The Art of Admitting to Shortcomings

In our Critical Arts publication, “Curation by the Living Dead: Exploring the Legacy of Norwegian Museums’ Colonial Collections” (Rasmussen and Viestad 2021) we assessed two museums’ attempts to revise their exhibition practices of objects taken from Congo to Norway during and shortly after the reign of King Leopold II (Museum of Cultural History in Oslo) and to repatriate collections taken from Indigenous populations on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) during Thor Heyerdahl’s scientific expeditions from the 1950s onwards (Kon-Tiki Museum [KTM]). The objects and ancestral remains were in both cases brought to Norway by Norwegian collectors who classified them in accordance with their own sensibilities and agendas. The removal of the objects alters connections to their original context and to the individual makers, users, and owners. Removed from their place of origin, the material takes on new meanings. In the context of the Norwegian museums the meaning and individual experiences behind them are obscured while the agency of the collectors and curators have taken centre stage. We concluded that despite efforts and expressed intentions to reframe or repatriate collections, the two cases we looked at appear to have benefitted the museums more than the communities to which the collections are attributed or intended to be repatriated. As such, the attempt at recasting arguably represents as much a continuation as a break from colonial museum and collecting practices. In the case of the KTM, a repatriation agreement was signed in connection with a Norwegian state visit to Chile, but at the time of our publication no ancestral remains or other archaeological material had yet been handed over. Furthermore, the KTM continues to perpetuate the ideals and visions of Thor Heyerdahl, as it sees them.

In a reply to our article, Marit Bakke and Eirik Stokke, raise a series of issues that they claim prove our work to be “scholarly unprofessional”, “scientifically problematic”, “outrageous”, and “fail[ing] to consider the complexity of the subject”. Both Bakke and Stokke have been engaged defenders of Thor Heyerdahl and the KTM and co-produced publications with museum staff (e.g. Bakke and Solsvik 2019; Solsvik and Stokke 2019). Since they do not list or declare any affiliation to the museum, we assume that the views expressed are their own and not those of the KTM. We want to thank Bakke and Stokke for engaging with our work, and for further outlining some of the background for the repatriation case at the Kon-Tiki Museum (KTM). Yet their detailed reply to our text misses the main point of our argument, which is: the KTM in its inception was based on the legacy of Thor Heyerdahl. Beyond adventures in experimental archaeology, this is also a legacy of looted artefacts and scientific racism produced in a colonial, asymmetrical historical context. As long as the KTM does not fully recognize and publicly own this fact, and speak and act accordingly, its problematic legacy might take on different forms but, nevertheless, continue. In the following we will answer to some of the other more detailed concerns of Bakke and Solsvik's critique.

“their main source is a newspaper interview”

Bakke and Stokke are right to assume that our point of departure for using the KTM as a case study for Norwegian museum institutions’ efforts of decolonizing the museum is first and foremost the publicly stated intention of the head of the museum. We consider public outreach to be the number one purpose and obligation of any public museum and think that museum officials communicating in the media should be taken at face value. In our article we refer to similar statements of the same intention, in an op ed, a radio program, and other newspaper articles and statements.

Our research as such (into the KTM case), is based solely on open sources and publications—not the archives of the Heyerdahl family or the privately owned KTM. Because our purpose was to explore how the legacy of the national hero Thor Heyerdahl is portrayed and maintained in the public sphere, we did not find it necessary to pursue the archives of the KTM. What we were interested in, however, was the content of the repatriation agreement that was at the centre of the Norwegian–Chilean state visit in 2019. This has not been made publicly available, and upon our request to see the document that was signed in the official ceremony, the KTM would not give us insight, stating that this was in agreement with Museo Antropologico P. Sebastian Englert (MAPSE) to which KTM intend to eventually repatriate objects.

“they want colonial museum practice to fit KTM”

Perhaps an even more pressing matter to our commentators is our supposed misunderstanding, that the KTM can be associated with colonial museum practices. We consider “the museum institution” as such, to be part of our colonial legacy and social structures. The “ethnographic museum”, or “cultural history museum”, as a knowledge-bearing and producing institution, was invented within an imperial discourse in the nineteenth century but has been maintained and reproduced all the way up to our own time, including the post-war era.

As shown by Jacinta Arthur (2020, 221), collecting and removing human remains and other materials from Rapa Nui is deeply connected to Chile’s troubled history of settler colonialism on the island. Thor Heyerdahl’s activities on Rapa Nui can of course not be divided from this context and is reflected in the excavation permit for Rapa Nui given to him by Chilean authorities in the 1950s. To this day, Chile does not provide the non-self-governing Rapanui legal rights to their own cultural heritage; rather it is defined “property of the nation-state” (Arthur 2020, 223). As we addressed in the article, it is concerning that in the absence of consent from Rapanui descendants, this infamous 1956 permit was still being invoked in 2019 to defend why the Norwegian researchers felt it was legitimate to take out samples of bone matter from the ancestral remains. The last sampling was performed in 2017 (Fugelsnes 2019, 17).

Bakke and Stokke seem to think that we believe Thor Heyerdahl in the 1950s should have been expected to act according to the research ethical standards of our present time. This is of course not the case. We do claim, however, that the KTM, as the curator of collections that were obtained under what we today see (or should see) as problematic because of the obvious skewed power relations between the various stakeholders, indeed has a colonial legacy to bear. The Kon Tiki Museum is certainly not alone in this. It is rather a reality that many modern cultural historical museums have acknowledged over the last decades and—in trying to figure out a new and appropriate role of the museum today—are engaged with in various ways.

We acknowledge these various efforts of trying to deal with a troubled past and presence but argue the need for constantly aiming to do better. We believe that academic discourse is one way of trying to do that, in pointing out problems or shortcomings in each other’s efforts and work. If the Kon Tiki Museum, as it seems Bakke and Stokke are claiming, in fact does not recognize its colonial legacy, nor sees any need to engage with problematic aspects of its provenance (in that the intended repatriation then is not an effort of decolonizing the museum), then that only further raises our concern. This might of course also help to explain the unspecified “good reasons” for why the exhibition in the museum does not address issues of problematic provenance. Conversely, we find it appropriate to discuss and assess provenance whether a material was legally excavated, stolen, forged, gifted, or bought.

“their pursuit of depicting Heyerdahl a racist”

When it comes to our use of the term scientific racism, and the general outline of how Heyerdahl’s research has been criticized to purvey racist and supremacist ideas, we would like to refer to the article itself and the included references. As we allude to in the article, academics who have previously described scientific racism and sexism in Heyerdahl’s work (e.g. Andersson 2010; Magelssen 2016) (or, for that matter, his contact with race ideologist and German Nazi Hans F. K. Günther (1891–1968): see e.g. Engevold 2019), have been met with fierce rejection by relatives and defenders of Thor Heyerdahl (Drugg and Eide 2010; Solsvik and Stokke 2019). We therefore find it somewhat confusing that one of the “facts” we are accused of ignoring is that, as Bakke and Stokke write “countless media headlines and scholarly discussions during the last decades” have dealt with Heyerdahl and racism. Our point, going back to the original article, is that despite the fact that problematic sides of Heyerdahl’s research are widely acknowledged, these discussions have had very little influence on Heyerdahl’s continued role as a national icon—not least in how he is curated in the KTM.

More importantly, Bakke and Stokke ask us to “clarify how KTM conveys Heyerdahl’s ‘fantasies of white supremacy’”. We agree that this statement might seem unnecessarily harsh, and we would like to apologise for the hurt that it might have caused the staff and affiliates of the museum. One of the greatest shortcomings of the KTM, and its advocates as we see it, is the repeated refusal to engage with the problematic parts of Heyerdahl’s legacy, and consequently by default contribute to their continued presence.

We are sorry to hear about the passing of Professor Thorsby. We think it is of absolute essence to continue the scrutiny and engagement with the academic work of fellow scholars, also after their passing. We find it scientifically problematic to claim otherwise. Our main critique of Thorsby’s research into the Rapanui Indigenous population is that he used samples from contested human remains, explicitly going against the advice from the National Research Ethics Committee (NESH) and kept obtaining bone material through destructive sampling without the consent of Rapanui descendants and communities. It was Thorsby himself who associated his research with that of Heyerdahl. We have not claimed to know why he did this, although we argue it is problematic.

“The Art of Ignoring Facts”

Our critics have pointed out some inaccuracies and typos in our article. Our study is by no means without flaws and weaknesses. We recognize that we confused the singular and plural tense regarding the number of Heyerdahl’s expeditions in the 1940s and 1950s. In other instances, Bakke and Stokke are incorrectly accusing us of getting the facts wrong. We have not claimed that the KTM has received public funding. But there are ties between the museum and Norwegian government functions, like the use of the KTM repatriation case in the official state visit to Chile, or when the Thor Heyerdahl Institute was mandated with funnelling public money to support research in line with the Heyerdahl legacy.

Heyerdahl was of course a complex person with diverse and sometimes conflicting scientific and personal convictions. There are no doubt countless possibilities to get lost in the details, but hopefully it will not be enough to derail all attempts to critically engage with the status and legacy of Thor Heyerdahl.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.