What I found most interesting about our visit to the D'Orsay was the conversation we had with Paul about the cultural differences between the U.S. and France and how that affects their different curatorial styles. As we’ve spoken about many times, post-revolution France affirmed the notion that French citizenship is paramount over all other identity traits. The ideology that being a citizen of France, educated by the French system, and speaking the French language, promotes an integrated and well-functioning society. The French have a “freedom from religion” mentality that sanctions religion as a private matter not needing to be expressed in public. The idea is that universal Frenchness should not be obstructed by private religious practices. It is interesting to see how ideas of French universalism that we studied in the 19th century Paris come forth in a modern Parisian setting and interact with a 21st-century world. Now, there is a global consciousness that personal identity is important. There is a push toward universal freedom of expression of one's identity. Often, religion falls under this ideology of personal expression, so a realization is now occurring that the French system does not fit with this 21st-century philosophy.
This kind of thinking translates over to the curatorial world. One can see the differences in emphasis of identity, especially racial identity, in the two sister Cinema exhibits at LACMA and D’Orsay. The French approach to museum building reflects their philosophy of universalism. Instead of looking for difference and exclusion everywhere, as Americans often do, they see the places where people came together under the spectacularity of French modern life. The LACMA exhibit displayed the human zoo, transport films, and the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. The purpose of these depictions was not to inspect the racial history of minority groups in 19th-century western culture but to show fascination with exoticism–the worldly curiosity of the modern mind. But, trigger warnings and context labels that strayed from the depictions’ arguments toward the show's thesis were still present. Americans are nervous to show this kind of history without discussing its racial and appropriative elements, even if these elements are not relevant to the materials’ argumentative functionality. The French, on the other hand, are often less afraid to leave these materials racially decontextualized, and often less interested altogether in the dissection of these materials than Americans.

 I find this cultural difference and its reflection in museum politics so interesting. The question now stands: Do you think racial materials should always be contextualized to express their racist and imperial legacies?