I recommend Tom Flynn’s comprehensive overview of the cultural panel which took place Tuesday at LSE. It sounds like it was much of the same kinds of polite disagreements which these kinds of events typically produce. Here’s a flavor of Tom’s reaction:
Cuno’s highly political presentation — which, paradoxically, sought to criticize what he saw as the politicisation of culture by source nations — was followed by a few short comments from Tatiana Flessas.
Professor Flessas sought to point out that many encyclopedic museums are themselves national creations and are thus also instruments of nationalist agendas — actors taking up nationalistic positions by claiming the power to interpret, contextualise and assign meanings to the objects in their collections. “That building up the road is not a branch of museums UK plc, it is The British Museum”, she said, drawing one the few ripples of laughter in an otherwise rather po-faced evening.
I’m surprised this point is still being repeated, since it seems to appear in every basic text on the subject I’ve seen.