Colonial histories and artefacts: which way gender?

This chapter explores the ways in which genders and bodies are assumed and assigned in the colonial museum, and by extension understanding the deployment of these decisions across the colonised world. The approaches by which museums interpret deep histories are not fixed; they change over time with approaches to museums practice, and also in relation to the broader world. In this way they are not devoid of contemporary understandings; they are of the world, as curators and archivists guide contemporary visitors through assigned meaning and context. This chapter explores why and how gendering of bodies of the past is interpreted to the museum visitor, with a focus on the colonial imposition of gender, and with suggestions for change through relationality and a grounding in anti-colonial approaches to understanding recall and commemoration.