Unsettling Museums: Pacific Artists, Anthropology, and Collaborative Practice

By Sylvia Cockburn

Unsettling Museums is a revolutionary exploration of the collaborations between contemporary Pacific artists and anthropology museums in the early twenty-first century. This book unpacks nuanced artist-museum relationships from the perspectives of both the artists and the museum staff. Sylvia Cockburn charts how collaborators navigate the spaces between art galleries and museums, between past and present, and between Western and Indigenous worldviews.

In museums seeking to decolonize Indigenous collections and center Indigenous voices, collaborations with artists and displays of contemporary Indigenous art have become almost ubiquitous. Through exhibitions, interventions, and research partnerships, Pacific artists and museum staff are negotiating key questions about the role of museums and the future of curated collections. Additionally, beyond the central relationship between artists and museum staff are further commitments and responsibilities between communities, audiences, and institutions. Over six chapters, Cockburn details the successes and failures of various artist-museum collaborations, her findings highlighting the importance of understanding these complex relationships. Case studies detailing exhibitions, interventions, and research partnerships are enhanced with twenty rich color plates and extensive quotations from primary interviews, foregrounding the work of Indigenous scholars and artists.

Although displaying contemporary Indigenous art can be a powerful method of intervention in museums, Cockburn concludes that it should not be seen as a proxy for wider community engagement. Unsettling Museums is an important reminder institutions must continually support the underlying relationships and adapt to the ever-changing expectations present between themselves, artists, and Pacific communities if they are seeking to truly "unsettle."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GWS9KFSD
• ISBN13: 9798880702077
• Release Date: January 2027
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Length: 200 Pages