A presentation to the mind in the form of an idea or image

I went to the Picasso art exhibition at the Iziko: SA National Gallery. The display was average, but it was very nice to see some of his sketches and a few paintings. It was very interesting to see how the museum represented how Picasso was influenced by Africa. Whether they are accurate - who knows? My 1st year tutlings go the SA Museum next week as an excursion. One of the students said that the Khoesan display offends her and she doesn't want to go. So in a tutor's meeting we ended up having a heated discussion about how people and cultures are represented in a museum. For those who don't know, the reason for the debate is the rather large display of "Bushmen" in their "natural environment" i.e. the desert, circa 1700's or earlier. The clay figures are actual casts of modern Khoesan people from the 1970's. The figures were then clad in traditional dress and placed in this fake desert scene. Its bad because the group has been typecast so to speak and paraded like animals. Its offensive because of 1) the manner in which these casts were made (they were stripped down naked and physical casts were made from their bodies), 2) the "lesser" view it portrays and 3) the fact that we don't see any cast of the ass of a white South African put on display in his/her natural habitat of the local coffee shop. Its just like the Saartjie Baartman thing - watching "the other". Anyway, the display has been closed off for a few years now, but it's still there. You can see where it is and try peek through the prefab walls shielding it. Some people say that without displays like that, how are people going to learn what other cultures are like? It is interesting to note that the people saying this are the white, middle class who have never been previously marginalized. I think in general one group has no idea how to represent another and no idea of how representations affect.

What kind of 'presentation to the mind' do we get from things that happen everyday? Yesterday, a work colleague was mugged by a large transvestite prostitute holding a pen. It was apparently very polite though. Over the weekend I helped the classic Cape Town ya-hey-bru surfer boy choose a gift for his mother. Ladies wearing burka's were looking at colourful scarves in Woolies on Saturday. A coloured male customer, upset because he couldn't order an out of print book, told me that I need to be educated. So these few events over the past few days have really got me thinking about how we are represented to others and vice versa. Perhaps representation is just another form of social, gender and racial intolerance. Anthropologists must have a tough job! Thank goodness I deal with the dead!