Why won’t this museum let women see its Igbo mask?

The Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford has won a reputation for its energetic programme of ‘decolonisation’. Its director, Laura van Broekhoven, is an expert on the Amazon. Nonetheless, on the museum website she actually begins her account of her academic work with the words ‘Laura’s current research interests include repatriation and redress, with a focus on the importance of collaboration, inclusivity and reflexive inquiry.’ She is keen on titles. Not only is she grandly described on the museum website as ‘Professor Dr Laura van Broekhoven’, she is also ‘Professor of Museum Studies, Ethics and Material Culture’ at the University of Oxford. That is quite a combination. Her approach to ‘ethics’ appears to differ radically from that of another Oxford ethicist, Nigel Biggar, whose best-selling book Colonialism has mapped out the pluses and minuses of Britain’s colonial experience without feeling the slightest need to adopt the supposed insights of Critical Race Theory.