In July’s post, I reviewed The Telegraph’s assertion that the Pitt-Rivers Museum had been ‘hiding’ objects that women were not supposed to see. You can find an archived version of the original Telegraph article here. The article is superficially about the exclusion of an object from public display (including digital display in collections online) to explicitly prevent a certain group (in this case women) from seeing that object. It’s main argument has been largely refuted in this article by the Pitt Rivers Museum, and in two threads about digital and in person access byMadeline Odent (@oldenoughtosay), on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
In my previous post, I looked at the misunderstandings about museums that underpinned The Telegraph’s article. A careful reading of the article reveals that neither women’s access to the Igbo mask, nor the somewhat more philosophically interesting subject of who should be able to access taboo or sensitive objects, is its real theme! It’s primary purpose is to denigrate the Pitt Rivers Museum’s policies on cultural sensitivity, and the decolonisation process of which they form a part. So far so boring and predictable, but what is interesting about this article are the methods it uses to manipulate the reader.
Reverse Outlining
To take a really close look at the Telegraph article, I printed it out and numbered the paragraphs. Then on the left side of the paper I noted the points of each paragraph, and on the right side, details that jumped out at me about how the article was written. If you want to see what that looks like, I’ve posted images of the results below. I have blurred the human remains in two of the images so those who do not wish to see are not accidentally exposed. Annoyingly, the final sentence of the article has strayed onto a fourth page, but it is functionally the end of the previous paragraph. For copyright purposes please note that I reproduce these images of the marked-up article here, without ‘alt-text’ of the article content, as a means to criticism and review. They are not meant for in-depth reading, but merely as a visual guide to how I analysed the article.
For those with an interest in academic writing techniques, I used a process known as ‘Reverse Outlining‘ in analysing the Telegraph article. If you want to see more about how it works, you can follow the previous link to Pat Thompson’s incredibly useful patter blog, or this article by Rachael Cayley.
Womens rights
The article is framed as an expose of a threat to women’s rights in the form of restrictions placed on the public display of an object, which are assumed (wrongly) to translate to a restriction on women accessing an object. The article begins and ends with the question of whether women are permitted to see an Igbo mask not visible to the public either online or in person, ostensibly because it would be used in a male-only ritual in its culture of origin. Over 10 paragraphs are concerned with this question. Paragraphs 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, all concern the Igbo mask, its absence from both the physical museum and the online imagery, warnings associated with it and the reasons for that in its culture of origin. Paragraphs 21 to 24 conclude the article with comments from an interview with Ruth Millington, an art critic and author, who critcises the idea that women should be prevented from seeing an object because it is ‘taboo in one particular culture’. The only other Pitt Rivers object with a cultural sensitivity warning mentioned in the article (in paragraph 13) is associated with female genital mutilation (FGM), another women’s rights issue. We could be forgiven for thinking that it is anxiety about women’s rights which have caused this author to misunderstood museum practice so extensively.
The realty is that the Igbo mask was probably chosen as the case study for this article because it’s exclusion from public view is tied to women, a traditionally oppressed and marginalised group. Playing off one marginalised group against another is something that has been particularly pioneered by those opposed to trans-rights, where much of the public discussion about trans-rights is framed in terms of a ‘threat’ to women. This article follows that same playbook. Its sets up an apparent tension between the cultural sensitivities of the Igbo mask’s Nigerian culture of origin and the women who are supposedly going to be prevented from seeing it. The article makes no effort to engage with a serious discussion about how society should parse the conflicting rights of different marginalised groups. Instead we simply invited to be outraged. This game of marginalisation top- trumps, rather falls down when we realise this is a question of public display. Most women won’t be that bothered that the Igbo mask is not displayed in the galleries or in collections online, and anyone with a genuine research interest can apply to the curators as is normal practice for such objects. But this information is left out of the article. Craig Simpson, the author, is relying on us not understanding how museums operate, in the hopes we will assume the the absence of the Igbo mask from the galleries and the removal of photographs from Collections Online, prevents access to it.
Construction and formatting
The article is constructed with incredibly short paragraphs, often no longer than a sentence. Perhaps Simpson believes Telegraph readers have short attention spans? These short paragraphs are also mostly descriptive. I’m personally a fan of the Uneven U form of paragraph construction, in which the components of each paragraph are ranked from concrete and evidentiary (Level 1) to abstract and moving towards a conclusion (Level 5) (Hayot 2014, 60). The Telegraph article noticeably lacks level 4 and 5 sentences, which would normally draw on the descriptive and evidentiary sentences to come to conclusions, extrapolate lessons or derive some other form of abstract or general truth. While this may not be consciously deliberate, it is certainly striking and plays an important role in obscuring the actual main theme of the article. Simpson does not draw explicit conclusions from his data, leaving the reader to do so. This produces two interesting and likely intentional effects; casual readers may not come to explicit verbal conclusions but rather may be left with a vague sense that something is wrong with the events described; and the author does not need to take responsibility for the conclusions drawn.
The absence of explicit conclusions to the individual paragraphs, and the article as a whole, has a further unintentional effect. To ensure his readers draw the correct conclusions, Simpson uses both text and imagery to direct us to the intended response. Practically this makes the article difficult to divide into sections because it has a tendency to bounce from one theme to another, before returning to a former theme. This ‘bouncing’ ensures the actual main theme remains front and centre in the reader’s mind. A quick review of paragraphs 1-8, demonstrates this clearly. Paragraphs 1, 3, 4, , 6, 7 and 8 all provide information about the specific case of the Igbo mask. These paragraphs could all have been condensed into a single paragraph with details of the mask and its origins, but instead they have been separated and paragraph 2 and 5 inserted between them. What is it that paragraphs 2 and 5 say that is so important we must learn about it in between the details of the specific case study of the Igbo mask? Paragraph 2 states only, “The decisions by the Pitt Rivers Museum is part of new policies in the interest of ‘cultural safety'”. The quotation marks around ‘cultural safety’ are original to the article. Paragraph 5 clarifies that the policy referred to in paragraph 2 is both a first for a major British collection and is part of a decolonisation process taken to “address a collection ‘closely tied to British Imperial Expansion'”. And so everything becomes clear! Women’s access to the Igbo mask is merely a smokescreen for criticism of decolonisation in a museum! How original!
The Pitt Rivers Museum decolonisation process
The Pitt Rivers Museum decolonisation process remains a significant theme throughout the rest of the article. The cultural safety policies and the Pitt Rivers’ ‘cultural sensitivity warnings’ pertaining to the Igbo mask are mentioned in paragraphs 2, 5, 9, 10, 11 and 12. The ‘cultural sensitivity warnings’ are described as ‘trigger warnings‘ in the article to further associate them with a feature of life that is widely despised and disparaged by some on the right of the political spectrum.
Tsantsa
The removal of the tsantsa from display is discussed in paragraph 14. Interestingly the first image in the article is of one of the tsantsa. I do wonder if the author originally intended, or would have preferred, to write about the tsantsa, but it was felt there was more mileage in the Igbo mask and its connection to womens’ rights. The caption to the photograph of the tsantsa reads ‘The museum’s collection of “tsantsa” shrunken heads were removed from display in 2020 in the wake of Black Lives Matter Protests.’
While it was obviously impossible for the Telegraph to publish images of the Igbo mask, the decision to head the article with an image of the tsantsa, the only objects actually removed from display as part of this decolonisation process, is illuminating. As Madeline Odent made clear in her thread (image right) about visiting the museum, the tsantsa were deliberately removed because Indigenous people’s have argued against the public display of their ancestors and research demonstrated that displaying the tsantsa perpetuated racist stereotypes about their creators being ‘savage’ or ‘primitive’. Including an image of objects deliberately removed from public display fro these reasons is a clear choice. It positions the article, its author, and its publisher in opposition to the aims and intentions of the Pitt Rivers Museum and its decolonisation process.
The image of human remains being removed from a display case on the third page of the article, is another deliberate choice to focus the reader on the removal or ‘hiding’ of artefacts. The caption to the image, reads, ‘Pitt Rivers Museum has, in recent years, removed many artefacts in the interest of “cutural safety”‘. This is doubly misleading. As Madeline Odent made clear in her thread about visiting the museum, far from ‘many artefacts’, only the tsantsa have been removed from display. Even then they remain part of the collection and accessible to reasearchers on the usual basis. But note how this supposed removal of ‘many artefacts’ is credited to ‘cultural safety’ and the policies associated with the decolonisation process.
Repatriation
Having mentioned the tsantsa, the only artefacts actually removed from display at the Pitt Rivers Museum, paragraph 16 refers to the artefacts the Pitt Rivers has marked for repatriation; the Benin Bronzes and a 15th century Indian statue. While repatriation is not a main theme of either the article or these blog posts, it is hardly surprising that Simpson mentioned it in an article dedicated to how decolonisation is resulting in the ‘hiding’ or removal, as he puts it, of objects from British museums. There is no more permanent removal than repatriation! That these objects only receive a brief mention is hardly surprising, because a more detailed assessment is likely to undermine his argument. Simpson is incorrect about the statue, it is being repatriated from the Ashmolean, not the Pitt Rivers. Evidence has surfaced that it was stolen after 1957, when a photograph shows it in situ in a temple (you can read more in this article). The Benin Bronzes represent a particularly egregious case of looting during warfare in the late 19th century. Both their origins as wartime plunder and the recent date of their theft have sparked widespread sympathy for repatriation and many museums around the world are engaged in this process. But by simply mentioning these objects, Simpson has ensured that his readers have no context for the cases for repatriation, unless they are minded to research further.
The Maqdala tabots; a parallel from the British Museum.
Paragraphs 17 and 18 of the article include a parallel case to the Igbo mask in the form of Ethiopian Orthodox tablets held at the British Museum. According to Simpson they are ‘hidden’ by being kept ‘out of sight and . . .never studied’, all because of their sacral nature in the Ethiopian church. As with the repatriated artefacts, we are given very little detail about these objects, they are simply props in Simpson’s narrative.
Superficially these two paragraphs might be understood to provide a positive precedent for the ‘hiding’ of the Igbo mask from the British Museum, which is commonly criticised for its retention of contentious artefacts and an apparent resistance to the type of decolonisation being undertaken by the Pitt Rivers Museum. However, the British Museum has been criticised for retaining these objects that cannot be displayed or researched. I suspect the reference to the Ethiopian tablets should be understood more along the lines of ‘artefacts are being hidden, even at the British Museum’ and is included to provoke the reader to shock about how widespread such policies are. As with much of this article the authors intentions are obscured and we are left to deduce his conclusions.
The Pitt Rivers response
The inclusion of responses from criticised institutions is generally considered good journalistic practice, and Simpson obviously gave the Pitt Rivers Museum an opportunity to respond. Paragraphs 19 and 20 include the statements from the Pitt Rivers Museum, but the use of paraphrase and selective quotation is carefully employed to reinforce Simpson’s points. While the text provides a balanced and rational response from the museum, the subtext is anything but. Based on the contents of paragraph 19, it appears that the Pitt Rivers spokesperson explained that they were consulting with groups whose artefacts are represented in the collection. The text of Simpson’s article suggests the Pitt Rivers Museum is undertaking this consultation to “ensure they [the objects] are selectively displayed”, but there are no quotation marks around this statement, which suggests the slightly odd choice of ‘selectively displayed’ is the author’s own. The use of this phrase is in fact explicitly refuted by the Pitt Rivers Museum’s response here. From a museological perspective, ‘selectively displayed’ is nonsensical. Every collection is ‘selectively displayed’ because no museum has space to display everything. It only makes sense in the article as a slightly scary comment that implies perhaps many other artefacts may be removed from display.
Paragraph 20 continues this careful juxtaposition of author paraphrase and musem quote and is worth quoting in full.
“Other objects could become restricted on the basis of gender in future, but the museum said, ‘These restrictions only refer to a tiny number of objects where we have recieved specific requests from communities. There is a lot more work to be done and we are keen to work with communities on the care of these objects'”.
Craig Simpson, ‘University of Oxford hides African mask that ‘must not be seen by women’. The Telegraph 17 June 2024, paragraph 20.
The paragraph begins with the seemingly sinister ‘other objects could become restricted on the basis of gender in future’, but this is another author paraphrase. We do not know how the museum spokesperson phrased that. The paraphrase is given legitimacy by verbal sleight of hand. It is immeidatley followed by, ‘but the museum said’, although this comment refers to the subsequent quotation and not the preceding paraphrase. The subsequent quotation from the Pitt Rivers Spokesperson to the effect that these restrictions relate to a ‘tiny number of objects’ makes the article sound balanced, but by including the museum’s honest and ernest final sentence about there being ‘a lot more work to be done. . .’, the paragraph manages to imply that the museum is not only anxious to work with more communities, but is also keen to restrict more objects.
Black Lives Matter
The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 are mentioned in paragraph 15 in relation to the decision to remove of the tsantsa. It is worth quoting paragraph 15 in full:
‘The decision to remove the heads [tsantsa] from display was made in 2020 in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests when the museum operated by the University of Oxford announced a “comprehensive programme of work we are doing to deeply engage with the museum’s colonial legacy”.’
Craig Simpson, ‘University of Oxford hides African mask that ‘must not be seen by women’. The Telegraph 17 June 2024, paragraph 15.
This quote effectively links the Pitt Rivers Museum’s decolonisation process, which has proved such a large theme of the article, to the Black Lives Matter movement and protests of 2020. It is only one paragraph, but the repatriations mentioned in paragraph 16 are linked to it by the formulation of the paragraphs and BLM is also mentioned in the caption to the first image, of the tsantsa. Madeline Odent has aleady covered the very few actual changes to the Pitt Rivers Museum displays since 2020, but its also worth noting that the Pitt Rivers has been engaged in a process of decolonisation and reinterpretation for much longer than that, since at least 2003 according to this tweet and these (image right) by Madeline Odent.
While the decolonisation effort may have been spurred on in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter protests, better contextual and decolonial changes predate BLM by several decades. But the BLM protests are useful for Simpson because they are relatively well-known events, linked to a specific point in time, that provoked various, often divisive reactions in British society. In referring to BLM, Simpson can borrow a readers outrage at the toppling of the Colston statue for the Pitt Rivers decolonisation process. It is much more dramatic and enraging to suggest objects are being ‘hidden’, removed or repratriated as a result of a divisive recent movement than to acknowledge a long term process of reinterpretation and contextualisation, with input from Indigenous communities.
‘The right to decide. .’
The framing of Simpson’s article focusses on womens’ rights and the specific case of the Igbo mask in the Pitt Rivers Museum, but the subtextual argument is a very clear, ‘BLM and decolonisation are depriving British people, especially women, of access to museum objects’. He makes this argument, almost without ever stating it (quite a feat when you think about it), by implication, clever editing of the Pitt Rivers’ own documentation and comments, by promulgating misunderstandings about how museums work, and with occasional outright inaccuracies (such as the belief that the repatriated statue came from the Pitt Rivers). Most of his paragraphs are purely descriptive, and we are left to draw our own conclusions, but the framing drives us in a certain direction. The case studies and examples given are sufficiently limited that we would already have to know, or be willing to locate, the background information that might lead us to a different conclusion from the one that is intended. At the end Simpson leaves Ruth Millington to conclude his article with various comments and quotations. I have no idea how much information Ruth had before she made these statements, but I found one particularly illuminating:
“To deny all women of all cultures, sight of something because that is a taboo in one particular culture seems an extreme stance, particularly given that this country is a modern, liberal and enlightened society.”
Ruth Millington, quoted by Craig Simpson, ‘University of Oxford hides African mask that ‘must not be seen by women’. The Telegraph 17 June 2024, paragraph 22.
Although we know that no one has ever been refused access to it, let us assume for a moment that the Igbo mask was inaccesible to women in the same way that that Maqdala tabots are inaccessible to researchers. It would not be inaccessible because it is ‘taboo in a particular culture’ but because it is taboo in its culture of origin. That is really quite a different point! The people who made this object did not want women to see it. Why? Because for all it may have aesthetic merit, the Igbo mask is not an objet d’art. It is a ritual object, created for the serious purpose of community ritual, perhaps engaging with the supernatural. We may not believe as they do, but we can understand that ritual objects have a meaning and context beyond their aesthetic appearance and material form. If we respect other people’s opinions (a key tenet of liberalism, or so I was taught) then we should have respect for the wishes of those who created this object.
Ruth seems to understand this intuitively, because why else would she have said, ‘particularly given that this country is a modern, liberal and enlightened society’? What she is really saying here, is that the cultural concerns of the makers of the Igbo mask are irrelevant because we do not believe in them! ‘We’, she and Craig Simpson seem to be saying, ‘can safely ignore the wishes of the Nigerian culture which produced the Igbo mask, because we are ‘modern, liberal and enlightened”. Neither she nor Simpson spells it out, but the only implication can be that the culture which created this object and would prefer it not to be seen by women, is the obverse, that is ‘backward, conservative and superstitious’. The implication is clear. We do not believe as they do, and our opinions are the only ones that matter. We are better!
I am not surprised that Simpson decided to use her words as his conclusion, since this has been the entire subtext of the article. He does not appear to believe we should; provide appropriate context about how objects were acquired or the cultures that created them; remove objects from display as requested by Indigenous groups: repatriate objects that were illegally or unethically acquired; or apply warnings on objects with particular significance for their cultures of origin. He opposes this whole process of decolonisation because fundamentally he believes that their wishes about how their artefacts are treated do not matter because we are better than them! I’m sure that our language has some words for people who think that they are better than those of other cultures, but in the spirit of Craig Simpson I will allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. You dear reader have, ‘the right to decide’, as Ruth Millington puts it!
Acknowledgements and references
The ‘Uneven U’ form of paragraph construction was laid out by Eric Hayot, 2014. The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities, Colombia University Press. It was subsequently discussed by Thesis Whisperer in this blog post.
Huge thanks to Madeline Odent for giving her explicit consent for me to use her tweets in this piece. Do please go and check out @oldenoughtosay on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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Scribe in the House of Life: Hannah Pethen Ph.D. 
That was fascinating! I’m glad your link to my blog led me to read it! And I’d never really thought of reverse outlining as a critical tool for evaluating other people’s writing, so that was really interesting to me.
Thank you so much. I had no idea you would see it when I linked to your blog. I originally reverse outlined the article because I wanted to see the thread of the argument, but then I realised how much it clarified what was really going on. It’s a fantastic tool for so many things.