Tiffany Jenkins

Tiffany Jenkins (Ph.D.,  University of Kent) is the author of Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority (Routledge, 2014) and Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums and Why They Should Stay There (Oxford University Press, 2016). She has been the host of multiple BBC Radio 4 series, a columnist for The Scotsman, and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her essays are published on the Behind the Scenes at the Museum Substack.

With your book on the Elgin Marbles, I'm sure you knew that you would get a strong reaction no matter what position you took. What response has surprised you the most?

I was surprised to find that most of the reaction refused to engage with one of my main points, which is more analysis than polemic.   

One of the main arguments I make in Keeping Their Marbles is that whether its the calls for the return of the Elgin Marbles, the Benin Bronzes, or Aboriginal human remains, the clamour for repatriation is most often generated within institutions themselves –the activists are inside the museum, not outside. This is a result of museum curators’ own crisis of purpose, that is,  the pursuit of truth and its dissemination. I suggest that the foundational principles of the museum, to investigate and understand the world, have been scrutinized severely. Those in museum studies are schooled in post-colonialism, postmodernism, and the idea that the museum is just the agent of the elite. This has entwined with a retreat from social and political solutions to very serious problems, and has led to the targeting of culture as a way of making people’s lives better. 

But no one really responds to this analysis or engages with it. It’s like they haven’t read the book!

I saw your podcast about censorship in the arts. Is this a brand new and different sort of phenomenon, or is it similar to any trends or movements in the past?

Censorship in the present is different to that of the past. Firstly, because of who is doing it. It used to be the state that censored artists, but today it’s more likely to be artists censoring other artists. Secondly, historically, those calling for censorship were often concerned that an artwork—perhaps of a sexual nature—would have a coarsening effect and a negative moral impact. Today's activists often have a different rationale. They argue that they are the only ones who have the right to speak about the experience depicted—and thus, have the right to silence those who have no comparable experience. Thirdly, artists used to be the one’s trying to offend. Now they go out of their way not to.  This is because those doing the censoring pour over what artists have said or written, for 'problematic opinions' which creates a climate where artists self-censor for fear of what may happen if they speak their minds. Self-censorship is the real problem today. 

You might find this panel discussion about cancel culture of interest.

If you had an airport layover and had only a few hours to spend in a museum -- any museum in the world --where would you spend it?

I have never been to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and I am not likely to be able to do so soon due to the war, but I would love to some time in the future. Though given its collection includes 3 millions works of art, archeological artefacts, I may need more than a few hours….