Andrew's Museum Ethics Blog

 Repatriation, MOVE Bombing Victims Hey everybody,     On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia officials made the decision to bomb the headquarters of a back-to-nature organization, MOVE, after a standoff with the police. 11 people were killed in the initial bombing, 5 of them were children. The resulting fire burned down 61 homes. Two forensic anthropologists, Alan Mann and Janet Monge, were asked to identify two of the bodies, later identified as Tree and Delisha Africa. Instead of returning the bodies to the coroner, they claimed to have lost the bodies. The bodies remained in the possession of Mann at Penn State and were used in classes as recently as 2021.     Mann and Monge shouldn't have kept the bodies in their possession. They should have been returned to the coroner after identification, then turned over to the remaining family members. At no time would it have been appropriate to keep or donate the bodies to Penn State, or for Princeton to use them in a class o...

 Cultural Appropriation, MFA Boston's "#Kimono Wednesdays" Replica of the Kimono from "La Japonaise." Photo from  Hey everybody,     In 2015, MFA Boston decided to have an event called Kimono Wednesdays on location. Visitors to the museum would be able to wear a kimono that was a replica from a piece by Monet. The piece by Monet in question is "La Japonaise," a painting in which the artist's wife is in a kimono and is the center of debate.      The exhibition the event was a part of, "Claude Monet: Flirting with the Exotic," could have been named something that didn't implicate exoticism or yellow-face, but that isn't the part that I would like to focus on.     In the articles I was able to read, Boston Chronicle requires a subscription, Japanese and Japanese Americans were not asked for their opinions. The council that condemned the event, didn't have a Japanese or Japanese American person on it. A kimono is not a religious p...

https://www.facebook.com/longmontmuseum/videos/239236724974363 (Sorry for the link, I couldn't get Blogger to accept any types of links other than Youtube). Hey everybody,       Last year, on February 17, my family (the Tanaka family), the Mayeda family, and the Kanemoto family were asked to share our family's history in the U.S. as a part of a series on voices in Longmont, Colorado's community. It was a panel of the three representatives and the host, questions were held until the end. The goal of the talk was understanding, learning other people's perspectives and histories.      The three families farmed a large part of Longmont, even contributing a large portion of land to the development of the city in the Kanemoto's case. All of them arrived as illegal immigrants through various means.      It was nice to share our history, without being interrupted. The questions were mostly respectful. The biggest thing, we were able to talk about dif...

​ Hey everybody,     You can call me Andrew or Drew, but not Andy. I'm a fine arts major, in his final semester +3 hours.     Most of my experience with museums is through visits. I've never been a part of putting together an exhibition for a museum. I've always figured that there was controversy around museums, but it wasn't until Art History Theory and Methods and Art History 211 that I heard about specific examples.     I wasn't surprised that museums are often used to suppress PoC and other minority narratives, or that museums were inherently classist. It's hard enough to tell my own narrative as an Asian American without people inflicting various microaggressions on me; I can't imagine how much worse it is for women or other minorities.     So, yeah, I think this is enough for an introduction. Ever the slacker, Andrew Horiuchi P.S. I'm going to try this style to see if it'll be easier to write. La Tanya S. Autry and Mike Murawski, “Museu...