Looking beyond the glass Prof. Mónica Salas Landa challenges students to view museum exhibits from a different angle.

Looking beyond the glass

In fall 2023, our class exhibit “Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism” drew inspiration from Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s book of the same title and aims to confront the profound legacy of violence deeply ingrained within museum collections. Building on her ideas, our physical exhibit featured eight textual interventions (see samples below) designed to address the neutral language commonly found in museum labels. This language often overlooks the violent history of museum collections, particularly their imperial and colonial origins. Through our website, we aimed to further emphasize this context and its lasting impact. We believed that for museums today, the most critical issue is understanding what was taken, from whom, under which conditions, and facilitating the return of objects when requested.