Abstract

A dominant metaphor in contemporary museum practice is that of tightening up stories to distill them to a central idea. This paper highlights problems with this metaphor and suggests a different metaphor as a counterweight, that of loosening narratives to provide space for multiple perspectives.

These issues are examined with regard to exhibitions dealing with the relationship between western science and indigenous knowledge traditions. Three examples are given in detail: an interactive science centre exhibition on traditional aboriginal knowledge; a planetarium show featuring a contact moment between James Cook and a Polynesian navigator; and a proposed exhibition on the scientific work of David Unaipon.

Overtightening is seen to lead to several problems. At a basic level the mechanics of tightening can distort the curatorial intentions of the exhibition. At a more fundamental level, the representation of knowledge practices in museums is significantly influenced by underlying conceptions of knowledge. Western scientific traditions have traditionally been interpreted by science museums with a positivist understanding while recent anthropological displays of 'non-Western' knowledge have generally adopted a relativist position. These frameworks inevitably leave their mark in the process of tightening.

It is argued that conventional representations of indigenous knowledge practices, either positivist or relativist, risk separating instrumental knowledge about nature from cultural practice, dividing the natural and cultural. Yet much indigenous knowledge, and arguably all knowledge practices, is performed in a domain that is simultaneously natural and cultural. This suggests that representations of such hybrid knowledge practices require us to speak of the cultural and the natural in a symmetrical fashion.