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Museum Archipelago

Museum Archipelago

Written by: Ian Elsner
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 A tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Museum Archipelago believes that no museum is an island and that museums are not neutral. Taking a broad definition of museums, host Ian Elsner brings you to different museum spaces around the world, dives deep into institutional problems, and introduces you to the people working to fix them. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let’s get started.© 2026 Ian Elsner Art Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary
Episodes
  • 112. In Relooted, You Steal Back What Museums Won't Return

    112. In Relooted, You Steal Back What Museums Won't Return
    Mar 2 2026
    It's 2099, and you and your heist team are about to case an unnamed high-security museum in Europe. One of the targets: the Kabwe skull, a roughly 300,000-year-old early human skull found in present-day Zambia in 1921. This is Relooted, a new video game from South African game studio Nyamakop, where your job is to steal back looted artifacts by mapping entrances and exits, positioning your crew, and making it past robot security using your parkour skills. Several things about this are unrealistic. For one, the actual Kabwe skull, currently on display in the Natural History Museum in London, might not need such an elaborate plan. But there is a damningly realistic fact at the heart of the game: every single one of the roughly 70 objects you steal was taken from the African continent and currently sits in a Western museum or private collection. And the way museums in the game wiggle out of a fictional treaty to return stolen artifacts doesn't sound fictional at all. It mirrors the real-world tactics that have kept the Kabwe skull in London for over a century, despite Zambia's repeated requests for its return. In this episode, Ben Myers, CEO and creative director at Nyamakop, and Mohale Mashigo, the studio's narrative director, talk about why heists are the perfect genre for a game about repatriation, what they found when they visited the real artifacts in person, and why their video game often does a much better job telling the story of these objects than the museums that hold them. Image: The Kabwe skull as it appears in a Relooted heist briefing. Topics and Notes 00:00 Welcome to Museum Archipelago00:15 Relooted01:30 "We overstated the security capabilities on museums"01:45 Meet Ben Myers02:50 Meet Mohale Mashigo03:04 The Kabwe Skull04:45 Labels and Missing Context in Museums06:08 A Digital Museum06:53 Treaties and Red Tape09:37 Prosperous Future Africa12:05 Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum on Episode 3912:16 Museum of Black Civilizations14:50 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 112. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above. View Transcript It's the year 2099 and you and your heist team are about to case an unnamed high security museum to steal the Kabwe skull. This moment occurs halfway through Relooted, a new video game from South African game studio Nyamakop. Your job is to map all the entrances and exits, position your crew members strategically, use cybersecurity techniques to break open the door, steal this artifact, and make it out of the museum past the robot security force using parkour, which fortunately, you're quite skilled at. “Video game excerpt: " Please look out for the Kabwe skull. For many years, the Zambian government tried to have the skull repatriated back from the United Kingdom. What's the security situation? Nothing you haven't experienced before. Robot guards, lasers, security shutters, pressure plates, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Several things about this moment in the game are unrealistic. For one, the actual skull, which is currently on display in the Natural History Museum in London, might actually be easier to steal. Ben Myres:  I've seen a couple of the ones in our game, in person now, and the first thing I noticed, is the Kabwe skull or broken Hillman in the Natural History Museum. That'd be very easy to steal. We've very overstated the security capabilities on museums. I have a video of, it's only 20 seconds long of the distance from the skull to the exit. I'm like, wow. Okay. That wouldn’t be very fun. This is Ben Myers, the CEO and creative director at Nyamakop, and one of the developers of Relooted.   Ben Myres: Hello, I'm Ben Myers, CEO, and creative director at Nyamakop. I like to be known for making cool video games. But there is a very realistic -- damningly realistic -- fact at the heart of the game. The Kabwe skull is just one of about 70 real-world objects you heist during the game. And every single one of them was taken from the African continent and currently sits in a Western Museum or private collection. Ben Myres:  I think there was a French government report that came out in maybe 2018 and that estimated that 90 to 95% of all African cultural heritage is kept in museums off the ...
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  • 111. Why Software Hasn't Eaten Museums (Yet)

    111. Why Software Hasn't Eaten Museums (Yet)
    Dec 15 2025
    Museums today are filled with software, yet they've largely avoided being "eaten" by the tech industry. Unlike music or movies, exhibitions can't be downloaded or scaled infinitely. There's only one Mona Lisa. But if the wrong platform finds the right leverage, that immunity may not last. Which is why the kind of software museums choose matters. TilBuci is a free, open-source tool used by museums to build touchscreens, kiosks, and projections. It was created by Brazilian software developer Lucas Junqueira after watching too many digital exhibitions quietly break down once the opening buzz faded. Designed to be usable by museum staff long after developers leave, TilBuci treats software not as a product, but as infrastructure. In this episode, Lucas Junqueira talks about what it takes to build museum software that lasts. Through the story of a projection still running on the facade of the Space of Knowledge museum in Belo Horizonte over a decade after it opened, we explore how open, locally controlled tools extend the life of museum systems, and what's at stake if a tech platform ever inserts itself between museums and their audiences. Image: A projection animates the façade of the Espaço do Conhecimento (Space of Knowledge) museum at Praça da Liberdade (Liberty Square) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Lucas Junqueira's software Managana, a previous version of TilBuci is running the projection. Topics and Notes 00:00 Intro00:15 The Rise of Software in Museums00:56 Software Eating the World02:19 Why Are Museums Different?03:16 Lucas Junqueira and TilBuci05:09 Challenges and Innovations08:09 The Flash Apocalypse10:12 What's at Stake 11:48 Jurassic Park on Club Archipelago13:00 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 111. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above. View Transcript Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes. So let's get started. If you've been to a museum lately, any museum big or small, you've probably noticed ever more software-driven experiences. Interactive touchscreens, projections, buttons, videos are all controlled by software. Lucas Junqueira: I've seen mostly all exhibitions have at least some kind of interaction or some pieces of the exhibition that require some kind of software to enable it. This is Lucas Junqueira, a Brazilian museum professional and software developer. Lucas Junqueira:  Okay. My name is Lucas Junqueira. I've been working on this exhibition museum scene for quite some time right now. It's tempting to see the increase of software in museums as another example of software eating the world. This phrase, "software eats the world", was coined by investor Marc Andreessen in a 2011 Wall Street Journal opinion piece. The idea isn’t that software replaces everything. It’s that software absorbs the value layer of company after company, industry after industry. In the "software eats the world" thesis, traditional music labels only exist to provide software companies (like Apple Music and Spotify) with content. The software, everything from how the app looks on your phone to what song is recommended next, sits higher on the value chain than the music itself. Even the network effects of which app your friends use, matter more than what you listen to. Netflix, Salesforce, and the game Angry Birds are some examples Andreessen mentioned back in that 2011 essay, plus plenty of other companies I barely remember. But the core of the thesis, even if it's not explicitly mentioned, is the zero-marginal cost nature of distributing software. Whatever the up-front cost of developing Angry Birds is, it doesn't actually matter since the company can distribute it to every phone on the planet for zero dollars. Once it exists, it can be copied endlessly, instantly, and globally. Which is exactly what museums can’t do. And this is where museums are different. Museums aren’t infinitely scalable, and they aren’t frictionless. You can't really download an exhibition in the way that you can download a song. You have to show up. There's only one Mona Lisa. And that's why software in museums is (so far at least) immune from ...
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    13 mins
  • 110. Revisiting The ‘Enola Gay Fiasco’ Today

    110. Revisiting The ‘Enola Gay Fiasco’ Today
    Apr 14 2025
    For the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum planned to display the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The plane was restored to be part of a full exhibit, presented alongside context about the atomic bombing's mass civilian casualties. But that exhibit never opened. Instead, after years of script revisions and intense pressure from veterans' groups and Congress, the museum displayed the restored bomber's fuselage with minimal interpretation. The exhibit was primarily dedicated to the technical process of restoring the aircraft; as one visitor noted, "I learned a lot about how to polish aluminum, but I did not learn very much about the decision to drop the atomic bomb." In this episode, historian Gregg Herken, who served as Chairman of the museum's Space History Division during the controversy, recounts how the exhibit went from reckoning with the bomb's full impact to re-enforcing a patriotic narrative. He recalls the specific moments that led up to one of the museum industry's cautionary tales, like when the director agreed to remove evocative artifacts like a schoolgirl's carbonized lunchbox from Hiroshima from the exhibition plans, and how the Air Force Association demanded the exhibit say the bombing saved 1 million American lives and other assertions that have been challenged by generations of historians. Today, a new presidential executive order dictates how the Smithsonian interprets American history. Topics and Notes 00:00 Intro00:15 The Enola Gay in the 1980s01:07 Gregg Herken02:21 Initial Planning 02:40 Martin Harwit03:48 Herken's Visit to Hiroshima 04:39 'The Lunchbox'05:32 Initial Exhibit Script 06:26 Opposition and Controversy 07:15 Revisions and Criticisms 10:49 Air Force Association's Demands 11:59 Exhibit Cancellation 13:37 "Pale Shadow"14:10 Reflecting on History and Censorship20:55 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 110. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above. View Transcript Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes. So let's get started. By the late 1980s, the Enola Gay – the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima – had been sitting disassembled at the Smithsonian's Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland for decades. What was once a beautiful shiny machine with four powerful engines, just powerful enough with the right banking maneuver to escape the hell it unleashed, was scattered and severed, with disheveled tubes where the wings used to be and the remains of birds nests in the turrets. Gregg Herken: It was shortly after I joined the museum and I went out to the restoration facility that the Smithsonian operates in Garber in Maryland. And they wanted to show me around. And since I was the new chairman of the Department of Space History, they said I could get into the fuselage of the Enola Gay. This is Gregg Herken, retired professor of American Diplomatic History at the University of California, and Chairman of the National Air and Space Museum's Space History Division from 1988 to 2003. Gregg Herken: Hello. My name is Gregg Herken. I'm a retired professor of American Diplomatic History at the University of California. Herken was part of the team planning the exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum that would feature the restored Enola Gay and of course he accepted the invitation and climbed up into the fuselage. Gregg Herken: So I sat in Tibbets' seat, in the pilot seat for a second, and then I sat in the bombardier seat. And off to the left was a panel that had, I think it was five toggle switches. And one of them had the label "bombs." And actually on the day of the Hiroshima mission, it would've said in a little tag underneath that "special." Gregg Herken: But I remember just thinking that I could sit in, I'm sitting in that seat, I could just reach over and flip that switch. And that was the switch that released the Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima. And I thought there is bad juju with that. I did not want to touch it. At the other end of ...
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    21 mins
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