Orientalism lives!

Checked out the new west entrance to the American Museum of Natural History, a curvy wasp's nest-inspired concrete concoction which turns out to be airy enough but a little more exciting in photos than in real life. But creating an entrance at what had been the back of the museum not only adds new space but changes flows, and we found ourselves in a gallery it was hard to believe was anywhere in a museum in 2024. 

Called "Asian Peoples," if you came at it from the east, as people before presumably did, you arrived from "Asian Mammals" (!). From half-naked "primitives" you'd work toward the "higher civilizations" of China, India and the Islam world. But we, like throngs of others now, came at it from the end, invited in by what was once the exhibit's sending-off, a sort of diorama of Samarkand captioned "The Lure of Asia." Seriously?!

By weird coincidence, the eminent Indian American historian of British colonialism Priya Satia published a critique of this gallery today (!). She was in the museum with her children earlier this month and so appalled at what she saw that she wrote a thread on X, response to which was vigorous enough that ThePrint asked her to write the article.

 

The displays of human cultures have been part of AMNH from the start - and, of course, they cover every part of the world except Europe. But I was dumbstruck to learn that this Orientalist fantasy, which I assumed dated to the bad old days when it hosted the Second International Eugenics Congress just over a century ago, in fact dates only to 1980! That was just two years, Satia points out, after Edward Said published Orientalism, calling out western "orientalists" for their presumed capacity - indeed superior capacity - to understand the east. 

 

Satia wonders about what walking through these galleries has meant to generations of school children. ("Are we Southeast Asian?" I heard one teenager ask a parent.) Satia's particular focus was the representation of India as monolithic, monolithically Hindu and caste-obsessed. In her brief essay she doesn't remark on the bizarrely mandala-like representation of "The Indian Worldview" which somehow nests within each each other "Myth and Epic," "The Pattern of History," "The Pattern of Everyday Life," "The Four Ends of Man" and "Caste and Karma" (at the center!), all framed by "The Powers of the Gods" and "The Vedic Cosmos." Monolith, anyone?

We learn also how Arabic culture is founded on admiration for Greece and Rome, and why Chinese science never became truly scientific like the west's. I'd like to know what this exhibition replaced, and who was involved in putting it together: I'm sure they thought they were doing better. Satia's X-discussions suggest there have been many protests over these and other galleries in the "Human Origins and Cultural Halls" - producing little more than some unconvincing signage indicating that the exhibits may be a little dated and need rethinking.

 

But, appalling though it is, it occurred to me it might make a good field trip destination for "Theorizing Religion" this fall. (Perhaps the week we read Hume's Natural History of Religion...?!) Students will be invited to study this gallery, compare it with the completely different vibe of the Northwest Coast galleries, recently completely redone in consultation with indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. These galleries are chock full of "religion" and theories of its evolution, all somehow "natural history" - and imbibed by countless schoolchildren. (If I do this I'll need to return and have a look at the galleries of African, South and Central American and Pacific Peoples. The other galleries of indigenous North American cultures are closed.)