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especially lend themselves to this : landscapes, for instance, become spaces into
which the viewer imaginatively enters. This is the antithesis of the Kantian
aesthetic. Art is reduced to ‘a mere extension of the psyche’. Maleuvre sees this
aesthetic stance as ‘anti-aesthetic by today’s standards’ (1999: 210–12). Never-
theless the contemporary focus on producing ‘experience’ through arranging
exhibitions as a set of psychological stimuli invites precisely this kind of solip-
sism. If the aim is to provoke feelings and associations in the visitor, a simulation
will do just as well as an object.
Though it treats the museum as a trigger for subjective experience, solipsistic
behaviour does not undermine the museum’s claim to universality. On the
contrary, the appeal to solipsism is associated with naturalism or realism
which, of all kinds of representation, most effectively effaces its own cultural
specificity as it erases the signs of its own production (Bal 1996: 13). However,
some acts of attention do threaten the museum by challenging its claim to
universality. These are the ones that reveal the culture of the museum to be
limited in its applicability – and which relocate it as the particular culture of a
dominant minority. The following section discusses repatriation claims on the
part of ‘indigenous peoples’ or ‘First Nations’. I consider how these challenge
the legitimacy of the museum, and how museums respond by attempting to
integrate these peoples’ cultural practices into the museum, or through renewed
appeals to universality.

The universal museum

First Nations have repeatedly demanded the repatriation of human remains
held in European museums. These demands challenge the museum’s socializa-
tion of its objects. While the scientists working with the collections use them as
research material, the communities arguing for their return view them as ances-
tral remains. For some scientists and museum professionals, the handing-over
of the remains from collections and their burial would mean an ‘irreparable’
loss in terms of scientific knowledge – knowledge that, they argue, might be
of use to the very communities which are demanding repatriation (Steel 2004:
22–5). The repatriation conflict, as it relates to both human remains and cul-
tural artefacts, is overdetermined by colonial relations: colonized peoples are
contesting and exposing the museums’ role in the continuation of colonial
violence and unequal relations into the present.
The blanket refusal of repatriation claims by some major museums can be
read as a reassertion of the cultural superiority of ex-colonial powers (Steel 2004:
22–5). The 2002 Declaration, signed by the directors of over 30 of the world’s
greatest museums, including the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Metropolitan