The decolonization of museums

Museum decolonization has become a central concern in contemporary museology, raising questions that extend beyond curatorial reform to the construction of collective memory, the psychological elaboration of the colonial past, and the configuration of postcolonial identities. This review synthesizes recent literature on the decolonial turn in museums from a psychological perspective, addressing institutional critique, participatory practices, historical trauma, epistemic justice, and the affective dimensions of collective memory. It also identifies key risks-tokenism, aestheticization of difference, and "decolonization without decolonization"-and outlines a research agenda focused on the psychological effects of decolonial museum narratives, the relational nature of participation, symbolic reparation, and the comparative analysis of decolonization processes across sociopolitical contexts.