Episode 9 – Dahomey with Jimena Perry

Rubi: [00:00:22] Welcome to Watch Next, the podcast where we recommend what you should watch next. I’m Dr. Rubí Sánchez-Lozoya. Each episode, join me in a conversation with fascinating scholars and thinkers to explore world cinema in a way that feels warm, inviting, and completely jargon-free.

Ximena Perry is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Iona University. She teaches Latin American history and museum-focused courses. Since 2018, she has also served as project manager of Explorers of the International Federation for Public History. Her most recent publication is the co-edited volume, Public History, Gender, and Power in Latin American Museums: Women Curators and Cultural Leaders. Since we will be discussing the film in detail throughout the episode, consider this your spoiler reminder. And with that, let’s begin. Welcome, Jimena, to the podcast. How are you doing?[00:01:22]

Jimena: Hello, Ruby. Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here.

Rubi: I’m very happy to reconnect by doing this. It’s just such a good excuse to, like, see and talk to friends again and just to hear how, how you’re doing. Jimena and I were in grad school together here at UT, so it is such a treat to have you here in the podcast

Jimena: Thank you, Ruby. As we were saying just before starting the recording, it has been six years, and it’s so good to see you. I mean, you look great, and the podcast it’s great. I heard the last two episodes, and it’s great. Congratulations

Rubi: Thank you so much, and congratulations to you on your book. Um, How’s the summer? You’ve been traveling, you’ve been busy

Jimena: I have been busy. I have been busy. I just came back from Geneva where I got to see some beautiful museums, and now in September I’m going to Lisbon, so I can’t, I can’t complain

Rubi: No, that’s great. That’s great. So you are our second documentary request. We just recorded an episode on Stories We [00:02:22] Tell. Have you heard of this documentary? Have you seen it?

Jimena: I, I saw it, I saw it. I actually taught it in a class called Storytelling two years ago.

Rubi: Stories We Tell.

Jimena: Yes

Rubi: Oh, wow. So what do you think of documentary and why, of, of that one, and how were you using it?

Jimena: Well, I hope we’re talking about the same one about a family that has, like, a lot of secrets

and stuff. yes

yes, yes, yes. I used it for the class called Storytelling because my class, it was the first time I taught it, and I emphasize on how students present themselves and which stories do they tell about themselves.

So I used it as an example, and we were very, very engaged, especially because of the twist that happens with the pa- with the father. We were all like, “Oh, wow. Nobody was expecting that.”

Rubi: You know, it’s very funny ‘ that that you actually have thought Stories We Tell ’cause you have also used Dahomey for your classes, right? And I’m so glad that you have seen this one too because [00:03:22] when I was preparing for today’s podcast, I was thinking of how Stories We Tell feels like such a very different kind of documentary from Dahomey.

Like, Stories We Tell feels very much like a whodunit. And the guest that we talked to was a poet, and we were talking about the idea of crafting and editing and what you show and what you not show. And Stories We Tell feels very pulpy. Like, and, and Dahomey feels to me, in its sparsity, in the way that it’s trying to draw its audience and meditate in the gaps of what it says and it doesn’t say feels much like a poem

Jimena: Okay. Okay. I– Well, the classes that I– I mean, I use Stories We Tell for a class in storytelling,

Rubi: Mm-hmm.

Jimena: and then The, The Homie, I use it for a d- a class I taught about museums. That’s a new class I’m teaching. And the movie, I mean, the documentary, I liked it very much. I saw it before I showed it to my [00:04:22] students.

But my students had a really hard time following it because it’s kind of slow and paused, like, like, you know. And my students were like, “Where’s the action? Where’s the action?” So I had to, I had to help them. But at the end, we had a really interesting conversation because in the museum class, in that– for that particular topic related to The Homie, we were talking about restitution and all the problems we had with that.

And this was like a perfect example. What I– what we really liked and students liked the most was the part where the objects speak themselves, and they ask the questions like, “How are we going back? Are they going to know me? Will they know my name? Where are they going to put me?” That are the questions that are happening with restitution right now.

It’s not enough to put things back. To put them back where? To when? Do people really know what they’re talking about? So it’s a lot of– I mean, [00:05:22] it’s very, very complex, and it’s not like returning things, and that’s it.

Rubi: Right. And I think the documentary also incorporates those questions with, like, the student forum that they have. So just to remind our audiences, Dahomey is a 2024 documentary directed by French filmmaker Mati Diop. The film follows the historic repatriation of 26 royal treasures from the former Kingdom of Dahomey, which is part of roughly 7,000 artifacts that were taken by France during the colonial era, as these artifacts are then returned to the Republic of Benin.

The film departs from a conventional documentary by granting a voice to one of the returned artifacts, which is what you were talking about. And this artifact is number 26, a statue of King Ghézo, and he meditates on his journey of exile and return. So what is it about documentaries in general that draws you in?

Like, why is it that you wanted to discuss a documentary? And I’m intrigued to talk about, maybe [00:06:22] more about those reactions from your students in terms of what their expectations were for a documentary and why did they have a hard time?

Because I also found it hard to, not watch, but the feeling that I had after I watched it, It, it felt different to other documents that I’ve seen.

Jimena: It feels like I’m finished

Rubi: Mm.

Jimena: A little bit, a, a little bit. Well, I don’t know. I chose it because I usually use pictures or documentaries for my classes. But for the museum class, it was really hard to find a movie that wasn’t like the traditional A, A Night at the Museum, that it’s… Eh, I mean, it’s … I mean, it’s a good movie and funny, but it was not for the classes, for our class.

And my class about museums is I d- I did, I didn’t want it to be like the traditional class, so I always look for topics that were, like, controversial. And when I came across The Homie, I thought, “This is perfect,” because in the student meeting at, by, [00:07:22] after the king is returned, you saw some students agree, but some students don’t, and some students don’t know what, what’s happening, what everybody’s talk- What

I mean, they don’t even know the story of, the king, or they don’t know the story of the, the Homie kingdom. Perhaps they don’t know much history at all. So that makes it also hard for them to relate with the object. And my students had a difficult time, they told me, following, like, the pace of the movie.

For them it was too slow. They didn’t also … They are not acquainted with African history. But I thought, “Okay, it doesn’t matter. Just think of the bigger picture.” So when I asked them questions, they were able to see that the movie had something to offer. It also … What engaged them most were the positions of the students in the m- film.

Some agreed, others don’t, and that, that also opened the question for for me that this [00:08:22] process of restitution are very controversial in themselves. Sometimes they can do more damage

Rubi: Mm-hmm.

Jimena: than not, and they’re completely unfinished, and they open A lot of questions about what a museum is. Should a museum actually keep them?

Should they have different stories? And related to that, if I may, I, as I mentioned, I came from Geneva three weeks ago, and I wa- visited there the Ethnographic Museum of Geneva.

Rubi: Mm-hmm.

Jimena: And of course, they have all kinds of objects that were stolen during colonial times, all kinds of it. That I mean, it’s amazing for a viewer, but it’s kind of difficult for an anthropologist and a historian like me to see them there.

However, they have a very interesting program that’s called M- Objects in Dialogue. And when you go through the exhibition, you see that some objects have, [00:09:22] like, a yellow mark, and you have a QR code, and you can click and then read that those dialogues h- are in conversation with the communities of origin.

So this is a project that has take- taken, like, the last years. So if the community says, “Okay, you can keep them,” they’ll keep them. If the community doesn’t answer, they will take it off. And if the community says, “Please remove it,” they’ll remove it immediately. And they are widening that, that that program to many, many objects.

And that relates to the HOMI because, If the community says, “Okay, you can keep it,” they w- they will keep it. But when returning the objects to their communities of origin, they also assess them and tell them how to, how to keep it, like some technical things, for example, for conservation. So the dialogue doesn’t end when the object is returned.

It keeps going. And I think that’s also interesting for, for the Homi because perhaps … I’m [00:10:22] not defending European and French people. I’m not. But perhaps the French can offer some kind of expertise to preserve the object and not make it, like, such an abrupt thing that it’s … It wasn’t there, now it’s there, so what do they do with it?

Rubi: Yeah. I mean, this is why I felt like the, I, I, I can sympathize with the students’ position of not knowing what to do with this documentary because at the end of it, I, I think the feeling that I had, and this is why I kind of relate it to a poem, I struggle because in traditional documentaries, you can really tell the hand of the documentarian of like, “This is the new information I want you to know,” or, “This is the emotional journey I want you to go through.”

Like, they want you to have certain kind of reactions of like either disgust or empathy or, or questioning. And the homie to me felt that it wasn’t so much about the questions that it was asked, but almost about the questions that could be asked.

As in [00:11:22] it, it felt like it was very aware of it being about the past with the objects, the present of like what do we do with these objects as when they’re coming home, but also about the future of Benin, right? ‘Cause we end with these shots of not only the students, but also people on the street, and it’s, it f- like you’re saying, it was an uncom- unfinished conversation.

It’s interesting to think about it that way because that was one of the students’ point in the film that, yeah, they are here and, and then that’s it. You know? Like, I think a lot of it felt around the question of like people either want to celebrate and, and say like, “We did it,” or they want to complain about it.

Some- the students were making the point of like this is just one of the many steps of the many battles we have fought to be here, and then it doesn’t end with this, but it’s about either getting more back or like having our structure. The documentary and the, the student forum was very interested in, in this just being a part of the conversation and, and not just a presentation of information.[00:12:22]

Jimena: Yes. Yes, Ruby, I completely agree with you. I really like the, the, the s- the student forum because, I was also surprised when some of the students or some of the audience in the forum said, “So it doesn’t matter if the, if we have the objects back.

It doesn’t mean anything. And, and it– they’re only twenty-six of seven thousand, so that’s nothing.” And I liked the– very much one of the activists that stood up and said, “Okay, no. If you want more, stand up and see what you can do to, to, to bring more back.” And I also agree that it opens a conversation.

Restitution makes history richer because of the interpretation and the new appropriations of the objects in their new context. That’s supposed to be the same one, but it’s never the same. The context is lost. So they’re going back to a new context.

That’s why I really like the object asking, “Will they know me? Will they know my name? Will they know who I am?” Probably not. And probably they [00:13:22] don’t care. It, it’s a very distant history. So what to do? What the museum should do in that case. Of course, I know it so- it sounds like a victory, and in some cases it’s a victory.

But doesn’t end there. It just opens

Rubi: I

Jimena: If they don’t know what happened in 1892, then they could go back and understand why the subjects were taken away in the first place.

So, that’s why I like the movie so much. And when I told my students that, they understood because they also had the idea at the beginning of the class that museums are places where you just put objects

Rubi: Mm-hmm.

Jimena: for people to see because they’re pretty. And well, that’s not the kind of museums I’m interested in.

Museums are very political, very critical spaces, transformative spaces, where there’s not one past, but many pasts.

Rubi: Okay, okay, so I wanna ask you many questions about this. So do you know when the museum started, [00:14:22] when the museums start being formed? The other question is, as a historian and someone that is interested in museums what is your class about? What do you want students to get out of it? Are you preparing historians? What other kind of students come to the class? Like, what is a museum class, and what are the questions that you’re asking

And, and the third question that is very pertinent to the movie, there’s many shots of people going to see the museums, and the, the voice of the artifact speaks and says, “Would they know my name?”

And even though I as someone who’s Mexican, have been to a lot of museums of, like, Mexican culture, like the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, it’s huge, there’s many things I do not know, right? And a lot of people don’t like museums and they find them boring, and they don’t know everything there.

So a part of your brain, too, is like, we’re doing all of this, and a lot of people, they don’t care, or they’re just there. So who is the museum for? Why all this work for this? And what should the museum be doing?[00:15:22]

Jimena: Okay, I’m gonna start backwards. Okay? Yes, museums are boring. Yes. I’m, I’m not gonna say they’re not. They are. And actually, there are books written about what’s have, has been called museum fatigue and how people get really bored in museums, and I completely get it. I mean, if you go to a place to see things that don’t tell you anything, don’t tell you a story you can relate to, or you cannot find some kind of thing that interests you, they can be very, very boring.

Museums in their, the form that we know them today started in the 19th century. They were a colonial project, most of them, most of them. In Europe and the United States they were different. In Europe they were meant, as Tony Bennett says in his book, The Birth of the Museum, “A way to control people, to tell people what to see and how to behave.”

In the [00:16:22] United States they were a little bit more, they have more an educational component. And in Latin America, of course Latin America, I mean, I’m Colombian by the way, they were– I mean, we were just colonies, so we didn’t have much to say. The museums that started in the 19th century in Latin America were national museums that were supposed to be devoted to science to show Europe that we were not so backwards.

This is a very general history of museums. There can be exceptions. So, a museum cannot be an entity that remains static and still during time because then it loses all its relevance. Museums to be updated they have to be dynamic, they have to tell stories that interest people.

So, many of the museums that I’m interested in and that you can see all over the world also tell you stories about the present, about how to, how people live right now. History [00:17:22] museums have a very, have, have a very bad reputation because people think they’re about, like, just paintings and about important men usually.

And for a very long time they were like that. I’m not saying they’re not. However, recently, since the ’70s more or less, with a movement called the New Museology and now what’s called Social Museology, museums have realized that they, to keep it up and to be relevant and to attract people to come to visit them, they have to tell stories in different ways.

So now we can see a lots of difference kinds of museums. There are ethnographic museums, archaeological museums, political museums, memory museums, like a bunch of museums. In my class, what I do is I give, like, an overview and a history of museums, and then I give examples of each one of them. In [00:18:22] particular, in, for my research and about my book, thank you for saying that, I talk about memory museums a lot.

And I think they’re very important because they are not only about history, but about how history informs the present and things that are happening right now, how people remember their pasts. And usually, when we talk about memory museums, it’s about traumatic pasts. So that includes violence political stances, the present, et cetera, and those museums can be really int- interesting.

Those museums catch the attention of students immediately because when I start talking about them, they remember, “Oh, I went to this one. Oh, my father to- to- told me this one.” And they start re- remembering things. . For me, a museum’s a critical transformative space where you can go and, not only have like an experience, but also like make a deep [00:19:22] criticism of society where you can find information you wouldn’t find in a textbook where you can I don’t know even participate in some of the ex- in the exhibitions. Currently, many museums are like that. They’re very interactive, and they’re very politically out there, and I love that.

However, if I might say, the current climate we’re living, that has been a challenge because as you might know, there’s an executive order from the government that forbids museums to tell other kinds of histories, and for that they mean Black histories or LGBTQIA histories, even women’s rights histories.

That means in some sense that we’re going back to the 19th century when history was only one and that’s a really big problem. Some exhibitions have come down. Some museums had shut down.

They have lost their funding. The [00:20:22] Afro-American Museum in the Smithsonian has- was going through some kind of troubles. It was shut f- shut down for some time. I don’t know if it’s reopened, but some of their exhibitions have to go down. The Latino museums also. In New York wh- where I live, it’s not felt so much.

However, museums have lost a lot of money. I think that’s a real problem and makes museums like more, Relevant than ever. If you go, for example, to a Latino museum and don’t find histories of colonization or criticism or you don’t find any histories of migration and just a story very washed down told by a middle-aged white man, that’s a problem.

That’s a problem, and it’s really sad, and it’s really… I mean, it really upsets me. It’s really infu-infuriating sometimes.

As I [00:21:22] mentioned before, since the ’70s and since the ’60s, there was a movement called the new museology. The new museology wanted people to go to museums to feel like identified with what they’re seeing. So the sh– there was a shift from obje-objects to people, and the stories were not told based on the objects but from the people. That shift was very important. Currently in Latin America, there’s a very strong movement called the social museology, which is about the colonization and all that kind of narrative, which is very, very important, and it’s about grassroots museums and communities. What are their stories? And they are as important as the stories we know traditionally.

So if we lose that, it’s a shame. So, currently museums are being really under attack because also the people in power have realized that they are that they’re important. They’re [00:22:22] important tools. They’re like allies for people to get information they won’t have in a textbook, for example

Rubi: I mean, when you were speaking, I, I have, like, three questions. What does a conventional museum look like in contrast to the different kinds of museum that you’re saying you’re interested in that are more interactive? Like, what does a conventional museum look like, and how does a different kind of museum look like?

Well, that’s one question. The other one is and then I can repeat them later too. The other one is how, in your experience, you say you came just back from Geneva, how are the European museums looking, or what the work of the European museum happening there compared to the American museum and the Latin American museum?

When you were talking about it, I was reminded of my experience of going to the Civil Rights museums in Atlanta. I think it’s a great museum and part of it was because of these interactive elements where they have the counter at Woolworth where you’re s- meant to sit in one of those seats where [00:23:22] Black protesters would sit at the counter and just wait to be actually have service, and people would go around and bully them to leave the counter at Woolworth, and you would put headphones on, and you would hear the whistling and the, and the seat will shake to feel the vibration of people pushing.

So you feel, you have that feeling of being there. And to me, that was a transformative experience because one thing is to see it and read it, and the other one is to be like, “Oh, this is, this is what it was,” right? And I have nothing to lose, but I still felt it like, a little bit in my body, and I thought that was a, that was a great museum.

Jimena: Okay, I’m gonna try to answer this the best as I can. The Met is a conventional museum. The Met is a great museum.

Rubi: Mm-hmm.

Jimena: It’s awesome. A conventional museum is such, and it’s some- it’s some museum that just has things behind glass where you cannot touch, and it has like a linear narrative, and you will go to see like what you expect, paintings [00:24:22] and some objects with kind of a dull story, if you want.

Big museums like the Met can have spaces like that, but they are also putting a lot of effort in not being like that anymore, and there are spaces like, for example, the Temple of Dendur where you can go and walk around the temple and stuff. That’s amazing. And they’re also opening their, their collection reserve so people can go in there and even touch certain things.

So I think that’s amazing. I’m thinking about some Latin American museums that are- don’t have enough resources. That can be a little bit, eh, because you just go there and see stuff that doesn’t tell you anything. That’s a traditional museum for me. However, as I mentioned before, museums have realized that they cannot do that anymore because then they, nobody will go.

Museums that I recommend [00:25:22] visiting, I just recently discovered in New York a museum called the New York City Museum. I didn’t know it existed really, and I thought it was going to be like, oh, the history of the muse- of the city, which is, but it’s displayed in a very interactive way, Ruby, where you can touch, where you can sit, where sometimes you can smell, and that’s really awesome.

And the example you were mentioning of the Atlanta Museum, I don’t know that museum. But what, yeah, but what you just told me, I would really like to go because it, it also brought me back to some of museums, a, a small museum in Medellín, Colombia called Casa de la Memoria.

Rubi: Mm-hmm.

Jimena: It’s, they have ho- holograms of people telling their stories about violence, and that’s awesome.

And in Geneva, I went to the Red Cross Museum, which is a small museum, but oh, wow, it’s, it’s [00:26:22] really… It’s really impactful. It’s, it really gets to you, and they have the same thing. There are parts that you can… there’s a big picture of a person talking, and then you take a device and put it to your ear in several language because, I mean, they have the money, and you can hear that, that person’s story, and that’s really, really touching. And then there’s a big space where there are art and crafts made by people in imprisonment or refugees, and that part, oh my God, it’s really, really amazing.

So it has parts of history and parts where you can listen, parts where you can touch. There’s a, a part where you can … where they talk about the Rwandan genocide, and there’s only a wall full of children’s pictures, and that’s really something. I mean, if you don’t get touched by that, you’re dead. It’s, it’s really

I don’t know. It’s overwhelming. [00:27:22] When children are a subject of that kind of violence, you have to feel something. So, I would recommend visiting small museums first, like museums that are not advertised.

For example there’s a very popular museum here in New York called El Museo del Barrio, and it’s advertised, but it’s not as famous as The Met, of course. It’s great. It talks about histories of migration, and it, and it’s also, … What they do is they present Latino artists that have political stances related to migration, the colonization, et cetera.

I have gone there to see two artists, one Cuban and one Mexican. They have been really, really great because you’re not expecting I mean, I wasn’t expecting like a traditional exhibition and they are very clear in their [00:28:22] political stance. So that’s what I think a museum’s, a museum, a, a museum should do.

Be like a space where people can express their political views with no problem, which is not happening, which is not happening in many, in many museums that have been shut down in the United States, as you might know all the current problems that we are living through that. However for example, the Museum of Natural History of here in New York, you could say it’s a traditional museum, but it’s so amazing.

It’s so amazing, but it also has a lot of interactive things. You can touch, you can listen when you go and see the whale that is– Everybody knows the whale, and everybody’s like, “Wow, that’s awesome.” However, they have a lot of exhibition with stuffed animals That could be interesting. But you know that displaying stuffed animals and things like that can be also controversial right now.[00:29:22]

They have a very interesting thing right now is that, for example, they have a very big calendar that it’s a, it’s a reproduction. So many people complain, “Oh, it’s not original.” But I think it doesn’t matter. It’s a way for people who can’t go to see the original and touch it and understand how it works.

So that’s another discussion that comes from traditional museums if you want. Everything had to be original.

Rubi: Mm. Yeah

Jimena: So if somebody comes to New Y- to New York, I would say go to the Museo del Barrio, go to the Tenement Museum, which is a museum about m- migration, which is awesome. Go to the museum called the Hispanic Society, which has really interesting also displays. But also you have to go to the MoMA and the Met. I mean, you have to.

Rubi: I’m very glad that you brought this idea of, you’re saying of the histories, but it’s also the different varieties of the museum and your different ways of interacting with the museum.

But as you were [00:30:22] speaking about the political stance of the museum, I think we’re talking about the shift too from a place of exhibition and passive reception to a place of education and transformation. And I think to imagine that the museum being before as a, a political place and tell me if this if I’m getting you wrong, I would say that that’s not particularly accurate because it did have a point of view.

What the museum is doing right now is expanding that point of view because if there were histories that were being excluded, that doesn’t mean that that was the objective point of view and now is being changed by all these added things. I think that, like you were saying with the movement of new museology, it’s actually to paying attention of the gaps that were already there, in what was presenting itself as an apolitical place.

Jimena: Yes. I think you’re right. I was thinking about more recent political stances, let’s say. But you’re right. You’re, you’re right. If a museum in the 19th century in England was [00:31:22] about how to teach people to behave, that’s a political stance.

Rubi: Right

Jimena: absolu- and absolutely right. And excluding people is also political. And that brings me to the question you asked me about the museums, about my book.

Rubi: Yes

Jimena: Because museums currently, or the ones I am interested in, are very, very political and very out there. They respond to how people remember really traumatic events usually associated with political violence that they have endured.

So it’s like the voice of the survivors. That was the subject of my first book. And in April 29th, a second book came out also about other kinds of museums just led by women. But that’s another history because now I’m very interested in, in also women leaders. But the, the, the first one was about since I mentioned I’m Colombian I was very interested in understanding how [00:32:22] people remember that kind of violence.

Not to say that violence end, has ended in Colombia, because it has never ended. Despite the attempts in twenty sixteen to sign peace, violence is, is still there. So, however, currently in Colombia, there are thirty-two grassroots museums or spaces devoted to remember atrocities. Some of them are museums, some of them are galleries, some of them are gardens, some of them are kiosks.

There are many, many things. But I would say that that also brings us to a very interesting discussion about the definition of museum itself. Museums can be any space. They don’t have to be the traditional way you think about it. An exhibitory space can be a museum. Also, there are pop-up museums, museums that appear and disappear, and that’s also a museum.

So the museums I studied in my first book were [00:33:22] grassroots museums. Two different three different ones. A state museum, the National Museum of Colombia, which is, for me, it’s an awesome museum that has gone through a lot of ups and downs in recent years because there has been many directors.

That could be a traditional museum if you want. And the other two are grassroots museums in municipalities of Colombia They’re not state-funded. They don’t have money. They’re led by women. They’re small spaces that remember what happened to them. The first one is in– near Medellín in a municipality called Gr- Granada, where the objective of the space is for people to feel, thinking about the Atlanta museum, Ruby, feel what they felt as survivors.

So it’s very crude. It’s very graphic. It’s like they want people to be impacted. The second museum is a [00:34:22] it- itinerant museum that travels around fifteen municipalities in Colombia, but they don’t display– I mean, those fifteen mu- mu- municipalities have endured more than one hundred and fifty massacres.

It’s a very violent place. But the museum doesn’t address, address that directly. They, they talk about their oral traditions, and they use poems, they use music, they use games because what they want to do with that museum is, is to people to feel strong in their culture and to remember, like, not only the violence, but who they are so they can endure all that they, they have lived.

So there are two very different ways of remembering violence, and then I had some questions like which one is more effective? No, it’s not about that. It’s about the cultural decisions those people made to remember the violence they have. So [00:35:22] if anybody sometime has a chance to visit one of those museums, I mean, please go.

In the United States the lynching museums are really important. There’s one, I can’t remember where, but one of our professors at UT, and she’s not at UT anymore, Diana Barry, was one of the consultants for that museum, the lynching museum in– I will have to find the exact name, Ruby. But that, that’s a very important museum.

The Museum of the City of New York that I mentioned had a temporary exhibition that was about immigration rights. They talked about ICE. They talked about deportations. They talk about the rights, for example, of disabled people that I haven’t seen before. They talk about the queer community. It was a really powerful exhibition, but it was only temporary.

I wish it had lasted longer. So if you have the opportunity, [00:36:22] if people have the opportunity to go and see other histories, they should definitely do it.

Rubi: I I will put that in the show notes what are some of the museums that you are suggesting, ’cause it would be nice to have a kinda like curated list, but as you’re talking and as we’re wrapping up, it made me think of, of two things. There are so many different ways of understanding what a museum is and it could do. And I think it’s a relationship that it has also with the visual and the experience, kinda what documentaries and films are trying to do.

My favorite kind of museums, is the ones that are in people’s homes. I went to Martin Luther King’s house, and and like you kinda see them as, as, as people. I also went to Wordsworth’s house in the great, in the Lakes District, and they had the newspapers on the wall. I think they used them for insulation or something. And it said, one of the things that was written was, like, an ad in the classifieds [00:37:22] that said, like, “A missing dog. Can you find him?

Looks like this.” And it was like, oh, you know, even back in the day, the people also had, like, very strong connections to their pets, and they got lost, and they asked their neighbors, “Hey, have you seen my pet?” Right? So it was immediately a way of thinking of, like, these people that you feel like so untouchable, these great leaders or, like, these great poets, and they’re like, oh, no, but they live in a community.

They also had, like, a fluffy dog, right? And I think that’s something that the museum and the visual can do. And I think this is why we’re attracted to this kind of storytelling as going, as bringing it back together.

Jimena: You also reminded me of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, where there’s an exhibition of a boy called Daniel, and it’s … Daniel is the voice enough of a kid walking you through his life until he, until he gets to the ghetto.

But you start in his room and his living room where his mom cooked, and you … And it’s really– And [00:38:22] the script takes you through all these places, and you see the living room, you see the room, you see where they eat, you see their food like a f- any family would do until they get to the, to the ghetto, and that’s really, really shocking because it’s a boy, any boy telling their story.

That’s really impactful, and that’s, … Of course, the ending is terrible but it’s really, really impactful. Everybody remembers that, that, that exhibition. I’m thinking about one of the grassroots museums I studied, the, the itine-itinerant museum. They were very deliberate with their silences.

They didn’t want people to remember them as a violent region. They want to be remembered as other kind of like, people who work the land, who have o-oral histories, e-et cetera, et cetera. They’re not [00:39:22] denying that they have a very violent past, but they don’t want that to be the only thing. So in that case, that silence is very intentional,

Rubi: Hmm.

Jimena: and it has to be respected, I think.

I think every community has the right to decide how they want to be remembered. And those silences sometimes are intentional, sometimes they’re just too painful to talk about. But I think we have to be in a position to understand why those silences are not coming up. Of course, we, as scholars or observers, we kinda study them talk about them and stuff, but when it comes to the museum, it should be the voices of the communities that tell the story.

Rubi: Hmm.

That kinda brings us back and, thinking of the multiplicity of voices and silences of the, of the student forum, right? Like, the work doesn’t end with the return of the artifact. The work of, of building a history [00:40:22] doesn’t end with the return of, of the object and the making of a museum, but rather it’s an ongoing process And that’s what I like about the, the, of Dahomey too, is that when not only the showcasing of the different voices, including the artifact’s voice but also shots of the city where people are living their life, right? Like, when peop- pe- when you think of, of, of Benin, you think of the artifacts of Benin, right?

Of that past, and you get to see less of the people of Benin right now. So I like how the film ends with those shots of, of the future also.

Jimena: Yes. And also the artifacts are there, so what are you gonna do with them? Because there’s also a very important part in the, in the documentary for me is when these objects are being moved. They’re only descriptions. There’s no history. They talk about the fabric, the weight, how much they, they, how, how much, how big they are, but that’s data that really [00:41:22] doesn’t tell you anything about the object itself.

Perhaps for conservation purposes, but it doesn’t really tell you anything. There’s also a part when the objects are going back into, into their new museum. Some people were dancing. Do you remember? Some people were dancing, but there’s also a part where there’s some construction workers just standing there like, “Eh.”

And there’s people like, “Mm.” Some people are happy someti- some of them are, are not, and they arrive to a special place where they’re respected with a lot of ceremony, but what about the people?

Rubi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jimena: Yeah.

Rubi: But I, I, I did like that the first people that get to see it outside of the curators were two construction workers. I thought that was very nice. I thought it was, like, a very nicely way of, of showing that contrast as well.

Jimena: Yes. Yes. I agree with that. I agree with that

Rubi: in the in the train of thought of, like, looking at a people, at their multiples, at multiple ways, let’s then switch to your rapid-fire [00:42:22] questions.

Jimena: Okay

Rubi: Are you ready for your rapid-fire questions?

Jimena: Radius I can be

Rubi: Okay. It’s a sharp turn, but favorite movie snack.

Jimena: Favorite what?

Rubi: Favorite movie snack

Jimena: I don’t understand the question. Favorite movies, Nick?

Rubi: A snack? Like what do you like to eat when you watch movies?

Jimena: Snack. Oh, I’m sorry, sorry. Chocolate

Rubi: Oh, great. Favorite movie duo.

Jimena: Oh oh my goodness, my goodness. Sam Neill and Laura Stern in Jurassic Park.

Rubi: Yeah. Actor or actress you will watch in anything.

Jimena: This blonde one Cate Blanchett

Rubi: Okay. She’s great. Movie you would like to see again for the first time

Jimena: Oh my God, Jurassic Park

Rubi: Nice. Very anthropology of you. Movie you watch way too young.

Jimena: Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Rubi: Very anthropology of you. One of your favorite movies.

Jimena: I have, I have so many. Star Wars.

Rubi: There, which one?

Jimena: All [00:43:22] the ve- the very first, the very first ones.

Rubi: And lastly, one film that is required watching or that you think everybody should watch.

Jimena: I already said that, but let’s say, Ah, Ruby. That’s, that, that, that’s a really difficult que-question.

Rubi: Recomiendas?

Jimena: Sí, pero es que ya, ya las dije todas. Eh, porque a mí me gustan son esas de dinosaurios y esas. A movie everybody should watch, perhaps a, a recent, a recent movie, a Brazilian movie called I’m Still Here, that it’s about the dictatorship. It’s a summary of all these things we have talked about. Silences, memory, not museums exactly, but a little bit. … Everybody should see it.

Rubi: That’s great. I think it’s a great note to end in. Thank you so much, Jimena. It’s been a lot of fun.

Jimena: Thank you, Rubi, for having me, and this was really nice the invitation, and also really nice to talk to you again

Rubi: Yeah, let’s keep talking. Muchas gracias.

Jimena: Yes. Muchas gracias a ti.

Espero que haya salido bien

Rubi: padre. Sí, nos vemos. [00:44:22]