The display of ceremonial objects in museums is most often a pornographic demonstration of cultural rape. This is, in part, because ceremonial objects are not really objects in any ordinary sense, and also because the idea of a museum is really only applicable in a culture of objectification, where such objects are cast in roles entirely opposite to their nature and reality. These roles are, approximately, a visual prostitution of style-as-beauty.

This has -nothing to do with the actual nature of these objects or their sources- and everything to do with the terrifying illness that the dominant cultures aggressively distribute. Exhibits such as these represent public displays by the conquerors of the violated graveyards of the numinous, the holy, and the sacred.

“We eradicated them and their culture almost as an afterthought of conquest, but aren’t these trinkets amazing examples of their creative artistry and cultural sophistication?”