Being neutral vs. being respectful: are they the same in museums? (Safoura Kalantari, Iran, ITP 2025)
Written by Safoura Kalantai, Cultural Heritage Expert, The Organisation of Cultural Heritage in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Southeast Regional Museum of Iran (Iran, ITP 2025)
On 11 August, our training programme focused on temporary exhibitions in museums. What an exciting topic!
Through different sessions, we learned about the planning process for exhibitions, a process that can take months or even years, and involves a large team of experts. After visiting parts of the museum such as the Islamic World Gallery and the Ancient India: Living Traditions exhibition, it became clear how much effort, discussion, and sometimes debate happens behind the scenes to create an exhibition. The result is often something truly admirable.
Before visiting the British Museum, I had a different view of how exhibitions there were organised. But having the chance to speak with curators and other people involved in the design process changed my mind. Judging an institution from the outside is easy, but once you see the inner layers, you gain a fuller perspective. When you witness the step-by-step work to tell the truth and respect the audience, it is hard not to admire them.
The day began with a visit to the temporary exhibition about Indian religion. This new exhibition looks back over 2,000 years to show how Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist sacred art began with ancient nature spirits in India, and how this art spread to other parts of the world.
Visiting Ancient India, Living Traditions was more than just seeing museum objects. It was colours, sounds, and stories woven together, a place where your eyes enjoyed the beauty, your ears caught the sound of nature, and your mind joined a dialogue about culture.
As ITP 2025 participants, we had a rare chance to walk through the exhibition with its curator, Sushma Jansari. I have worked as a museum guide before, and I believe that no matter how strong an exhibition is, a human voice adds a special depth. Who better than the curator, who knows the choices, the debates, and the hard work behind every small detail?
One thing I noticed was the respect given to the objects and the communities they came from. The exhibition avoided exaggeration, showed where the objects came from, and involved local people in telling their own stories. Religion can be hard to show in museums in a way that the community accepts, but this exhibition did it very well. Its location helped make it a success, but the main reason was how well the curators connected the community with the exhibition’s story.
This made me think: is being respectful the same as being neutral? Museums often claim neutrality, but every decision, what to display, how to describe it, and whose voices to include, is already a choice.
While visiting the exhibition, I found myself thinking about the theme of the day session: temporary exhibitions… and how even life is temporary! It reminded me of a famous Persian poet, Hafez. He has a line I remember whenever life feels difficult:
If these turning epochs do not move with our will today,
The spheres of time are not constant; do not grieve.
These lines from Hafez bring to mind that life and time are always changing. If things don’t go our way right now, we shouldn’t be sad because nothing in the world stays the same forever. Everything is temporary and always moving. My Utopia is a world where we can speak openly and be truly heard, something that feels rare these days. I also hope for a time when we can talk about the dark side of the subjects we choose for the museum exhibitions, without fear or restriction. It might not be possible now, but I believe one day it will be. So, I remember the words of Hafez, and I try to stay hopeful.
In the end, I believe we cannot be fully neutral, and perhaps we should not be. Neither in museums nor in life. Every act of speaking, showing, or even staying silent is a choice. The goal is not to erase our views, but to ensure they are always grounded in respect.
