Abstract

As heritage institutions in metropolitan centres in the UK, US, and other colonial nations respond to calls for equity and the repatriation of material culture, museums in previously colonised nations have sought their own paths forward. We will discuss fieldwork carried out across multiple sites in Greenland, comparing the variety of local and national narratives, curatorial logics, and stated missions encountered in the institutions we visited. We will consider the work different kinds of museums understand themselves to do, and the audiences museums understand themselves to be for. In light of conversations with curators and community members, we will question whether museums are useful institutions in the 21st century Arctic and ask what Arctic museum futures might look like. Finally, we will discuss the process of staging the current exhibition Arctic Cultures: Collections and Imaginations, sharing our own visions of the future of critical museum practice.