The Disorienting Beauty of "Africa & Byzantium"

A landmark exhibition offers a new history of art.

- Susan Tallman

Viewed benignly, the encyclopedic art museum is a great public library of things, illuminating the brilliant variety and shared impulses of our species, and promoting intercultural understanding and admiration. Viewed less benignly, it has been cast as the well-spoken child of imperialist shopaholics and kleptomaniacs who appropriated the art of other people to tell flattering tales about themselves.

Museums have long contested this characterization on grounds both pragmatic (their ability to protect and care for the world's treasures) and high-minded-the belief that convening things from everywhere enables them to tell a sweeping, global story about what it is to be human. The 2002 "Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums," signed by the directors of 18 world-famous institutions, put the claim succinctly: “Museums serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every nation.” It’s a fine sentiment, but the fact that every one of those 18 museums is in Europe or North America raises obvious questions about just how those peoples of other nations are being served. This geographic lopsidedness has led critics to challenge not only the museums’ rights to the objects in their care, but also the histories those objects have been arranged to illustrate.