ethnographic museums
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2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Csilla Ariese ◽  
Magdalena Wróblewska

The cry for decolonization has echoed throughout the museum world. Although perhaps most audibly heard in the case of ethnographic museums, many different types of museums have felt the need to engage in decolonial practices. Amidst those who have argued that an institution as deeply colonial as the museum cannot truly be decolonized, museum staff and museologists have been approaching the issue from different angles to practice decoloniality in any way they can. This book collects a wide range of practices from museums whose audiences, often highly diverse, come together in sometimes contentious conversations about pasts and futures. Although there are no easy or uniform answers as to how best to deal with colonial pasts, this collection of practices functions as an accessible toolkit from which museum staff can choose in order to experiment with and implement methods according to their own needs and situations. The practices are divided thematically and include, among others, methods for decentering, improving transparency, and increasing inclusivity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-381
Author(s):  
Ramon Sarró ◽  
Ana Temudo

This article discusses the history of the National Ethnographic Museum of Guinea-Bissau (West Africa) and an exhibition we curated about it in Bissau in 2017, which serendipitously led to its reopening. The Museum, which was created in 1988, had ceased to exist because of a civil war in 1998-99. Thanks to a reconstruction of contact prints in the archives of Bissau, we were able to organize an exhibition and to conduct research on the history of the museum. Methodologically, the article illustrates the potential of photography in museum historiography and revitalization. Thematically, it exemplifies the history of museography in West Africa from the mid-1980s through the 1990s, the role of museums in the creation of national heritage, and, by looking at the present situation of the Museum at stake, the fragile place that ethnographic museums have in the politics of culture in today’s Africa.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 620-634
Author(s):  
Margarita F. Albedil

The article deals with the “thing”, i.e. the “museum item” and its diverse nature. This phenomenon is analyzed based on modern thought, which recognizes the subjectivity and agency for things. Previously, these categories were used exclusively as applied to human beings. The items, which reflect the universe of traditional cultures of diverse peoples, when preserved in ethnographic museums have to be traditionally included in the general worldview system along with language, myths, rituals and social institutions. Apart from their utilitarian purpose, things also serve as cultural symbols and possess certain semiotic language. This language was convenient for expressing such ideas and concepts, which are difficult or impossible to express by other cultural codes. An item, which enters a museum collection is effectively removed from its usual cultural context. As a result, it changes its status and undergoes a significant transformation in its “biography”. In the first instance, it becomes a source of diverse information concerning the culture within which it was initially created and used. Due to the great information potential, museum items can serve as a valuable source study resource for various studies in the field of humanities.


Museum Worlds ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Anna Bottesi

Today many ethnographic museums are questioning the hierarchical power relationships implicit in the act of representing the cultures of others. In this article I analyze the way that the curator of the South American section of the Weltmuseum Wien chose to deal with the exhibition of sacred and secret objects, that is, those things that only specific categories of individuals are allowed to view. If we exclude storage as a possible solution, what is the proper way to treat artifacts such as these? How should the expectations of an audience attracted to the idea of the exotic, and perhaps forbidden, be satisfied? How can this challenge be transformed into an opportunity to reflect about what we have, or have not, the right to do?


Author(s):  
Emalani Case

In Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses, Phillip Scorch encourages Kamalu de Preez and Marques Hanalei Marzan, two cultural advisors and specialists at Hawaiʻi’s Bishop Museum, to ‘have a conversation with a museum piece of their choice’ and to allow Scorch ‘to become part of it’ (50). Reading their reflections made me think about the many conversations I’ve had with pieces in museums and what they’ve said to me, what they’ve taught me, and what they’ve made me feel. In the Introduction to the book, I am quoted as calling an ʻahu ʻula and mahiole (a Hawaiian feathered cloak and helmet that belonged to one of our chiefs, Kalaniʻōpuʻu), a puʻuhonua, or a place of refuge and sanctuary (6). As a Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) living in Wellington, New Zealand, the feathered ‘things’ became my pieces of Hawaiʻi far away from home and therefore collectively transformed into a place of cultural safety for me, a place where I could converse with my ancestors in physical form, embodied in the intricate netting, knotting, and feather work.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-133
Author(s):  
Carsten Wergin

This Forum contribution builds on the ethnographic engagement with restitution projects as places of transcultural encounter. Based on data collected in 2019 during repatriation ceremonies in Berlin and Leipzig, I show how a responsibility for human remains that was shared between European museums and Australian Indigenous custodians set in motion processes of healing, both among Indigenous groups and those working with these collections in Europe. I further argue that ethnographic museums change in these processes from supposedly passive exhibition spaces to spaces of socio-critical engagement. Finally, I explore the decolonial potential of such collaborative engagements with heritage within and beyond European borders that are motivated by provenance research and repatriation practices.


Kunstkamera ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-15
Author(s):  
Saleh Seid Adem
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Maria Y. Gaiduk ◽  
Alexander I. Klimenko ◽  
Alexander B. Khramtsov

The paper provides an overview of the domestic experience of creating ethnographic museums in the open air. It traces stages and chronological periodization of the foundation of such museums in the world and studies historical conditions for the creation of open-air museums in Russia. The first experience of creating such a museum was demonstrated at the All-Russian Agricultural and Artisanal-Industrial Exhibition in Moscow in 1923. In the park-museum of Kolomenskoye village near Moscow, monuments of wooden architecture of the 17th–18th centuries were placed. For the first time, this paper comes up with a comprehensive classification of the open-air museums according to various grounds: the status of the museum complex (federal, regional, local), the specificity of the exposition, the architectural and urban planning principle of the organization; the principle of organizing the exposition and others. The study determined that most of the open-air museums are concentrated in the central part of Russia. The authors also explored potential for developing an open-air museum in the Tyumen region. The experience and examples of the functioning of museums allow for developing give “ground” for the development of ethnographic museums in all regions of the country. The creation of this complex is interesting not only from the point of view of implementing educational function for the population, but also in terms of developing the region's economy — the creation of the most diverse tourist product (landscape — architecture — ethnography).


Author(s):  
Amirbek Dzhalilovich Magomedov

The article analyzes the merits of the member-clerk of the Caucasian Handicraft Committee A. S. Piralov, his role in the study and organization of traditional trades and crafts of the peoples of Dagestan, the Caucasus as a whole. Artemiy Stepanovich Piralov headed the Caucasian Handicraft Committee from the time of its creation (1899). Under his leadership, the Committee conducted an extensive survey of Caucasian cloth weaving, the traditional dyeing business of Dagestan. The merit of A. S. Piralov was also the holding in 1902 of the Congress of the Caucasian handicraft industry, the preparation and publication of the book «A Brief Sketch of the Handicrafts of the Caucasus». He also distinguished himself by collecting products of folk craftsmen of the Caucasus for the collections of handicraft and ethnographic museums in Russia.


2020 ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Kosjenka Laszlo Klemar ◽  
Željka Miklošević

On the occasion of observing International Museum Day, Croatian museums carry out the Educational Museum Action (EMA) by conducting educational activities - most often workshops, guided tours and didactic exhibitions - on a specific topic set by a museum-leader. Ethnographic museums in Croatia have participated in the Action from the very beginning; in 2000 and 2010, Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb was the leader of the Educational Museum Action. This paper presents a research of EMA features as an educational museum action conducted by analysis of printed booklets as the Action program publications and by responses of museum experts who took part in the organization and implementation of the Action, obtained as a result of a survey. The research points out the discrepancy between the name and features of the organized activity, upon which a state and potentials of the Action development, as well as the museum’s educational activities have been questioned. Curators of ethnographic collections and museum educators in Croatian ethnographic museums, having participated in the research, gave their contribution to determination of issues related to museum educational programs and to determination of their development potentials.


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