Last week I attended the Rose Cafe hosted by GRF Sam. Sam’s talk focused on his work with modern primitives, specifically in how art and literature can function as relics of colonialism through the intersection of the modern and the primitive. During the cafe, he showed us a variety of visuals which were designed to make us consider the way we think about the terms “modern” and “primitive”. One image that I found particularly striking was a photograph of a large room with a high ceiling which contained many primitive objects housed in a variety of rectangular glass cases. This photograph was taken in a way which, at first glance, more resembled a department store than a museum. As Sam pointed out the function of class in the idea of a museum, which is designed more for middle or upper class individuals, as it combines with the idea of displaying post-colonial cultures and peoples as collections of stolen objects, I thought that the suggestion of this image as a department store was particularly poignant.

While Sam’s entire talk was quite fascinating, I personally found his discussion of museum exhibits to be the most impactful. As a person who has spent much time in museums and generally enjoys visiting them, this portion of his talk made me question my own role in certain problematic practices. Sam made valid points about how the way curators construct museum exhibits designed to represent primitive cultures is often influenced strongly by colonial ideologies. This really made me reconsider how I have thought about primitive art displays in museums I have visited in the past, and encouraged me to be more thoughtful about my own perception of these exhibits in the future.

Overall, I really enjoyed last week’s cafe. I was pleasantly surprised to see a field such as Sam’s represented, as the cafes can often be kind of repetitive in terms of which fields they encompass. It sometimes seems as if the Rose Cafe selection is dominated by talks about either agricultural research or general life advice. It was mentioned that there may be more talks being given by GRFs about their research, and I am really looking forward to seeing more diversity.