Review: Museums as Agents for Social Change: Collaborative Programmes at the Mutare Museum, by Njabulo Chipangura and Jesmael Matago

Abstract

Book Review| February 01 2022 Review: Museums as Agents for Social Change: Collaborative Programmes at the Mutare Museum, by Njabulo Chipangura and Jesmael Matago Museums as Agents for Social Change: Collaborative Programmes at the Mutare Museum by Njabulo Chipangura and Jesmael Matago. Routledge Museums in Focus series. New York: Routledge, 2021. xii + 138 pp.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index; clothbound, $59.95; eBook, $20.65. Julia Wells Julia Wells Rhodes University in Makhanda Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (2022) 44 (1): 116–118. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2022.44.1.116 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Julia Wells; Review: Museums as Agents for Social Change: Collaborative Programmes at the Mutare Museum, by Njabulo Chipangura and Jesmael Matago. The Public Historian 1 February 2022; 44 (1): 116–118. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2022.44.1.116 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search This is a feisty book which tackles the heavy legacy of colonial museums in Africa today. The authors carefully explain just how awkward a museum, as an institution founded to support race-based colonial assumptions, can be. Throughout Africa, colonizers built museums both to celebrate their own claims to technological superiority and to hold the indigenous people in place as curious others. This book demonstrates how such apparent handicaps can be turned inside out and put to good use. It includes a series of case studies of initiatives successfully undertaken at the Mutare Museum in Mutare, Zimbabwe. As a guide not only to what is wrong with museums, but to a host of remedial actions, it is a book that should be of interest to anyone interested in museum management throughout Africa. In fact, it should be required reading for all decisionmakers and funders within the sector. The lessons can easily... You do not currently have access to this content.