La Casa Del Museo: A Museum Outreach Project at the Outset of Decolonial Criticism

Abstract

This article presents some of the practices of the experimental project La Casa del Museo and their long-term results. This project exemplifies the exploration undertaken by various professionals at the Museo Nacional de Antropología (MNA) to reconsider the role of that institution in relation to society, coinciding with the rise of decolonial criticism. It also allows for a reconsideration of museum experiences and actions to reimagine the role of museums in a postcolonial world. Between 1972 and 1980 the project operated an outreach programme undertaken in barrios, that were (at that time) located on the outskirts of Mexico City. It arose as a practical response to the series of discussions that were ongoing within the museums sector in the 1960s, and which questioned the modern museum of the type scattered across the world as a legacy of colonialism. The implemented actions illustrate the construction and exploration of new ideas and assumptions regarding the work of museums in relation to groups normally excluded from cultural participation. To begin, I revisit some of the key debates of the last quarter of the twentieth century on the role of museums in relation to society in order to analyse the context that gave rise to La Casa del Museo. I then define the key elements of its practices with regard to the postulates of the Integral/Integrated Museum, given that it aimed to ‘implement its dynamic’. Following this, I discuss the project’s long-term effects, understood as ‘resonances’.