Museums face a significant challenge with how collections have traditionally been organized and presented. Like many institutions, collections are often grouped under broad geographic labels like "Asian Art," "African Art," "Oceanic Art," or "Islamic Art." While these categories have served organizational purposes, they can inadvertently homogenize distinct cultures, materials, time periods, and artistic traditions. This approach sometimes removes objects from their specific cultural contexts and can reinforce overgeneralizations that flatten the rich complexity of diverse regions and peoples. Museums like the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) are actively seeking ways to address these issues and present their collections more thoughtfully.
A digital platform that helps museums move beyond these problematic categorization systems. Instead of relying only on broad regional labels, we connect objects based on materials, themes, techniques, cultural practices, AND meaningful geographic relationships. Using interactive 3D technology, cultural mapping, and input from communities, we're making museum visits more engaging and honest about the stories objects tell. This matters because it's both educationally important and part of anti-racist museum practice. We're moving away from orientalist ways of organizing collections and toward approaches that honor both cultural specificity and geographic heritage. Museums need to decolonize their curatorial practices, and this project gives them a practical tool to actually do it.
We are creating an interactive web-based platform and mobile app with three core components:
Detailed 2D/3D models of objects with interactive hotspots that provide contextual information beyond physical display limitations.
Dynamic visualization showing connections between objects based on cultural contexts, materials, techniques, themes, and geography.
Clear examples showing traditional geographic categorization versus culturally-situated organization, using DIA's Asian Art collection as proof of concept.
Domain: reframingcollections.org will host the platform and serve as a resource hub for museums seeking to implement this methodology.
Reframing Holdings will not use AI to just scrape the web for information about holdings: stakeholders will be essential to helping the DIA educate the public on its holdings. For each item in Reframing Holdings, DIA staff will work with appropriate stakeholders to determine how best to contextualize that item. Broadly speaking, DIA curatorial staff will reach out to and consult with scholarly experts, public interest organizations, and relevant communities from which items have been acquired. Just as the contexts will differ in presenting a 20th century American painting, a 19th century Japanese tea bowl, and a 19th century mask from an indigenous community, appropriate stakeholders will vary by item.
Seeking appropriate stakeholders will necessarily be a time-consuming and perhaps contentious process, and some stakeholders will inevitably disagree with each other or the DIA about how to contextualize the DIA’s holdings. However, what will set Reframing Holdings apart from other curatorial practices is a sincere effort to work with diverse stakeholders to respectfully provide the most accurate and informative learning experiences possible for museumgoers.
The DIA will maintain curatorial discretion over its holdings, but the goal of this project is not for the DIA to establish One True Narrative about each item. Presenting items with multiple stakeholders’ conflicting views can help museumgoers recognize that different communities disagree over how to understand the items. This will, of course, aid museumgoers in better appreciating the rich complexity of the DIA’s holdings.