Museum of Stolen Artifacts

22 Oct 2020

An early morning walk with a friend led to a discussion of culture and museums. As someone who studied exhibition design, I've always loved the idea of museums, but I also see their insignificance in todays world. Not only are they out of touch with their visitors, but also serve to remind us of an era they used to exist in. Museums are a great way to see and experience culture and heritage, and not just read about them in a book. But lately, I've been thinking about the artifacts on display in the museums and their significance.

Story time: I worked on a trans-media project called Antariksha Sanchar, which is a video game+theatrical performance+documentation+digital project inspired by the cultural heritage of Tamil Nadu. During the british colonial rule, documentation of the culture at the time was scarce, and not much in the way of visual documentation exists. The V&A museum in the U.K. has in its collection, a series of illustrations of the people during that time. This documentation of that particular time period is especially valuable since not much exists. To access these paintings, one must visit the V&A website to view the collection. On doing so, the viewer is presented with this:

The very fact that the documentation of Indian culture and heritage is owned by it's former colonial rulers is shocking. The restrictions placed on its use by a mere museum in a foreign land is a bizarre concept, and one that I refuse to abide by. These rights on someone else's culture are meaningless and harmful. Why is it that someone in India must learn of their own culture and heritage by accessing the museum of a former colonial power?

Of course, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, with the British Museum in London, having in its collection artifacts which have been stolen from countries around the world. The acknowledgement of the fact isn't enough, and these items must be returned. This video essay by Vox, The British Museum is full of stolen artifacts explains this in greater detail. For those who'd like a more entertaining take on the same, the Museum Heist scene from the movie Black Panther is a good watch.

In response to this, I've created the Museum of Stolen Artifacts or MSA in short. It's a museum that lives on the internet, and when opened shows you where the artifacts are originally from. I strongly believe that artifacts must belong to their home countries, and must only be loaned to the other museums. The outright ownership of an artifact cannot be of a foreign country. The MSA is a museum that shows the viewer the origin of an artifact, and intents to press home the fact that they do not belong in certain institutions.

The Museum of Stolen Artifacts is (preferably) to be used on a smartphone, which uses the primary camera to detect objects via a tensorflow powered machine-learning algorithm. On detecting the object, the MSA will show the user the name of the artifact, and the country of origin. Although it's currently a protoype, and only works with 3 artifacts on display at the British Museum. Future updates to the project will include further information such as the history of the object, and ownership details, along with the ability to recognise far more objects than it does so currently.

Below are some images and videos of the initial prototype.

Screenshots from the museum

Short video of the museum