Decolonizing the Smithsonian: Museums as Microcosms of Political Encounter

This article investigates the relationship between politics, decolonization and museums. It explores the curation of the Asian and African collections at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, 1950-1970, in the context of US involvement in the ‘end’ of European empire, Third World nationalism and the Cold War. Close analysis of museum archives reveals the diversity, dynamism and occasionally progressive nature of museum anthropology during a period often considered uninteresting and even moribund. It demonstrates the myriad entanglements between museums and US government policy, and how cultural representation in the US was influenced by the specificities of colonization and independence in different regions of the Global South. Museums are positioned as agents in mediating wider political change.