the conference brochure and
Transcription
the conference brochure and
The Future of Ethnographic Museums 19 – 21 July 2013 A conference at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Keble College, University of Oxford. Pitt Rivers Museum Welcome! It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Keble College and the University of Oxford for The Future of Ethnographic Museums conference. Perhaps it will strike some as ironic that a conference about the future is being held in a city renowned for being steeped in the past. But among Oxford’s famed historic buildings are institutions that were cutting-edge at the time of their creation, including its museums. The Ashmolean, for example, was the first public museum in the United Kingdom (today its original building houses the University’s Museum of the History of Science). The Pitt Rivers Museum’s own distinctive typological mode of arrangement made it innovative in its day, for all its current popular (and false) reputation purely as a museum of a museum. One of the fundamental questions that will be addressed in this conference is how such institutions, created at the height of the ‘museum age’ and of Empire, can reconfigure themselves to engage with contemporary issues and attract fresh audiences. Whether physically reshaped or ideologically rethought, how might ethnographic museums respond to the changing socio-economic environment, the new demographics forged by global migration and the resurgence of nationalistic politics in Europe in the twenty first century? Can ethnographic museums once again be 2 Although our discussions over the next few days will focus on some of the serious challenges – financial, political and intellectual – that currently face many ethnographic museums, we hope that the conference will also be engaging and enjoyable. In addition to the conventional lecture and discussion formats, our programme features live performance, music, poster presentations, exhibition viewing, a gala dinner, as well as an opportunity to see the Pitt Rivers Museum itself in – literally – a different light. We hope that these activities, alongside the papers, will point to some of the different possible ways in which ethnographic museums, in Oxford and elsewhere, can be re-animated to assume a new role in the twenty-first century and beyond. sites of innovation and interaction within wider debates in the public sphere? Will they and their contents be consigned to the past or entirely eclipsed by new kinds of museums? Such questions informed the Ethnography Museums and World Cultures (EMWC) project funded by the European Commission. Led by the Royal Central African Museum (Tervuren, Belgium), this project set out in 2008 to encourage ethnographic museums to redefine their priorities in response to “an ever more globalizing world”. The Oxford conference marks the culmination of this five-year research project over the course of which a series of workshops, exhibitions, publications and symposia has created new linkages and dialogue between museums across Europe. At this conference we seek to continue the debate that has been fostered by the project and to widen the connections even further with contributions from a distinguished group of international speakers and the participation of delegates from all over the world. Our thanks to all of you, to the funding bodies, the team at Culture Lab (Brussels) and to the museum and college staff in Oxford who have made this conference possible. Clare Harris and Michael O’Hanlon Conference Convenors 3 CONFERENCE TIMETABLE DAY 1: Friday 19 July 14:00 – 16:00 15:00 – 16:00 Keble College Check in at Lodge and registration in the Douglas Price Room with refreshments Pitt Rivers Museum Visiting with the Ancestors special exhibition Curator Laura Peers will be available in the gallery to discuss her Blackfoot Shirts project 17:00 – 18:30 Pitt Rivers Museum 18:45 – 19:45 20:00 – 22:00 Opening reception in the galleries of the Pitt Rivers Museum Keble College Conference keynote lecture by James Clifford in the O’Reilly Lecture Theatre Keble College Dinner in Keble College Hall (ticketed) 4 Pitt Rivers Museum by torchlight DAY 2: Saturday 20 July All lectures take place in the O’Reilly Lecture Theatre 09:30 – 11:30 Keble College Session 1 Chair: Marcus Banks Speakers: Sharon Macdonald and Wayne Modest 11:30 – 12:00 Keble College Coffee in the ARCO room 12:00 – 13:00 Keble College Session 2 Chair: Chris Gosden Speaker: Nicholas Thomas 13:00 – 14:00 Keble College Lunch in the ARCO room 13:30 – 14:00 Keble College Poster Presentations in the Sloane Robinson Building seminar rooms (see separate sheet for timetable, room numbers and speakers) 14:00 – 16:00 Keble College Session 3 Chair: Laura Peers Speakers: Ruth Phillips and Annie Coombes 16:00 – 16:30 Keble College Tea in the ARCO room 16:30 – 17:30 Keble College Session 4 Chair: Dan Hicks Speaker: Corinne Kratz 18:30 – 20:30 Keble College Gala dinner in Keble College Hall (ticketed) 20:30 – 23:00 Pitt Rivers Museum Sound, light and performance by Nathaniel Robin Mann in the Museum 23:00 – 24:00 Keble College College Bar open late and 6 DAY 3: Sunday 21 July Lectures and panel discussion take place in the O’Reilly Lecture Theatre Session 5 Chair: Christopher Morton Speakers: Kavita Singh and Clare Harris 10.00 – 12.00 Keble College Keble College Lunch in the ARCO room 12:30 – 13:00 Keble College Poster Presentations in the Sloane Robinson Building seminar rooms (see separate sheet for timetable, room numbers and speakers) 13:00 – 14:30 Keble College Session 6 Chair: Laura Van Broekhoven Discussion of conference theme led by a panel including: Michael Barrett, Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, Lotten Gustafsson Reinius and Barbara Plankensteiner from the EMWC project 12.00 – 13:00 and Conference ends 15:00 National Museums of World Culture, Stockholm. (For full illustration information see p32) 7 Royal Museum for Central Africa Speakers’ Abstracts James Clifford (University of California Santa Cruz) “May you live in interesting times”: The Ethnographic Museum Today New publics and branding exercises; complex relations with source communities; material pressures and generational shifts; performance art and digital networking; innovative forms of collaboration and research… The talk explores the good and the bad news for museums devoted to cross-cultural understanding in times of globalization and decolonization. “Puisses-tu vivre dans des temps intéressants”: Le musée ethnographique aujourd’hui Les nouveaux publics et stratégies pour créer des images de marque; les relations complexes avec les communautés source ; les pressions matérielles et changements générationnels; l’art performance et les réseaux digitaux ; les formes innovatrices de collaboration et de recherche… Cette présentation explore les bonnes et les mauvaises nouvelles pour les musées qui se consacrent à la compréhension interculturelle à une époque de globalisation et de décolonisation. Sharon Macdonald (University of York) Making Differences and Citizens in Ethnographic Museums Over recent decades, ethnographic museums in many European countries have been remarkably vital, often drawing on their collections in new, sometimes experimental, ways to address topics of current concern. Increasingly, many position themselves as ‘socially relevant’ agencies of ‘intercultural understanding’ and cosmopolitan ‘spaces of dialogue’ in demographic contexts in which those who would once have been the distant others of their displays might now live in the same city. Recent years have also seen, however, a growing intensity of ‘backlash’ against ‘multiculturalism’ in Europe, including highlevel political proclamations that ‘multiculturalism is dead’ and needs to be replaced by a forging of new senses of national cohesion and affiliation. In some countries, this is having consequences for ethnographic museums in the form of restructuring (including incorporation into telling a ‘national story’), reduced funding and threatened closure. 9 The aim of this paper is to address the current predicament of ethnographic museums by providing an analysis of some of the main policies on cultural diversity and citizenship that inform the contexts within which they operate. Through a comparative investigation of selected European countries that illustrate key differences of approach, I will highlight some of the various ways in which certain ethnographic museums articulate cultural diversity and citizenship through their operations and exhibitions, both within and sometimes beyond those of the nations in which they work. By doing so, I hope to show not only ways in which ethnographic museums may variously ‘do’ cultural diversity and citizenship but also how they have potential to challenge some of the widespread notions of citizenship and difference that operate elsewhere. Créer des différences et des citoyens dans les musées ethnographiques Durant les dernières décennies, les musées ethnographiques dans plusieurs pays européens ont fait preuve d’une vitalité remarquable, puisant souvent dans leurs collections d’une manière nouvelle, souvent expérimentale pour aborder des préoccupations actuelles. De plus en plus, beaucoup d’entre eux prennent position comme organismes de « compréhension interculturelle » « d’intérêt social » et comme « espaces de dialogue » cosmopolites dans des contextes démographiques où ceux qui auraient été naguère les autres distants des vitrines d’exposition peuvent désormais vivre dans la même ville. Récemment, on a cependant assisté à un « retour de balancier » contre le « multiculturalisme » en Europe, y compris dans des déclarations politiques en haut lieu avançant que « le multiculturalisme est mort» et qu’il doit être remplacé par la création d’un nouveau sens de cohésion et d’affiliation nationales. Dans certains pays, ceci entraîne des conséquences pour les musées ethnographiques sous la forme de restructurations (y compris l’enrôlement comme porte-paroles d’une « histoire nationale »), de restrictions financières et de menaces de fermeture. L’objectif de cet exposé est de prendre en considération la situation difficile des musées ethnographiques à l’heure actuelle à l’aide d’une analyse de certaines des politiques majeures touchant à la diversité culturelle et la citoyenneté qui soutendent les contextes dans lesquels ils fonctionnent. Par une enquête comparative de pays européens sélectionnés illustrant les principales différences d’approche, je vais mettre en évidence quelques-unes des diverses manières par lesquelles certains musées ethnographiques articulent la diversité culturelle et la citoyenneté par leurs activités et leurs expositions, tant à l’intérieur qu’à l’extérieur des pays dans lesquels ils travaillent. Ce faisant, j’espère montrer non seulement comment les musées ethnographiques peuvent «créer» la diversité culturelle et la citoyenneté de différentes manières, mais aussi comment ils ont le potentiel de remettre en question certaines des notions très répandues de citoyenneté et de différence qui œuvrent ailleurs. 10 Wayne Modest (Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam) Curating Between Self Hate and Self Love: Ethnographic Museums and Ethno-nationalist Politics There is a palpable anxiety within the Dutch museum sector as budget cuts threaten to reduce drastically the funding of individual museums. This anxiety is felt especially amongst ethnographic museums as the survival of the Tropenmuseum is under threat and the funding of the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam has been reduced significantly. Additionally, three postcolonial cultural history museums (Nusantara, Maluku, Ninsee) closed their doors in 2012. Concurrently, the Rijksmuseum – broadly seen as representing glorious Dutch history – has reopened at a cost of approximately €375 million. These upheavals in the museum sector have taken place in the context of an openly xenophobic politics, where much of the nativist, anti-Islam language of the Freedom Party (PVV) has been adopted by the mainstream political parties. These populist politics point to the presence of cultural others as one of the country’s most pressing concerns. While the precarious position of ethnographic museum may seem unrelated to the anxious politics about others, especially within the broader context of the global financial crisis, I want to suggest that we can understand some of the ‘backlash’ against ethnographic museums in relation to these ethno-nationalist politics. First, these museums are often seen as too focused on the Dutch colonial past, insisting on criticizing rather than celebrating the nation. Second, many of these museums have expressed an active engagement with the multicultural society at home, defying the popular belief that ethnographic exhibitions should be about ‘over there’ and not concerned with ‘here’. Given this situation, what are ethnographic museums to do? I argue that institutions such as the Tropenmuseum are a necessary part of public life that should haunt the multicultural present. Given their history and their collections, ethnographic museums should maintain their agenda of discussing the colonial past, and contributing to more nuanced understandings of the trajectories to our multicultural present. In addition, such museums should take on the larger project of reframing the language of cultural difference and distance that pervades political discourse, which these museums themselves helped to create. 11 Organiser les expositions de musée entre haine de soi et amour de soi: les musées ethnographiques et la politique ethno-nationaliste Il y a une inquiétude palpable dans le secteur des musées néerlandais à l’heure où des coupures budgétaires menacent de réduire drastiquement le financement de certains musées. Cette inquiétude se ressent surtout parmi les musées ethnographiques alors que la survie du Tropenmuseum est menacée et que le financement du Wereldmuseum de Rotterdam a été réduit considérablement. En outre, trois musées d’histoire culturelle postcoloniale (Nusantara, Maluku, Ninsee) ont fermé leurs portes en 2012. Simultanément, le Rijksmuseum - généralement vu comme le représentant de l’histoire néerlandaise dans toute sa gloire - a rouvert à un coût d’environ 375 millions d’euros. Ces bouleversements dans le secteur des musées ont eu lieu dans un contexte de politique ouvertement xénophobe, dans laquelle une grande partie du langage anti-islamiste et nativiste du Parti de la Liberté (PVV) a été adoptée par les partis politiques traditionnels. Cette politique populiste est un indicateur comme quoi la présence de personnes d’une autre culture est l’un des soucis les plus urgents du pays. Alors que la situation précaire des musées ethnographiques peut sembler sans rapport avec une politique d’inquiétude envers autrui, surtout dans le contexte élargi d’une crise financière à l’échelle mondiale, j’aimerais suggérer que nous pouvons comprendre certaines des «représailles» contre les musées ethnographiques en rapport avec cette politique ethno-nationaliste. D’abord, ces musées sont souvent considérés comme trop centrés sur le passé colonial hollandais, en insistant sur la critique plutôt que la célébration de la nation. Ensuite, bon nombre de ces musées se sont impliqués activement dans la société multiculturelle au sein de leur pays, allant à l’encontre de la croyance populaire que les expositions ethnographiques devraient porter sur le «là-bas» et ne pas se préoccuper de l’« ici ». Compte tenu de cette situation, que doivent faire les musées ethnographiques? Je soutiens que des institutions telles que le Tropenmuseum sont une composante nécessaire de la vie publique qui se doit de hanter le présent multiculturel. Etant donné leur histoire et leurs collections, les musées ethnographiques devraient préserver leur programme de discussion du passé colonial et de contribution à une compréhension plus nuancée des trajectoires de notre présent multiculturel. En outre, ces musées devraient s’embarquer sur le projet plus ambitieux de recadrer la rhétorique de la différence culturelle et de la distance qui imprègne le discours politique, rhétorique que ces musées eux-mêmes ont contribué à créer. 12 Nicholas Thomas (University of Cambridge) The Importance of Being Anachronistic In a major recent review for the Arts Council of England, Baroness Estelle Morris observed that museums “create a sense of place”, and are “rooted in the communities that have shaped them”. This is true in a profound but also paradoxical sense. Most great museums hold collections that do not represent the communities local to them, but that may embrace the cultures of the world, and passages in human history now remote from day-to-day experience. These institutions were shaped, moreover, not by ‘communities’ in the normal sense (the inhabitants of a town or region), but by elaborate and far-reaching networks. Those networks consisted of those citizens, professionals, enthusiasts, travellers, and colonists who worked to build museums and their collections, and - indirectly but equally importantly - the non-European people who gave, bartered, sold, or suffered the theft of the specimens and antiquities that in due course found their way to the various European institutions. What ‘sense of place’, exactly, does a set of artefacts, relics, or natural specimens, brought from a plethora of remote communities to a provincial or metropolitan museum foster? What understandings of community and history do such collections and institutions now express and enable? L’importance d’être anachronique Dans une étude récente capitale pour le Conseil des arts de l’Angleterre, la baronne Estelle Morris faisait observer que les musées “créent un sentiment d’appartenance à un lieu», et sont «enracinés dans les communautés qui les ont ont formés “. Cela est vrai dans un sens profond, mais aussi paradoxal. La plupart des grands musées possèdent des collections qui ne représentent pas leurs communautés indigènes, mais qui embrassent les cultures du monde et des passages de l’histoire humaine désormais loin du quotidien. Ces institutions ont été façonnées, qui plus est, non pas par des «communautés» au sens normal du terme (les habitants d’une ville ou d’une région), mais par des réseaux complexes et d’une portée considérable. Ces réseaux étaient composés de ces citoyens, professionnels, passionnés, voyageurs et colons qui ont œuvré à construire des musées et leurs collections, et - indirectement mais de façon tout aussi importante - les personnes d’origine non-européenne qui ont donné, troqué, vendu, ou ont subi le vol de spécimens et d’antiquités qui ont finalement trouvé leur place dans diverses institutions européennes. Quel «sentiment d’appartenance à un lieu», exactement, un ensemble d’objets, de reliques, ou de spécimens naturels, 13 Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico‘Luigi Pigorini’ transportés d’une multitude de communautés lointaines à musée provincial ou métropolitain encouragent-ils? Quelle compréhension de la communauté et de l’histoire de telles collections et institutions expriment-elles et permettent-elles aujourd’hui? Ruth. B. Phillips (Carleton University) Push Back: Decolonizing Ethnography Museums and the 21st Century Matrix of Politics, Money and Technology Depending on your vantage point, the prospects for continuing the process of decolonization in ethnography museums can look either bright or grim. If you are standing on the Mall in Washington DC, contemplating the preparation of new long-term exhibits at the National Museum of the American Indian, you might take heart from that institution’s willingness to scrap the expensive and elaborate installations it created for its opening less than a decade ago in order to reinvent itself in light of visitor and critical response. If you are standing on the shores of the Ottawa River looking at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Library and Archives Canada, and other national repositories of Aboriginal heritage, you might well feel despair at the massive losses of curatorial expertise, research programs, and capacity for collaborative practices that have befallen these institutions during the past two years. In contemplating contemporary ethnographic museums at the beginning of the 21st century we are presented both with exhibitions and research projects that work to restore authority and voice to Indigenous peoples, and with others that seem to be moving backwards toward modernist paradigms we thought were in the past. The notion of ‘push back’ is thus double edged, invoking dynamics both of decolonization and recolonization. Looking only at national museums is, furthermore, misleading. Both in Europe and North America, a confusing mixture of reactionary ideologies, financial constraints and new technologies has been transforming ethnographic museums not only at the national level, but also at the level of smaller regional and university museums. Digital technologies are particularly powerful within this matrix, cross-cutting politics, ideologies, and budget cuts. In the early 21st century new media are being used both by reactionary and progressive museologists to foster their agendas. Social media can be used as a genuinely democratizing force, providing a channel for direct voice and access to ethnographic collections across boundaries of culture and privilege, but they can also be used to provide a smokescreen that gives an appearance of democratic consultation while masking 15 the absence of collaboration and the loss of multivocality. This paper examines the matrix of politics, funding, and technology that is likely to continue to shape museology and decolonization projects for some years to come. The first case study addresses two exhibitions mounted in 2012 to memorialize the War of 1812 by the Canadian War Museum and the Woodlands Cultural Centre Museum (Six Nations of the Grand River.) The second focuses on efforts to provide digital access to historical artifacts of the same period through the GRASAC Knowledge Sharing database being developed by the Great Lakes Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures. Repousser: La décolonisation des musées d’ethnographie et la matrice de politique, d’argent et de technologie du 21ème siècle Selon le point de vue adopté, la perspective de poursuivre le processus de décolonisation dans les musées d’ethnographie peut sembler radieuse ou sombre. Si vous vous trouvez sur le Mall à Washington DC, contemplant la préparation des nouvelles expositions à long terme du Musée national des Indiens d’Amérique, vous pouvez vous sentir encouragé par la volonté qu’a cette institution de se débarrasser des installations coûteuses et complexes qu’elle a créées pour son ouverture il y a moins de dix ans afin de se réinventer face à la réception des visiteur et de la critique. Si vous êtes sur les rives de la rivière des Outaouais regardant le Musée canadien des civilisations, la Bibliothèque et les Archives Canada, et d’autres dépositaires nationaux du patrimoine autochtone, vous pourriez bien vous désespérer des pertes massives de compétences des conservateurs, de programmes de recherche, et de capacité de pratiques de collaboration qui ont frappé ces institutions au cours des deux dernières années. En contemplant les musées ethnographiques contemporains au début du 21ème siècle, nous sommes confrontés à la fois à des expositions et des projets de recherche qui cherchent à restaurer l’autorité et la voix des peuples autochtones, et à d’autres qui semblent reculer vers des paradigmes modernistes que nous pensions être du passé. La notion de «repousser» est donc à double tranchant, invoquant à la fois la dynamique de la décolonisation et de recolonisation. De plus, il est trompeur de considérer seulement les musées nationaux. Tant en Europe qu’en Amérique du Nord, un mélange confus d’idéologies réactionnaires, de contraintes financières et de nouvelles technologies a transformé les musées ethnographiques non seulement au niveau national mais aussi au niveau des plus petits musées régionaux et universitaires. Les technologies numériques sont particulièrement puissantes au sein de cette matrice, court-circuitant la politique, les idéologies et les coupures budgétaires. Au début du 21ème siècle, de nouveaux médias sont utilisés à la fois 16 par les muséologues réactionnaires et progressistes pour promouvoir leurs programmes. Les médias sociaux peuvent être utilisés comme une véritable force de démocratisation, en fournissant un canal d’expression directe et un accès aux collections ethnographiques allant au-delà des limites de la culture et du privilège, mais peuvent également être utilisés comme diversion donnant une apparence de consultation démocratique tout en masquant l’absence de collaboration et la perte de voix plurielles. Cette présentation examine la matrice composée de politique, de financement et de technologie susceptible de continuer à façonner les projets de muséologie et de décolonisation pour les années à venir. La première étude de cas porte sur deux expositions mises en place en 2012 pour commémorer la guerre de 1812 par le Musée canadien de la guerre et le Woodlands Cultural Museum Centre (Réserve des Six Nations). La seconde met l’accent sur les efforts visant à fournir un accès numérique à des objets historiques de la même période grâce à la base de donnée «de partage des connaissances GRASAC » développée par l’Alliance des Grands Lacs pour l’étude des arts et des cultures autochtones. Annie E. Coombes (Birkbeck College, University of London) Making a Difference: Ethnographic Interventions from the Post Colony Much of the debate around both the intractable problem, and conversely the potential contemporary value, of ethnographic museums has focused attention on Europe and North America. I am interested in understanding why it is that an institution which has such a potent colonial legacy still retains credibility in nations which have themselves been subjected to particularly violent ethnographic scrutiny. This paper looks at how local collections of material culture, that in other contexts would be classed as ‘ethnographic’, are being mobilized as part of a country-wide phenomenon in Kenya. It focuses on the contradictory ways in which cultural objects are being revitalised through the community peace museum movement as a means of conflict resolution, in the wake of numerous instances of interethnic violence. Ethnographies are being constituted on the one hand, as a reinvention of local ethnicities and on the other, as part of a shared cross-cultural heritage which might provide the basis for the creation of a new national history in what remains a deeply divided country. Could it be that these community peace museums effectively constitute a local revision that radically transforms the possible roles available for the ethnographic museum today? 17 Faire la différence: Interventions ethnographiques de la post-colonie La plupart des discussions sur le problème insoluble, et inversement sur la valeur potentielle des musées d’ethnographie à l’heure actuelle se sont centrées sur l’Europe et l’Amérique du Nord. Mon intérêt est de à comprendre la raison pour laquelle une institution qui a un héritage colonial si fort garde sa crédibilité dans des nations qui ont elles-mêmes été soumises à un examen ethnographique particulièrement violent. Cet exposé examine la manière dont les collections indigènes de culture matérielle, qui, dans d’autres contextes, seraient considérées comme «ethnographiques», sont mobilisées comme un phénomène à l’échelle nationale au Kenya. Il se concentre sur les manières contradictoires dont des objets culturels sont revitalisés par le mouvement des musées de paix communautaire comme un moyen de résolution de conflits, à la suite de nombreux cas de violence interethnique. Des ethnographies sont créées, d’une part comme réinvention d’ethnicités locales et d’autre part, dans le cadre d’un héritage interculturel partagé qui pourrait fournir une base à la création d’une nouvelle histoire nationale dans ce qui demeure un pays profondément divisé. Se pourrait-il que ces musées de la paix communautaire constituent effectivement une révision indigène qui transforme radicalement les rôles possibles du musée ethnographique aujourd’hui? Corinne A. Kratz (Emory University) What Makes Exhibitions Ethnographic? Exhibition styles and genres are often associated with different subject matters: art exhibits, history exhibits, science exhibits, ethnographic exhibits. Yet while such canonical notions of genre persist, we also know and confidently assert that exhibition genres have blurred. Ethnographic museums today are not the ethnographic museums of a century ago, although they certainly bear the legacies from which they have grown. How do they communicate both their histories and their contemporary orientations to visitors through their exhibitions? What does an ‘ethnographic exhibition’ look like now, when the very categories of ethnography, history, and art exhibits have been blurring for decades? What elements signal the ethnographic in blurred genres, and what values, identities, and differences do they convey through their design and thematic content? 18 Weltmuseum Wien Qu’est-ce qui rend les expositions ethnographiques? Des styles et des types d’exposition sont souvent associés à des thèmes différents: des expositions d’art, des expositions d’histoire, des expositions scientifiques, des expositions ethnographiques. Pourtant, bien que ces notions canoniques de type persistent, nous savons aussi et affirmons avec conviction que les frontières entre types d’expositions sont devenues floues. Les musées ethnographiques d’aujourd’hui ne sont pas les musées ethnographiques d’il y a cent ans, même s’ils conservent assurément les traces de l’héritage à partir duquel ils se sont développés. Comment communiquent-ils aux visiteurs à la fois leurs histoires et leurs orientations contemporaines à travers leurs expositions? À quoi ressemble une «exposition ethnographique » à présent, alors que les catégories mêmes de l’ethnographie, de l’histoire et des expositions d’art se sont estompées pendant des décennies? Quels sont les éléments qui signalent l’ethnographique dans des genres flous et quelles valeurs, identités et différences les expositions véhiculent-elles par leur conception et leur contenu thématique? Kavita Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University) The Future of the Museum is Ethnographic Against the many predictions of the imminent death of the ethnographic museum, this paper will take a contrarian view. Rather than seeing the ethnographic museum as a thing of the past, it will argue that all museums of the future will be ethnographic: that is to say, to a greater or a lesser degree, the ethnographic mode will soon underlie all major museal and exhibitory forms. Drawing on examples from China, South East Asia, South Asia and the Gulf states, this paper will discuss the ways in which museums that are now bourgeoning across the world respond to the pulls and pushes of a global cultural economy and global cultural circulation through processes of description and inscription. At one level, as an ever-growing range of objects circulates in new venues, museums need to deliver greater degrees of contextualization and description for the objects that they exhibit. Objects are often embedded in invisible dioramas: isolated and spot-lit in modernist cases while podcasts and audioguides provide layers of aural interpretation. At another level, the global spread of museums now inscribes the cultural form of the museum upon a new landscape, setting up chains of meaning that derive from the museum’s radical otherness, its unbelonging, in 20 the place in which it finds itself. As we learn to consume an old museum in a new location, I suggest, we learn to savour not just the museum’s contents, but the museum itself as artefact. Through this manoeuvre, now, finally, Enlightenment Europe begins to appear as an ethnic particular. L’avenir du musée est ethnographique Cette présentation prend le contre-pied des nombreuses prédictions de la mort imminente du musée ethnographique. Plutôt que de voir le musée ethnographique comme chose du passé, je fais valoir que tous les musées de l’avenir seront de nature ethnographique: c’est-à-dire que, dans une mesure plus ou moins grande, le mode ethnographique sous-tendra bientôt toutes les grandes formes muséographiques et d’exposition. S’appuyant sur des exemples tirés de la Chine, de l’Asie du Sud-Est, l’Asie du Sud et des pays du Golfe, ce document examine la manière dont les musées qui sont aujourd’hui florissants partout dans le monde répondent aux aléas d’une économie culturelle mondiale et d’une circulation culturelle mondiale à travers des processus de description et d’inscription. À un certain niveau, tandis qu’une gamme sans cesse croissante d’objets circule dans de nouveaux lieux, les musées doivent offrir un plus grand degré de contextualisation et de description des objets qu’ils présentent. Les objets sont souvent intégrés dans des dioramas invisibles: isolés et éclairés au spot dans des vitrines modernistes pendant que des podcasts et audioguides fournissent des couches d’interprétation sonore. À un autre niveau, la diffusion mondiale des musées inscrit maintenant la forme culturelle du musée dans un nouveau paysage, créant une chaînes de signifiés qui découlent de l’altérité radicale du musée, sa non-appartenance au lieu dans lequel il se trouve. Comme nous apprenons à consommer un vieux musée dans un nouveau lieu, ce qui est ma proposition, on apprend à savourer non seulement le contenu du musée, mais le musée lui-même comme artefact. Grâce à cette manœuvre, maintenant, enfin, l’Europe des Lumières commence à apparaître comme un particulier ethnique. 21 Clare Harris (University of Oxford) The Digitally Distributed Museum and its Discontents The proliferation of experiments with new technology that have been attempted in the last decade or so, suggests that one future for the ethnographic museum might well be digital. Whether in the form of databases, websites, online exhibitions or the use of social media, digital technology has been embraced to varying degrees by many ethnographic museums. The motivations behind such initiatives include improving access to museum collections, enhancing the profile of individual institutions beyond their physical parameters, sharing the knowledge contained within them as far afield as possible and fostering collaboration with specific audiences. For some, the capacity to replicate actual objects digitally has extended as far as forays into ‘visual’ or ‘virtual’ repatriation. Underpinning these efforts is the hope is that by distributing their contents globally on the Internet, museums may forge new relationships through the agency of digital objects. But who precisely is being addressed by these projects and how are they received? What happens when museum objects are extracted from their archival contexts to circulate freely on the Internet and are consumed by Netizens or state actors who are not their intended recipients? This paper will explore these issues using The Tibet Album website as a case study and incorporating the results of research conducted in both actual and virtual Tibetan communities in Asia and the Tibetan diaspora. It examines whether the digitally distributed museum will always meet with the desired response from its users and investigates the ramifications of releasing objects into the virtual domain. It also asks: to what extent do digital technologies enable a re-thinking of the foundational principles and organisational practices of ethnographic museums and their colonial past? The Tibet Album website: http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk Le musée réparti numériquement et ses malaises La prolifération d’expériences avec de nouvelles technologies dans la dernière décennie suggère que l’avenir du musée ethnographique pourrait bien être numérique. Que ce soit sous la forme de bases de données, de sites web, d’expositions en ligne ou de l’utilisation des médias sociaux, la technologie numérique a été adoptée à des degrés divers par de nombreux musées ethnographiques. Les motivations de ces initiatives comprennent l’amélioration de l’accès aux collections du musée, la mise en valeur du profil de chaque établissement au-delà de leurs limites physiques, le partage du savoir contenu en leur sein aussi loin que possible et l’encouragement à la 22 collaboration avec des publics spécifiques. Pour certains, la capacité de reproduire numériquement des objets réels a fait l’objet de tentatives de rapatriement «visuel» ou «virtuel». À la base de ces efforts se trouve l’espoir que, par la distribution sur le Web de leur contenu à travers le monde, les musées peuvent nouer de nouvelles relations par l’intermédiaire d’objets numériques. Mais qui exactement est visé par ces projets et comment sont-ils reçus? Qu’advient-il lorsque des objets de musée sont extraits de leur contexte d’archives pour circuler librement sur Internet et sont consommés par des internautes ou des acteurs étatiques qui ne sont pas leurs destinataires? Cet exposé explore ces questions en prenant comme étude de cas le site Web The Tibet Album et en intégrant les résultats de recherches menées dans les communautés tibétaines réelles et virtuelles tant en Asie que dans la diaspora tibétaine. Il évaluera si le musée répandu numériquement sera toujours à même de répondre aux attentes de ses utilisateurs et examine les implications qu’il y a à placer des objets dans le domaine virtuel. Il pose également la question suivante: dans quelle mesure les technologies numériques permettent-elles de repenser les principes fondamentaux et les pratiques organisationnelles des musées ethnographiques et leur passé colonial? Le site Web The Tibet Album: http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk Weltmuseum Wien 23 Speaker Bibliographies James Clifford taught in UCSC’s History of Consciousness Department for 33 years and was founding director of the Center for Cultural Studies. He is best known for his historical and literary critiques of anthropological representation, travel writing, and museum practices. Clifford co-edited (with George Marcus) the controversial intervention, Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (1986). Clifford is currently completing Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the 21st Century, a book about homecomings and contemporary Native cultural politics that will be the third in a trilogy. The widely influential first volume, The Predicament of Culture (1988) juxtaposed essays on 20th-century ethnography, literature, and art. The second, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century (1997) explored the dialectics of dwelling and traveling in postmodernity. The three books are inventive combinations of analytic scholarship, meditative essays, and poetic experimentation. the wake of apartheid, (including strategies by contemporary artists) and in Kenya in the wake of a renewed interest in constructing a national history which might reconcile both Mau Mau and Home Guard despite their antagonistic roles in the struggle for independence. She is the author of prize-winning books including Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (1994) and History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (2003). Managing Heritage, Making Peace: History, Memory, Identity in Contemporary Kenya (with Lotte Hughes and Karega Munene) is forthcoming this year. She is currently a participant in the African Union project for a Human Rights memorial for Africa. Clare Harris is Reader in Visual Anthropology and Curator for Asian Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford. Her research and writing focuses on contemporary art, photography in colonial and post-colonial contexts, monuments and memory construction, histories of museums and collecting, and the politics of representation with particular reference to Tibet, the Himalayas and the Tibetan diaspora. In addition to numerous articles, she has produced several books including the Annie E. Coombes is Professor of Material and Visual Culture in the Department of Art History and Screen Media, Birkbeck College, University of London. Much of Coombes’ research deals with issues of how difficult and traumatic histories can be effectively represented in the public domain. Recent books focus on museums and monuments in South Africa in 24 Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, and the Wenner Gren Foundation, among others. She lives in Santa Fe and is a research associate of the Museum of International Folk Art. award- winning study of modern Tibetan art In the Image of Tibet: Tibetan Painting after 1959 (1999). Harris has curated exhibitions in Britain and Hong Kong and was instrumental in the creating The Tibet Album website. In 2006 she was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship. Her latest book, The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics and the Representation of Tibet, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2012. Sharon Macdonald is Anniversary Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of York, UK. Trained as an anthropologist in Oxford, she has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the Scottish Hebrides, the Science Museum, London and Nuremberg and Berlin, Germany. Recently, she began a Leverhulme funded study of the display of ethnic minority heritage in museums in China and an AHRCfunded project on museum shopping with the British Museum. Her books include Theorizing Museums (co-ed. 1996), Reimagining Culture: Histories, Identities and the Gaelic Renaissance (1997), The Politics of Display (ed., 1998), Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum (2002), A Companion to Museum Studies (ed. 2006), Exhibition Experiments (co-ed. 2007), Difficult Heritage: negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (2009) and Memorylands. Heritage and Identity in Europe Today (2013). Corinne Kratz is Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Emory University, where she co-directed the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship for a decade. Her writing focuses on culture and communication; performance and ritual; museums, exhibitions, photography, and representation. Kratz began doing research in Kenya in 1974 and has collaborated with colleagues in South Africa since 2000. She is author of the award-winning book The Ones That Are Wanted: Communication and the Politics of Representation in a Photographic Exhibition (2002), Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement and Experience in Okiek Women’s Initiation (2010), and co-edited Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (2006). Kratz has published numerous articles, curated museum exhibitions, and received grants and fellowships from the John Simon Wayne Modest is currently head of the Curatorial Department of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. He previously held positions 25 Kavita Singh is Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she teaches and does research on the history of Indian painting and the history and politics of museums. Her writings have been published in Artibus Asiae, the Journal of Material Culture, Marg, The Art Newspaper, Art India and as chapters in several books. She has received grants and fellowships from the Getty Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Clark Art Institute, the Asia Society, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India. as Keeper of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum in London and Director of the Museums of History and Ethnography at the Institute of Jamaica. He also held visiting research affiliations at the Yale Centre for British Art and New York University’s programme in Museum Studies. His publications include articles such as Slavery and the Symbolic Politics of Memory in Jamaica: Rethinking the Bicentenary and We’ve Always Been Modern: Museums, Collections and Modernity in the Caribbean. He most recently co-edited the volume Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections, Collaboration (Bloomsbury, with Viv Golding) and is currently working on Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, with Tim Barringer). Nicholas Thomas is author of Entangled Objects (1991), Oceanic Art (1995) and many other books on material culture, cross-cultural histories, and contemporary art in the Pacific. His collaborations with Pacific artists include Hiapo: Past and Present in Niuean Barkcloth (with John Pule, 2005), and Rauru: Tene Waitere, Maori Carving, Colonial History (with Mark Adams, Lyonel Grant and James Schuster, 2009). His recent essays include ‘The Museum as Method’ (Museum Anthropology, 2010). Since 2006 he has been Director of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He has curated Skin Deep: a History of Tattooing for the National Maritime Museum, London, and Cook’s Sites for the Museum of Sydney, as well as Kauage: Artist of Papua New Guinea and several other shows in Cambridge. Ruth B. Phillips holds a Canada Research Chair and is Professor of Art History at Carleton University, Ottawa. Her research focuses on the indigenous arts of North American and critical museology. Her books include Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums (2011); Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast (1998); and Representing Woman: Sande Masquerades of the Mende of Sierra Leone (1995). She has served as director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology and president of the International Committee on the History of Art. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 26 Chairs and Panellists Prof. Marcus Banks, Professor of Visual Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK Dr. Michael Barrett, Curator (Africa), The Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, part of the National Museums of World Culture, Sweden Dr. Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, Chief Curator, Ethnography Division, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium Dr. Laura Van Broekhoven, Chief Curator, National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, The Netherlands Prof. Chris Gosden, Chair of European Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK Dr. Dan Hicks, Lecturer and Curator (Archaeology), Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, UK Dr. Christopher Morton, Lecturer and Curator (Photograph and Manuscript Collections), Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, UK Dr. Laura Peers, Reader in Material Anthropology and Curator (Americas Collections), Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, UK Dr. Barbara Plankensteiner, Deputy Director/Chief Curator, Weltmuseum Wien, Austria Prof. Lotten Gustafsson Reinius, Curator, The Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, part of the National Museums of World Culture, Sweden Performers Sound & Light at the Pitt Rivers Museum: Dr. Noel Lobley (Ethnomusicologist), Rupert Gill (DJ) and Jon Eccles (Museum Technician & Visual Artist). Live performance by Nathaniel Robin Mann, Sound and Music Embedded Composer in Residence at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford Contemporary Music (OCM). For further information about performers see separate sheet. 27 Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde International Network of Ethnography Museums & World Cultures Lead Museum Museo de América Avda. Reyes Católicos, 6 28040 Madrid / Spain www.museodeamerica.mcu.es Royal Museum for Central Africa Leuvensesteenweg 13 3080 Tervuren / Belgium www.africamuseum.be Naprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures Betlémské náměsti 1 110 00 Prague 1 / Czech Republic www.nm.cz Partner Museums Musée du Quai Branly 222, Rue de l’Université 75007 Paris / France www.quaibranly.fr Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’ Piazza Guglielmo Marconi, 14 00144 Rome / Italy www.pigorini.beniculturali.it Pitt Rivers Museum South Parks Road Oxford OX1 3PP / UK www.prm.ox.ac.uk Linden-Museum Stuttgart Hegelplatz 1 70174 Stuttgart / Germany www.lindenmuseum.de Weltmuseum Wien Neue Burg, Heldenplatz 1010 Vienna / Austria www.weltmuseumwien.at Associate Partners National Museums of World Culture PO BOX 5306 40227 Gothenburg / Sweden www.smvk.se Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève Bd. Carl-Vogt 65, Case postale 191 1211 Geneva 8 / Switzerland www.ville-ge.ch/meg Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde Steenstraat 1, Postbus 212 2300 AE Leiden / Netherlands www.volkenkunde.nl The Minneapolis Institute of Arts 2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis Minnesota 55404 / USA www.artsmia.org 29 Diaspora Association Plus au Sud 141, Rue du Trône 1050 Brussels / Belgium www.horlogedusud.be La Cambre - ISACF Place Eugène Flagey 19 1050 Brussels / Belgium www.lacambre.be Ethnography Museums & World Cultures project contacts Anne-Marie Bouttiaux (Project Manager) [email protected] Anna Seiderer (Research Assistant) Tel: +32 (0)2 769 56 77 Fax: +32 (0)2 769 56 42 [email protected] Guns Lieve (Secretary) Tel: +32 (0)2 769 57 83 [email protected] Culture Lab – International Cultural Expertise Alexis Castro & Gian Giuseppe Simeone Elisabethlaan, 4 3080 Tervuren / Belgium Tel / Fax: + 32 2 7671022 tel: + 32 2 7677427 mobile: + 32 476 942 800 [email protected] www.culturelab.be 30 31 Credits The conference has been funded with the generous support of: The European Commission, The Wenner Gren Foundation, The School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography (University of Oxford), The Astor Fund, Oxford ASPIRE, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum and Magdalen College. Conference committee: Clare Harris, Michael O’Hanlon, Cathy Wright, Nicky Temple, Antigone Thompson, Haas Ezzet, Christopher Morton and Kate Webber. Photographs: Illustrations in this booklet are from a selection of the EMWC project partner museums. Inside cover: Interior view of the Pitt River Museum (looking east), 2013. Photo Malcolm Osman © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Inside back cover: View of the Pacific collections at Musée du quai Branly. Photo Nicolas Borel © Musée du Quai Branly. 2 4 (l – r) 5 7 8 14 19 23 28 View of Oxford from South Parks (detail) © Greg Smolonski. Portrait of Nathaniel Robin Mann © Nathaniel Robin Mann; Blackfoot shirt with painted war honours; 1893.67.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford; Keble College Hall © Keble College, University of Oxford. Pitt Rivers by torchlight. Photo Rob Judges © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Carvers creating a copy of the chief G´psgolox´ totem pole as a gift to the museum, after the original was repatriated to the Haisla First Nation of Canada in 2006 © National Museums of World Culture, Stockholm. View of the exhibition Fetish Modernity curated by the Ethnography Museums and World Cultures Project. Photo Jo Van de Vyver © RMCA Tervuren. Sopakarina, a Kula canoe from the Trobriand Islands © Soprintenza al Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini”. Display of penacho, a Mexican feather headdress © Weltmuseum Wien. View of the Asia galleries at the Weltmuseum Wien (detail) © Weltmuseum Wien. Children receiving a temporary moko from a Māori artist © Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden. Published by Pitt Rivers Museum to accompany ‘The Future of Ethnographic Museums’ conference, 19-21 July 2013. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Printed by Oxuniprint Ltd. 32 Musée du Quai Branly www.prm.ox.ac.uk /pittriversmuseum @Pitt_Rivers # PRM2013