Fay­ola K J Fras­er

For Trinida­di­an schol­ar Dr Daniela Fi­fi, mu­se­ums aren’t just build­ings—they’re liv­ing, breath­ing spaces where his­to­ry, iden­ti­ty and com­mu­ni­ty con­verge.

With her ground­break­ing new pub­li­ca­tion, “Crit­i­cal Is­sues in Caribbean Mu­se­ums”, Fi­fi chal­lenges the si­lence and un­der­rep­re­sen­ta­tion sur­round­ing the re­gion’s muse­o­log­i­cal lega­cy and opens the doors to bold, nec­es­sary con­ver­sa­tions.

Dr Fi­fi, who wears many hats as an arts ad­min­is­tra­tor, arts ed­u­ca­tor, and cu­ra­tor, saw a gap in avail­able lit­er­a­ture sur­round­ing Caribbean mu­sic prac­tice and pub­lished this com­pelling col­lec­tion, which is the first of its kind of re­search in­to Caribbean mu­se­ums and Caribbean glob­al col­lec­tions.

Launched on April 10, 2025, Fi­fi in­vites con­tri­bu­tions from lead­ing schol­ars, ex­perts, and prac­ti­tion­ers, to spark vi­tal di­a­logue on mu­se­ums.

The book, edit­ed and co-au­thored by Dr Fi­fi, pro­vides both a the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal frame­work for re­think­ing mu­se­ums in the Caribbean and its di­as­po­ra. It ad­dress­es press­ing themes such as com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, the ethics of dis­play, pre-Columbian art in­ter­pre­ta­tion, and de­colo­nial ap­proach­es to cu­ra­tor­ship.

At its core is a call to ac­tion: for mu­se­ums to be con­sid­ered ac­tive agents in sus­tain­ing her­itage and re­fram­ing his­to­ry in ways that are so­cial­ly re­spon­sive and lo­cal­ly root­ed. Ac­cord­ing to Fi­fi the book it­self “is an in­vi­ta­tion to think to­geth­er, act to­geth­er, and sus­tain our shared her­itage to­geth­er”.

Fi­fi’s au­thor­i­ty on the sub­ject is ground­ed in a ca­reer that spans many years and var­i­ous glob­al con­texts and her hold­ing a Doc­tor­ate in Art and Art Ed­u­ca­tion from Teach­ers Col­lege, Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

Raised in a fam­i­ly deeply in­volved in the arts and cul­tur­al sec­tors, she de­scribes “be­ing in­spired through my en­vi­ron­ment from an ear­ly age to build a ca­reer in the arts and ed­u­ca­tion”. She be­gan her for­mal stud­ies at Pratt In­sti­tute in New York, where she earned a de­gree in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­sign, but soon af­ter she start­ed work­ing, she re­alised that she did not want to stay in the field of cor­po­rate en­gage­ment with art, and moved to the fine art and mu­se­ums sec­tor.

Af­ter com­plet­ing a Mas­ter’s de­gree in Art Gallery and Mu­se­um Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter, Fi­fi re­turned to the Caribbean and worked for four years at T&T’s Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery as a cu­ra­to­r­i­al spe­cial­ist.

It was there, she notes, that she so­lid­i­fied her de­sire to stay in mu­se­ums and fine arts, and de­vel­oped a deep­er ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the in­ter­sec­tion be­tween mu­se­ums and ed­u­ca­tion—re­al­is­ing that “mu­se­ums play an im­por­tant role in en­sur­ing the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum is speak­ing to the rel­e­vance of con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety”.

One of her book’s cen­tral ar­gu­ments is that mu­se­ums have a unique ca­pac­i­ty to fos­ter mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives—some­thing that is in­creas­ing­ly vi­tal in plu­ral­is­tic so­ci­eties.

Fi­fi de­scribed mu­se­ums as open­ing “a mul­ti­plic­i­tous av­enue of en­gag­ing the world”. There is no one right way to in­ter­pret art or one right an­swer, she said.

“Mu­se­ums pro­vide flex­i­bil­i­ty for au­di­ences to hear di­verse per­spec­tives.”

In her opin­ion, they car­ry a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port fos­ter­ing an eq­ui­table and fair so­ci­ety through art.

In doc­u­ment­ing case stud­ies from across the Caribbean re­gion, the book al­so high­lights the im­por­tant work of com­mu­ni­ty mu­se­ums—small­er, of­ten un­der-re­sourced in­sti­tu­tions that serve as cul­tur­al an­chors for their lo­cal pop­u­la­tions.

A stand­out ex­am­ple is the Choco­late Com­mu­ni­ty Mu­se­um in Bras­so Seco, Trinidad, which Fi­fi de­scribed as a mod­el of com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven muse­ol­o­gy that blends her­itage ed­u­ca­tion with eco-tourism and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

She ad­vo­cates for greater in­vest­ment in­to com­mu­ni­ty mu­se­ums, not de­scrib­ing T&T’s muse­o­log­i­cal land­scape as “in lack” but see­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to “pur­sue ed­u­ca­tion­al ven­tures and part­ner­ships be­tween schools and com­mu­ni­ty mu­se­ums to gar­ner so­cio-eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for com­mu­ni­ties”.

Fi­fi wants greater in­sti­tu­tion­al part­ner­ships be­tween mu­se­ums and uni­ver­si­ties, ar­gu­ing that these col­lab­o­ra­tions can sup­port re­search, pro­gram­ming, and pro­fes­sion­al train­ing. She al­so calls for na­tion­al poli­cies that rec­og­nize mu­se­ums as es­sen­tial pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture—not lux­u­ries, but ne­ces­si­ties in cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“Mu­se­ums can be pow­er­ful con­trib­u­tors to GDP through cul­tur­al and her­itage tourism,” she says. “But that re­quires in­vest­ment, in­te­gra­tion in­to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and in­ten­tion­al me­dia pro­gram­ming.”

As part of the book’s launch, Fi­fi is lead­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lic pro­gram­ming ini­tia­tive ti­tled The Mind of the Mu­se­um, which will de­but at the Mu­se­um of Latin Amer­i­can Art in Cal­i­for­nia on Au­gust 30.

The se­ries will in­clude keynote lec­tures, re­gion­al pan­els, ex­hi­bi­tions, pod­casts, and ex­pert pre­sen­ta­tions from con­tribut­ing schol­ars. Its goal is to ex­pand the con­ver­sa­tion on Caribbean mu­se­ums be­yond the aca­d­e­m­ic realm and in­to the broad­er pub­lic con­scious­ness.

With Crit­i­cal Is­sues in Caribbean Mu­se­ums, Dr Daniela Fi­fi has not on­ly filled a long­stand­ing gap in mu­se­um lit­er­a­ture, but al­so is­sued a bold and nec­es­sary chal­lenge to reimag­ine what Caribbean mu­se­ums can be: in­clu­sive, in­no­v­a­tive, and deeply con­nect­ed to the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.

As the Caribbean con­tin­ues to ne­go­ti­ate its place in glob­al cul­tur­al sys­tems, this book of­fers a vi­sion that is as crit­i­cal as it is hope­ful.