Museums have a lot of power over what we think about the things we see.

We might just trust them a little too much for it.

We are generally unaware of the significance of the ancient objects that we see on display in museums. Lots of these objects represent a colonial history of taking, and their existence in that space is therefore loaded with invisible tensions of the past, that permeate the present. Wall labels are meant to link the un-linkable; their purpose is to evoke imagery that connects us to an object’s origins, giving us the illusion of understanding that context, too. The label is also meant to root that object to the culture that it came from.

But, often, these labels don’t provide enough information to consider the tough stuff. And, doubly, this lack of engagement with the history perpetuates the bad stuff and erases the valuable stuff.