Museum, Museum Theatre and the African Perspectives of Living Museum

A major problem decipherable from the study of museum and museum theatre is that perceptions of the two appear deficient as they tend to ignore the interests and perspective of Africa. The problem derives from the position of dominant Western museum scholars which has always profiled museum in Africa as a colonial legacy, bequeathed to Africans as vestiges of Europe’s “civilising mission”. By implication, Africans, supposedly, had no prior idea of museum until the white man came to “civilise” them. It is therefore unsettling that major discourse on museum and museum theatre hardly ever reflect on the 1897 British looting of Benin palace which significantly accounts for the presence of African cultural/religious objects and antiquities in foreign museums. I am therefore arguing that the existing concept of museum and museum theatre is deficient to the extent that Africa’s age-long practice of collecting, preserving, conserving and exhibiting artefacts for the purpose of education and entertainment hardly features in museum discourse. So, manifestations of museum theatre in traditional African culture are explored in this essay. The practice of museum and museum theatre is therefore examined from the African context of traditional festivals in venues like palaces, village squares, shrines, groves, ancestral homes and other heritage sites. This study therefore identifies an organic fusion of museum and theatre in the traditional African setting devoid of any controversy whatsoever. It is on this premise that festivals and other cultural practices fit in as African examples of living museum.