The pure act of 'collecting', acquiring and ordering objects for display, requires both sacrifice and the desire to order and explain the desired thing, to both possess a thing and the narrative attached to it. As Sharon Macdonald writes of typological organization during the European turn of focus onto rationalism in the nineteenth century, "In art museums, the new discipline of art history informed a novel means of organizing galleries from the late eighteenth century, the works typically being presented as exemplifications of particular styles, themselves classified by both 'period' and 'civilization' and 'nationality,' and thus being spatially organized such that visitors could take an educational tour through the progress of art over time, crossing continents, and experiencing characteristic differences, as they did so." (p.87, emphasis added).

The ordering of objects, through these 'characteristic differences' or similarities, assigns a narrative, one that can be manipulated by the person/institution that displays them. Practices of collecting veer to the desire for perfection, as Baudrillard expands on, and 'completeness' or absoluteness dominates the compulsion. He writes, "It remains characteristic of the collection that there comes a point when the self-absorption of the system is interrupted and the collection is enrolled within some external project or exigency (whether associated with prestige, culture, or commerce makes no odds, only assuming that the object ends up confronting one man with another, thereby constituting itself as a message)." (p.24). A collection, therefore, is a method of communication from one body to another. One built out of sacrifice in the name of desire to send a message to another body, about themselves. This can be an articulated identity through means of demonstrating otherness, it can be to engage in cultural governance through garnering value for the objects in one's collection and their associated moral value, or even just to demonstrate wealth through the acquisition of highly valued objects-- but the function of the collection remains the same.

Through this kind of hierarchical organization, the forming "survey museum" could claim knowledge and representation for entire civilizations, and manipulate that 'knowledge' into a narrative suited to the structures of power that organized the museum project in the first place. As Preziosi writes, "This phenomenon is at the same time at the heart of the socially-sanctioned need or even legally enforced obsession in many societies to discipline and "fix" the meanings of things; to give each entity an appropriate historical, political, chronological, geographic, and ethical locus or "address." And to do so ideally by embedding objects in a story or narrative; in an unfolding evolutionary history or teleology — a linked series of entities fabricating an overall shape to the time of a time and place." (p. 83, emphasis added)

The survey museum, the first major one of which in America was the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, became a tool of social ordinance designed to demonstrate the national wealth of the demos and the character of the nation. As Duncan and Wallach write, the alignment of the national project with what was recognized as "universal genius" (57) was integral to the character of the survey museum and necessary for the image of the state in its reflection to both the public citizenry and international spheres. In the formation of the Metropolitan Museum in particular, an arrangement of display between the public and private spheres allowed for the presentation of the public through the workings of the private. "Public would mask private-- or try to. The Museum would be located on city land and would be owned by the city. However, the Museum collection would be owned and controlled by the concerned citizens who made up its board of trustees." (58). The Metropolitan became a center of established power in meaning-making and national character, operated by a controlling class of wealthy citizens.

In The Art Museum as Ritual, Duncan writes, "Like most ritual space, museum space is carefully marked off and culturally designated as reserved for a special quality of attention-- in this case, for contemplation and learning." (10, emphasis added) The 'framing' of this 'ritual space' contributes heavily to what a religious environment might refer to as an 'attitude of reverence', requiring the participants to engage in certain behaviors through methods of social discipline. The architectural and atmospheric toolkits of museums share attributes with the toolkits of religious spaces in a similar manner, creating environments detached from time, the outside world, regular social obligations, and values. As Duncan writes, "As we shall see, others, too, have described art museums as sites which enable visitors to achieve a liminal experience-- to move beyond the psychic constraints of mundane existence, step out of time, and attain new, larger perspectives." (12, emphasis added). This connection with the 'higher authority', (in this case, the Eurocentric "universal genius" (57, emphasis added) of Duncan and Wallach's The Universal Survey Museum) allows for what Duncan quotes as a "replacement for religion", (12, emphasis added) or a shift in the hierarchical powers as mirrored in the political shift of the 18th century. The new God, so to speak, then becomes the cultural authority of the museum.

In the case of the Metropolitan Museum, multiple factors are at play in determining the politics of sight and knowledge that influence the experiences and interpretations of collected objects. The museum's neoclassical, stately architecture and its monumental size give it a classical European civic structure, placing it among a class of buildings that deal primarily in education, religion, and law; all disciplinary functions. The museum's location, in prime real estate beside Central Park and on 5th Avenue, places it in a fiscal class far above the average person, giving the impression of wealth and centrality. The use of monumental, neoclassical architecture continues inside, where the 'Great Hall' expands into high, arched ceilings in the visitor's first impression of the building, which is reminiscent most prominently of a cathedral. Following the flow of traffic through to the most obvious pathways, up the central stairs or to either the left or right sides of the hall, the visitor's ticket is checked and enters one of three central, prominent galleries: European Painting, Ancient Greek and Roman Art, and Egyptian Art; all being classical, Eurocentric examples of the lauded 'universal genius'. To get to galleries containing Indigenous, African, Oceanian, Asian, Temporary Exhibitions, or Modern Art, the museum-goer must first traverse one of these three collections, prioritizing the experience. Inside these galleries, the use of lighting, surveillance, sound, traffic control, etc., changes to suit the effect on the visitor.

The American Wing Period Rooms in the Metropolitan Museum opened to the public for the first time in 1924, a moment in United States history in which appreciation for the American decorative arts was becoming an important recognized part of a rhetorical hegemonic 'American' culture. The project of exhibiting these began in 1910 (Hecksher, 163) and carried on for fourteen years until its opening, in which the curatorial staff at the Metropolitan Museum sought out not only decorative arts suited to each room, but the paneling and fixtures of rooms from the historical moments themselves. These rooms were the product of a Frankenstein's-Monster arrangement, wood being taken from houses that might have remained intact otherwise (Pilgrim, 12-13) and decorative arts collected from around the United States in order to recreate period settings from particular houses or moments in history. The goal was authenticity, to recreate a domestic scene from a particular era, however, this is more or less relative. Using scenes taken from various places and left to the tastes of a curator, as well as being a product of historical imagination, period rooms are what Pilgrim calls "period rooms of period rooms", (p.22), an approximation of itself. The argument has been made that these rooms provide more spectacle than authentic education.

A great deal of the rooms from the late 18th and 19th century at the Metropolitan American Wing, for instance, the Richmond Room, are taken to model a very specific economic class. They model examples of wealth in historic domestic situations, and certain fixtures in these rooms call back to very specific ideas about the American identity. For instance, in the Richmond Room, the wallpaper features prominent examples of European civic and religious architecture across a river from pastoral fields and women wearing Greco-Roman dress, people pulling boats up to the shore and running through the grass-- an example of a pastoral, romanticized articulation of the colonization and governance of the United States. In the Benkard room, the decorative arts displayed are very much representative of the American federal era, featuring eagles, wheat motifs, and neoclassical decorations reminiscent of the Adams' styles popular in Georgian England. These rooms call back to an American etiology as descended directly from Europe's 'enlightenment' history and rationalistic democracy, featuring pastoral, romantic themes, and showcasing examples of white wealth and power in the 19th-century United States. The question, here, then becomes: whose history is being showcased as representative of the United States during this era? And why?

The museum has several departments dedicated to the research of the provenance of objects; however, the legal implications of 'gifted' or purchased objects from legal channels after their initial displacement by illegal means complicate matters. For instance, out of the some 160 pieces from Benin, not all are from the 1897 massacre, and some, though they are, have been purchased or gifted through legal channels. In a statement recorded by the New York Times, "The works in the Met’s collection “were largely given to the institution in the 1970s and 1990s by individuals who acquired them on the art market,” a spokesman told the New York Times in April." (See here) The Metropolitan Museum, by and large, paints a very complicated entanglement of factors in the face of what, in the public mind, is a very clear-cut issue, one way or the other.

Red tape and bureaucracy aside, the Metropolitan is about as forthcoming as the British Museum or the Louvre when it comes to provenance research. All three museums run programs for Nazi-era provenance research and are actively invested primarily in the evaluation and return of these objects as their public focus on the topic of repatriation. The Metropolitan and British Museums allow for digital collections search options to the public to allow for civilians to look through objects collected during this era, and open themselves to communication from the public in regards to the origin of these objects. These museums are also central in the public debate over cultural patrimony and museum heritage, widely criticized for holding objects that are viewed as stolen. The Metropolitan Museum holds several notable objects that are the subject of much public scrutiny from across the globe, including but not limited to Nigeria, Cyprus, Indonesia, India, Greece, and Cambodia. It has been slow to, or absent from, making statements on any of these objects directly.

As Christina Kreps writes in Non-Western Models of Museums and Curation in Cross-Cultural Perspective, "Curation is no longer just about taking care of objects. It is also about cultivating harmonious relationships directed toward redressing historical wrongs, and showing respect for diverse worldviews and belief systems as they pertain to people’s perceptions of, and relations to, objects.” (469) The very worldview attached to the institution needs to fundamentally change: a perspective shift away from the knowledge-seeking/owning and racial politics of settler colonialism is required. As Mirzeoff writes, "It would require a space where you’re willing to look at the challenge of making the new without hierarchy, without preconditions, and without any guarantees. It is a global challenge. It’s not a question of throwing out art objects but of creating a space that embraces the necessity of decolonization. I want an institution – whether university, museum, gallery or whatever – that doesn’t reproduce white supremacy, that doesn’t represent a prison, in which there isn’t expropriated labor, there isn’t extinction, and there isn’t genocide. What would that look like?" (21).

Kreps posits that the next best step might be to back away from institutional models of knowledge-seeking and into a politics of care. What would the Metropolitan look like, if instead of focusing on merely acknowledging the centuries of hateful practice that have led to the caging of their cultural materials, the Met focused on expanding public perception of present-day members of the Tribes from which the objects originate, or even after-effects of settler colonialism? What would focusing on present-day contexts and the return of heritage artefacts provide for the average museum goer?

One standout instance of public resistance to a corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum came in 2019, when the museum made a public statement rejecting any further contribution from the Sackler family, as well as taking down their name from gallery halls, (Pogrebin, The New York Times, 2021) given their role in the global opioid crisis. (Harris, The New York Times, 2019). This came alongside the same announcement from the Tate in London and the Guggenheim in New York. Recorded by the NYT, the President of the Met Daniel Weiss said, “The museum takes a position of gratitude and respect to those who support us, but on occasion, we feel it’s necessary to step away from gifts that are not in the public interest, or in our institution’s interest,” (Ibid.) This calls back to ideas expressed by Serafino and Garrad, in which the authors cite the complicated public/private nature of museum relations to the civic body and how, by and large, museums are designed to be representational entities, which means that there is a measure of incredible public involvement in financial decisions made by institutions, which the public willingly and unwillingly participates in. (75-76)