reflected this geography based organization through its galleries and collecting practices. Moreover, the exhibition designs created by GSM design further contextualize the artworks in various ways to reveal their users or the location that they would have been originally seen in. Simply evoke South Indian temples with their long clad halls where dances performed offerings to the deity in the central sanctum. Chinese Buddhist delis were placed in dark alcoves with projections of Chinese cave temples as well as sacred beings that made visitors feel as if they were indeed stepping into a sacred site in China. Cambodian lentils were displayed above eye level with projections of a Cambodian temple above, a visitor was given a chance to enter temple like space to study or worship a central image while circumambulating and viewing other sculptures. In the Islamic gallery, a projection of a mirab gave visitors a sense of the interiors of a mosque as objects related to a mosque were displayed. In short, these galleries were simply stunning. But in 2014, all this changed when the ACM embarked on another new journey. The new ACM moves away from the geography based mode of display. Under the guidance of its second director, Dr. Alan Chong, the ACM began to display objects in a new way. That is along the shared themes of trade, faith and belief, and materials and design. These revamping phases included changing the museum's mission. That is focusing on quote historical connections between cultures and civilizations in Asia and between Asia and the world end of court. Yet the ACM's new curatorial narratives reflect Singapore's own history of trade and migration as a court city. In other words, the nation state is still very much present as an underlying narrative. The new direction was publicly revealed through a special exhibition in 2013, devotion and desire, cross-cultural art in Asia. A series of exhibitions since then has explored the global term in various ways. The Tang Shipwreck, China Mania, Christianity in Asia, port cities and core and raffles in Southeast Asia, just to name a few. In the introduction essay for the catalog for that inaugural exhibition in 2013, Alan Chong, the then director of the ACM, challenges the emphasis on national narratives that are often seen at museums throughout the world. In its questioning of national narratives, the ACM has begun to engage with global art histories, which narrates stories beyond the nation state as a unit of analysis. Here I'm reminded of Mary D. Sherry's imaginary visit to a museum in her edited volume, cultural contact and the making of European art. I'm sharing that with you. She begins by describing the various rituals we participate in when we visit a museum like buying a ticket, grabbing a map and then rushing around from room to room to catch as many objects as we can before we have museum fatigue. She ends by saying, quote, when your circuit seems complete, you again consult the floor plan, just to make sure you have seen it all. And now you notice that there is a department of Islamic art, one floor up, and that the arts of China and Latin America are located in an entirely different built end of court. In the new ACM, a French sugar caster is placed alongside a Chinese Imari sugar caster, which in turn is engaging the then creates for Japanese Imariware. In the new ACM, we can see the proclamation that bans Christianity in Japan, along with the term dynasty wrapping that mentions the arrival of Christianity in China. The world is in one vitrine in one gallery, or on one floor. The initiative to engage with the global could be interpreted as a move to decolonize as well. First and foremost, it is a move to distance the museum from the CMI model classification system that began 100 years ago. This engagement with the global turn, moreover reminds us that this was indeed art histories, that is the disciplines own solution to decolonize itself. It is a deep and sustained critique of its Eurocentric priorities, that is questioning the centers canons models and including or inviting bodies and new voices. The project of global art is often confused with non Western art history. It is also not a narrative about East meets West. Global art history until taking the whole globe as a framework of analysis, what then it's global art history to simply put it, it is about going beyond the nation state and creating narratives that straddle traditional boundaries and proposes innovative comparisons. That is what we see in these new galleries at the ACM. And it also gives us an opportunity to discuss art produce during the colonial encounter, and to even discuss colonialism. It also gives us a chance to go beyond the traditional canon, as we heard in Conan and Faisal's talks. So dramatic transformation of the ACM, we have a unique example of an Asian art museum that is a museum in Asia, playing an active role in initiating changes to the display of Asian art histories. We need to recognize and acknowledge it. And as Monica juniture reminds us, engaging with global art histories also means to engage with the incommensurability of encounters. Any museum has objects for simply taken or objects that remind us of the tragedies of colonial violence. This to the ACM has begun to grapple with. Let's move forward to this new phase when we will begin to see and hear more narratives about friction, discord, disunity and resistance that do not portray our world only through rose tinted glasses. We are here as it's eight o'clock in Singapore, and we should start on our conversation, I guess, and a discussion with Conan and Faisal. And then move on to the Q&A. Or would you like to respond to some of some of, or would you like to ask some specific questions. I actually wanted to start off by the discussion by actually thanking Conan and Faisal for giving, I guess, those of us who teach Asian art histories a challenge to go beyond the traditional canon or what we include in our lectures by getting us to look at these objects that we just simply walk past in the galleries, such as those precious but humble ceilings or the chili that Faisal was bringing attention to. Yes, we try to, you know, we do send the students out to the ACM or 200 of them the first years for their presentations and we try best to encourage students to go beyond the, you know, the Buddhists, the Gandharan Buddhists or the walking Buddhists or the Ganeshas or the beautiful Brachula Brances, but in getting us to really look carefully at these objects, I think gives us a maybe an opportunity for us to try to see how we can include them in our own lectures and then slowly starting including them in what we teach as part of the canon. But your talks also touched upon a couple of other issues, the issue of collecting and of course collectors. And I was struck by how, you know, the title of our panel has a famous collector's name. The Western colonial collector, but then when I listened to your talks, I was also hearing the presence of local collectors or other collectors and other types of collecting. And, and of course I'm also thinking of the galleries themselves. One of my favorite galleries is the little gallery that's nestled between the Singapore Archaeology Gallery and the Maritime Trade Gallery that highlights those wonderful ceramics, the medicine jars or the alum textiles and which which clearly tell us that people in this region were collecting local collectors. And, and perhaps they were collecting different types of objects from what the anthropologists and the adventurers and the naturalists and the missionaries started collecting that sort of formed the earlier colonial version of the ACN. And, and also I'm thinking of, you know, when we also think about narratives of plunder. I'm mostly thinking of the one of your final exhibition Stephen Jimmy Ong's installation. And when we listen to that narrative of plunder of the palace, or we are when I when I think of my own research. The Temple of the Tooth Relic or the Royal Treasury by Portuguese troops in the 16th century in Sri Lanka or we think of the Kingdom of Benin being planted and all those beautiful bronzes being taken to London. And that is a plunder we also hear of collectors and collections so I'm just wondering how do we begin to start. I guess moving away from this emphasis of colonial collections and colonial collecting to start looking at how local collections and collectors were also collecting. Because it's kind of a broad question for both of you to get us started. Maybe I can take it first. Yeah, I think, okay, dude, I think first thing is that there's a bit of an error in the title I feel because it says raffles collection by actually should be raffles museum collection because obviously the raffles collection now when you know to the British Museum, and you know some of it was lost at sea. But so, so, yeah, it's interesting that, of course, so the raffles museum collection was really built up by many many collectors not just those associated with colonial sort of occupations. But also, as you know, in the very first place the, the opening of the museum, the museum component of the raffles library museum actually began in 1849 with the donation of two gold coins by by the Tamagong Abraham of Johor so in a way, in a way the collection really began with those two items. I didn't find them down the collection, you know, the record isn't really there but I would say that is indicative of how, you know, there's really a buy-in from all sectors of the community when it comes to collecting. Obviously, we can't deny that violence was definitely a big part of one of the forms of collecting in the colonial period, although I have to say that with some notable exceptions, the majority of, as I said, the raffles museum collection was a big part of it was as well logical. And it was really collected by people in sort of the scientific expeditions to collect samples of all sorts of different specimens in the region. Yeah, just trying to kind of find out if you want to jump in. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I think you have a very good point and it's something that we definitely are thinking about with regards to local collectors because some of these communities, some of our communities that we've been collecting, God knows how long before colonialism came into the picture, the Bahtar communities were collecting different gimmicks from China, for example, so were the Dayak communities, but we don't listen to, we don't highlight them as we don't consider them collectors, why not, you know, we should. They don't, we might not have their names, but we should at least kind of like investigate this phenomenon and beyond just collection but procuring of objects from different cultures. So we were trading this South East Asia, the different communities were trading amongst each other. Textiles, for example, was one of the most mobile products. So yeah, we just need to rethink about who are why we classify certain people collectors, but also with regards to the colonial collection why not we also think about the other side about the people who are giving up their objects so turn the whole story around or look at it from that angle, because some of these people will actually, I mean, we know tourism art, some of a lot of the objects in earlier Southeast Asian collections could have actually be more of tourism art or at least they were made for the Western taste and Western aesthetics, but I guess I wouldn't call it Western aesthetic but Western taste what they think Southeast Asia looks like. These people have certain agency on how they, they sold, they made these objects, maybe we should also start looking at those angles as well. So we can still deal with colonial collections but let's look at all the players involved. Can I jump in really quickly. Because there's actually the question that's got voted the most I think directly deals with this so I think it's probably good to interweave some of these questions from the audience with the discussion when they relate directly. So on that note, yeah, Fiona Tan has asked all these great attempts to decolonize the museum and allow local communities to engage with these collections. I am curious if there are attempts to recover voices of the colonize from the past, as the communities might see their history and use, and use refer to these items differently. And then Conan you've both like spoke about this, but maybe this is a question. Have you actually started looking at specific communities yet that you could work with. I think it follows on nicely from what you just stated. Yeah, I mean, for me I have and that's one of my first go to approach whenever I start researching on something which is to try to find someone within the community, if not an organization or institution that I can, you know, run ideas by or talk to. So with the Chile, for example, I was very lucky to be able to have a conversation with Irina Agravina she's a she's an artist and researcher from Georgia Carter and. I mean, it's not Balinese, but we had conversations about daily three and significance of daily three and she gave lots of perspectives. And I'm trying, we are trying to do that with many other different communities so with run a well in foundation for example I've spoken to them. So yeah, it's baby steps for me but the aim is we have we have I guess a direction, but the pandemic is making that a bit difficult Stephen but yeah. You know, I think for, for the Hindu and Buddhist objects in the collection we haven't exactly began to kind of do that in a very systematic way yet to, I think, you know with with our engagements with the interreligious organization in Singapore that, you know, we alluded to. We have been trying to get some perspectives from members of those religious communities to to actually react to objects in the gallery that are from their religion. But I don't know if that's really what the same as what you would say you would, you know, the questioner would say it's the same as recovering the voices of the colonized people at the time, you know, because obviously that it's not the same thing right like, you know these things are connected. The place where they were collected from and it's not the same as a local community here in Singapore appreciating these objects so I'm not very sure if there's an answer to that question. Although, you know, from what I try to do in my presentation today to try to try and uncover some of the how communities were actually, you know, from from where these clay tablets that I was talking about where they were taken from. And how they were actually interacted with with the local community communities as I said, you know that the Buddhist monks would be actually taking them and, you know, instead of putting them in a, in a between on display they were actually grind them up and use them to make a new new Buddha images because they had had this kind of power. And I feel like there is a lot more there are opportunities for this in the colonial record even obviously is those imperfect because we're not, you know, really listening to the voices of the people just descriptive. I think there is potential research that we do. Yeah, I think you hinted at it with as well the fact that the ceilings were discovered in an area that is now primarily the populations are primarily Islamic so they would have focused on them as a different way so it would be interesting to sort of reconnect with those communities, you know, in present day, you know there is I think there's definitely scope for it. All right, so I suggest that you have any. Well, I mean I'm thinking of, you know, it is a challenge to try to recover those voices I mean one could start looking at the artwork and see what you know what what kind of traces these communities have left behind I think Conan was certainly into that in the way the seals were used. And sorry, I'm in a room where there's a sensor, and if I don't move in the lights go off, which I forgot. So, um, but I'm also thinking I'm sort of when I that question and then 5,000 corners responses and and reminded me of some of the own work that I do on these Sri Lanka libraries made for the Portuguese court and how, how Portuguese troops sort of destroyed these temples along the course of Sri Lanka and how it has been such a challenge to try to recover the art history of those regions and it's only through these ivories and try and it's, you know, you can only do it to a certain extent, trying to figure out what, what, you know, not what life was like back then or what the covers are trying to depict in those images. But it's something that we need to do. I think I'm going to address some of the other questions as well. Actually, what I'm going to do is this two or three questions that interrelate and touch on sort of some key topics about not just what we're talking about today specific to ACM but also the whole sort of decolonization. So I'll sort of try I'm going to frame it into sort of a larger picture so that you can maybe then we can answer it. Sort of one question. The first is Bradley's has been voted as well. I mean he's so he's really looking at the issue of positionality. So who gets the right to speak for for who right who can speak about these issues. You know he says it's virtually impossible to talk about cultural colonialism without mentioning racial equality. Who in academia is that you got the voice students and scholars are like is it of course is traditionally and you could even argue still over representation of say, white scholarship. Who gets who gets to speak on this where should the balance be whereas who gets privileged who doesn't. And then Andrew Chan has a question and a comment. So I'll deal with the question not the common. Really what he's saying is this just a fat right it's decolonization just a badge. Is it just the latest academic, you know, seeing that we're all getting excited about it, or has it. Is there an actual, is there actual value, heuristic value to it does it move discussions forward in a meaningful way. I think is what he's saying or he's questioning challenging what we're doing. And also, you know, how do we judge his comment is, you know, how do we judge colonial collectors, you know, the limitations that they're under the conditions they collected on the should we, you know, I guess that's another common critique of decolonization is that perhaps we're judging the past by today's standards I don't think that's what we're doing but I think that is something that needs to be addressed and maybe that can be. Maybe address that issue and then sorry, I'm just going down, Dr hill me. I think this is either for me what's also an important aspect is if okay if we get rid of colonial narratives, what replaces them. Do we replace them with national narratives with localization narratives. Because if we create a vacuum obviously then it'll be filled by something so I think there's, I think you've touched on a lot of this already but maybe just want to sort of think of those three questions comments and, and how you would respond to them I think in the ACM context or within what you've spoken about today. I think I will begin by I think this is the important thing to say that I don't think the colonization is a fan. I think it's actually really integral to the museum, remaining relevant, remaining important to communities where, wherever they are, I mean whether it's in previously colonized countries like Singapore and Indonesia and so on. In the West right in the British Museum, the Met, these all need to be colonized as well and it's not a matter of, I think, necessarily, you know, doing away with everything that was colonial. To me it's kind of trying to obscure the histories of our nations where we are today, the cultures, but it's about trying to understand them better to contextualize them better. So, kind of, yeah, going back to the question of are we trying to judge these collectors, these colonial museum durators and so on in the past by today's standards. I don't really think that's the right way to frame it. I think it's about trying to historicize them in their context and to, you know, I think it's kind of to address this sort of balance that, you know, where in the past colonial discourse the colonial voice was seen as the most important or the top of the hierarchy. But now what we're trying to do is to try and equalize the other voices that have been forgotten or ignored or kind of somehow silenced and to try to put them on the same level through kind of doing this kind of historicizing work. And I think that that's really be colonizing to me to to let in all these other narratives and other perspectives. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think firstly with regards to the question about, you know, who gets to tell these stories right I think both Conan and I even suggest that have already mentioned about committee voices I think that needs to happen and I know it's tricky sometimes people don't know how to deal with collaborations but we need to start collaborating with people across the globe I think there's no excuse anymore to not do it. So we like to work in our own little bubbles in our own little laptop sometimes but sometimes it's best, you know, and that allows you to be able to make sure it's collaborations I mean two collaborations not commissions or collaborations would probably yield the best results so you make sure that you are not back connecting what the colonels were doing. And I mean, and with regards to the word decolonization or decolonizing, you know, it gives a term for something that many of us have already been thinking about especially and as and going back to the previous question especially ethnic minority scholars and academics and curators or anybody in the field, we just before the word colonizing was, well, a fashion fashionable the fact that it was difficult for us to find something to latch on to methodology even but this gives a voice to it. And I know when people think of decolonizing the museum or anything. One of the first things they think about oh we want to forget the past we're going to judge the past. We don't really we want to keep addressing the past we kind of love the past know we won't be in this field, but with a different with different perspectives with new lenses with different lenses diverse lenses wider lenses because much of the building blocks of academia. The academic world, the museum world, the perspectives and approaches were built upon mostly Western one so we just want to make sure that we make it richer, but bringing in local and regional and alternative perspectives allow that. So yeah, so that's what it means I know it sounds very scary to some people, very aggressive, but it's actually not in my opinion. Yeah. I think that makes me kind of think again of the question of what do we replace. What do we what we taste as the colonial right and to me actually the colonial is a state of mind where where one group of people, you know, privileged people is is seen as above all else. So, yeah, I know where I guess we are trying to we are trying to undo that. It doesn't mean that the voices of those, you know, who were at the top of the hierarchy or even today are complete silence and actually I think it's a call also to it's not just about the past about the present as well. I mean, who, you know, it makes us think who are the privileged voices today in our society who who gets to speak now. And as curators we, you know, we're also trying to, I hope, right, we're trying to address that as well. I think, maybe there's a different issue altogether but I think one of the things that we're doing at the museum to address this also is without accessibility programs to try and make sure a lot of other groups in the communities that don't necessarily think about going to the museum as something they do every day or have issues that prevent them from enjoying our collections fully. The way it is presented now we're also trying to slowly, you know, in very physical ways as well to make those collections more accessible to all in, well, in Singapore and everywhere else. So, yeah. I mean, you've both covered everything so beautifully but I was also, you know, thinking about what we can do, I guess, in academia since some of, I guess, one of these questions talks about cultural colonialism and academia and students and scholars having a voice and even just simple things like both of you alluded to like getting students to just go to the museum, you know, some of them it might be even the first time when they're writing the reflective essays or in their diary, the depth of weekly reflections and or just getting students to also not only read the knowledge that's produced in centers of knowledge production in London or New York or, you know, these universities in the US so but also making sure that we include essays, articles, books written by scholars producing knowledge in Asia just little baby steps matter. And so, you know, it sits and also going back to the question on, I guess, you know, what are we going to replace it with. It could be a national narrative, but it could and it could be localization or looking to the region, or looking to looking at global connections but it's, you know, it's it's it's a challenge to do these completely replacing colonial narratives because as one of the questions, I think also mentioned something about how we have to rely on these colonial officials. And of course we do acknowledge that that they were collecting and they were writing. But, you know, it's it's it's always a it's always a challenge I guess trying to figure out what what this decolonization is whether it's in academia or in the museum world. Right, yeah, I don't event to what you've all said but actually I wanted to pick up. If you don't mind we'll keep going for about another five 10 minutes. There's still a few more questions I'd like to address but Faisal triggered something from me earlier about language and I think it's really important as well because there's a whole discussion about decolonization and of course again, this is, you know, one of one of the aspects that we both there's also been workshops in Southeast Asian context about how the, you know, about issues of translation or, you know, publishing in native languages Southeast Asian languages. Because again that creates barriers if everything is in English, French or touch right depending on some of the regions or Portuguese, maybe in the Sri Lankan context and so forth. So I think, again, it's not, again, it's not just it's not about doing away with with with English language scholarship or not referring to, you know, a well known professor in the US university it's just about actually realizing that there could be just as much valuable information or completely new perspectives in as Faisal has shown in, you know, in literature that's written in a Southeast Asian language so that is, that's another question right another issue entirely about about about language issues that's completely I think related. All right, I'm going to take the next two questions together as well because they, they actually address the same issue and that's a very specific one to ACM. I think the answers are asked about about the, you know, the usual, the colonial viewpoint of Islam and how of course in the Raffles collection and so forth is completely underrepresented. So how, how should museums address the absence of Islamic objects in their display and the religious heritage of the region I think ACM is doing that but maybe one of you would like to talk about that a bit more. And has also asked a quite a specific question on on collections but she's more interested in fashion so she's asking. She's curious how you would look at historical dress in the same decolonizing context, both in terms of how such traditional garments are still worn, and the same way as they were decades ago and how also some ways dress has drastically changed because of colonialism maybe you could, maybe you could address one one each maybe I think Conan's been working on the fashion a bit recently as well so you might want to take that one, and Pfizer may want to take the one on Islam. Yeah, or, or vice versa. Okay, well, I, I mean, yes and no I mean I think like with regards to the collection, especially the old Raffles library museum collection. I might seem like we don't have Islamic objects or we need to also start thinking about what it means when we talk about Islamic objects as well right and that's a bigger discussion in itself. There were far stricter categories in the past and what we can deem as Islamic objects but some objects for example in the Malay peninsula that might not look like Islamic objects they were also part of Islamic rituals or everyday kind of rights and stuff like that. And it's very difficult to pry what is Islamic and not from say Malay culture. So, there are ways to look at it for some of the objects so when I'm talking what I'm talking about it's like objects like the Chris and certain Islamic traditions or festivals or even just the use of certain textiles. That might be just, you know, non-sacred textiles but they are worn for the everyday which also include Islamic kind of rituals and moments and festivals for example. We also need to start being open to the idea that something can be both Islamic and say Hindu or and Buddhist. For example, most of us already know things like objects like the wayang toping or even the wayang kulit were also used for the dissemination of Islam for example but these are not things that were tackled or addressed by the earlier collectors so but I do agree that some of the objects that were I guess, quintessentially Islamic for example, headstones or Bhatune sun for example they are made of wood we might not be able to have them. But I guess that's where we have to do the, you know, reparations right now to make sure we have these objects that are current or even acquire from the community and I think we also need to think about intangible heritage as well. Collecting those kinds of documentation for example because a lot of the, also the objects of this region they are perishable, they are meant to, you know, be consumed over time so those things need to be considered so we can start doing those legworks right now I think. Yeah, exactly. I think the remedy to, you know, the absence of Islamic objects in the collection is really to start this thing Islamic objects in the museum. And sorry, can I just add I mean and also our Islamic art creator Nora, she's doing a lot of that already so we that's why I think our Islamic art gallery is pretty well done in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, the Islamic gallery which is part of our faith and belief galleries on the second floor is, I think the only one the only galleries of Islamic art in the world to feature the art of Southeast Asia to center Southeast Asia and that global conversation. And then this requires also a lot of research on the collection itself, where many of these objects may have been, you know, kind of not not noticed or or silenced as you said. And that's for fashion I think I think it's a similar actually it's a similar, maybe a similar thing in the sense that a lot of the objects that the ACM has been collecting over the years, and even from the Raffles Museum time. of Asian fashion have actually been categorized as ethnological objects so they've been categorized as costume or you know, you know, maybe live ceremony, garment and so on and I think so it is like a miscategorization to us now. And what we've been trying to do at the museum now with the opening of our fashion and design galleries in the dirt floor is way to try and and look at our past our old collections and also to, you know, grow our collection to, to re to rethink this idea of fashion, you know, it's just not related to just, you know, the idea of old culture, which old culture, high fashion really comes a very specific moment in the colonial metropolis in Paris and London in the 19th century. We're trying to expand that that view of fashion that in Asia and Southeast Asia there were actually many many different forms, many different types of fashion that were developing at their own pace, you know, without without any necessary if you're any external difference. So, so that's really what I'm trying to do at the museum. address that question. I'm aware I'm conscious of time so I think we should probably wrap up. Unfortunately, there was one, there's a few questions left that are all interrelated and maybe I would just sort of raise them but we should use like, I think they will come up in later talks in the series. You know, again, the definition of decolonization it is a lot I think it's a, it's a term that encapsulates a lot of different aspects. And he says it was not what he was expecting. Is it not ideas about ownership power and origins I think you definitely address power and origins, but ownership of course. So I think this is where we're getting into, you know, questions of repatriation and so forth. I would just say that I think in in lecture five Ricky Pundazan will definitely I think talk about those issues in more depth in terms of the Philippine collections in Michigan and I think the talk next week may touch on it as well but yeah of course I think it does I think decolonization obviously refers to these, these talks about these as well and Francis Locud also asked a similar question about is there ongoing efforts to repatriate or digitize artifacts that originated in Singapore, but we're extracted during colonial times. I don't know if you want to comment on it really briefly or we just bring it to a close. So is this important to acknowledge that those two questions. All right. Maybe I'll just quickly say something. I mean, yeah, I think repatriation is always a possible part of the solution is not going to be the solution is part of the solution. Because it's not always useful for every case. And, you know, and I think some of the previous speakers from the previous sessions have really mentioned this also. But as I mentioned earlier some objects in the same collection were sold by people from their respective communities to collect, you know, to be collected by the by by the Western colonials, the Western colonial collectors for example so we need to respect those kinds of agency so it's really very tricky for some of these objects so it might, we might be, we have to really identify the context of each object first so and it's possibly not a solution for every single object right so. Yeah, but for certain objects when it's really really very obvious, you know, it's really questionable. I think a lot of those cases, we've already seen in the media that this is a solution that lots of museums were actually open to. If I may just say one thing before we close and just to note that actually, you know, the work of the colonizing museum is also not only the province of the current department, and definitely at the ACM, our colleagues in the other departments including the audience, scriptures, programming and education, marketing, all the other parts of the museum are as important in decolonizing what we do at the museum and actually this is already a very big change from the colonial period where like, you know, the all powerful curator making decisions and like doing everything. So, so I just wanted to acknowledge, I mean, even though this webinar series is called equalizing, equalizing curating and the museum. A lot of what we've talked about me and Faisal today actually also the work of our other colleagues in other departments as well. So, so yeah, just, just like to acknowledge that. Absolutely. I think museums have, I think the broader context museums have evolved over to say the past 30 years to become more public facing as well right so now we have a whole range of departments and professions within the museum as opposed to definitely during the raffles period or even up until the 1960s and so forth and I think, again, I think it's very important that Conan's brought it up because this, you know, the as museums evolve this these questions of decolonization I think become much more relevant and engagement with local communities and so forth. Yeah, I think it's we should frame it with a broader developments of museums and museology as well. But yeah, on that note I think I will bring this really great discussion to a to a close I think we covered a lot of really important points today. And thank you for the questions as well really great questions from everybody really great to see people, not only questioning but challenging as well that's what we like to see. So just all that's left for me is to thank Sujatha for being a wonderful discussion. And then of course Faisal and Conan for their excellent discussion today and the audience so hopefully I'll see some of you next week. And that's it from us. Good night. Thank you.