Establishment of the Ethnographic museum of Istria in the context of postwar politics and museum practices (original) (raw)
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The ethnographic museology in Serbia today is under intense criticism from the expert public. Numerous objections addressed to it are related to all fields of activity, from the problems and artifacts treated to the very concepts of the exhibitions. Facing criticism and in an effort to respond to the challenges of modernity, museum professionals are directed to overcome the discontinuity of ethnology/anthropology in the museums within their core science and to keep monitoring the global museum practice. While the academic ethnology/ anthropology has long since expanded its traditional frame of research from the rural areas and the past to the urban areas and the present, ethnology/ anthropology in the museums has just begun to move its focus of interest on topics related to the contemporary society and culture.
A museum object, sacred, yet fragile – a lesson of the Croatian museum transition
Traditionally, museums have often been considered the temples of culture, places where objects and collections stored are of great importance for a particular community, society or people and even the whole of humanity. Museum institutions have been trying to distance themselves from this image for decades, moving the focus from the objects to the visitors. This transformation occurred as the awareness of the social role of museums began to change, by which museums are no longer the absolute authority and their task not merely that of the “divine” study of museum “dogmas”, but rather they acquire a participatory role, making each individual a creator of meaning and values. This transition is perceived as a positive step in the development of museological thought and activity, but one that is also often criticized because it puts the position of museums and their experts and scientists in particular fields in a precarious position. Should museums allow their authority, considered to be based on scientific principles, to be questioned by visitors, that is, laypeople? In that regard, the position of museums can be viewed through the prism of the church and its respective position in society.
Museum and Community. The Early Period of the Museum History in Miskolc, 1899-1914.
"...how badly we need the so much desired Palace of Culture" Collectors, Founders, Museums in Eastern Europe in the 19th-20th Century. Ed. by KULCSÁR, Valéra. Jósa András Museum, Nyíregyháza, Hungary (2020) 9-14., 2020
Today’s relevant museum paradigm focuses on the communities. The current issue is participation: how can the institutions involve the local communities in their museum activities? The participatory attitude appears in the 19th century, at the very beginning of the modern museum’s idea. The foundation of museums, their first acquisitions, their first exhibitions were dominated by the local communities, the citizen’s participation and a high degree of voluntary actions. The town of Miskolc (North-East Hungary, 60.000 inhabitants around 1900) is a typical of the community-led local museum development. The very first artefacts, artworks and antiquities were collected by the Borsod County Archive from 1833. In the second half of the 19th century the Protestant Grammar School also started a study-collection for its educational purposes, covering the fields of history, archaeology and nature history. Based on these collections, the foundation of a city museum was initiated by a local civil group, the Borsod-Miskolcz Association for Public Culture in the 1890’s. They founded a Museum Committee of 15 voluntary members in 1899, and acquired three rooms for museum purposes in the former building of the Protestant Grammar School. As a result of the enthusiasm of the Miskolc citizens, in 1901 the Borsod-Miskolcz Museum owned more than 5000 objects, offered by both private collectors and individuals. The museum had very few professionals at the beginning, like József Buday as an expert of nature history, or Kálmán Kóris as the first ethnographer of Miskolc. Until the First World War the museum was run by volunteers. They opened for the public only for a few hours per week, mostly Sundays, even though the museum was very popular among the locals, it had 6-7000 visitor per year in its first period. Later on, the role of the community was a determinant factor in the museum’s life until the socialization of the collections in the 1950’s. The very first period of the museum history can be a relevant pattern for today’s participatory tendencies.
Museums "at the heart of community": local museums in the post-socialist period in Slovenia
Etnografica Revista Do Centro Em Rede De Investigacao Em Antropologia, 2007
The author tries to define the changing role of local or community museums in the last few decades, when the crisis of museum institutions became a fact and when museum institutions were very often labeled as "fossilised", "ossified" and conservative institutions, and that are now facing the ongoing fast social changes. He points out that Slovenian museums, in the last decade of socialist and post-socalist rule, have also gone through the same development. The first "incentives" for making necessary changes in museums and for using different methods and approaches came after 1980, mostly in local and regional museums, and most of the new approaches and efforts for transformation came from ethnologists. Finally, he describes his personal museum experience in three museum projects from 1993, 2000 and 2006 where he tries to "humanize" museum objects and solve some problems concerning "museum crisis".
(Re)Shaping History in Bosnian and Herzegovinian Museums
The current article explores how political changes in the past 130 years have shaped and reshaped three major museums in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The overall aim is to describe structural processes of national museum building in BiH and the ways the museological representation of history is connected to state and nation making and to political transitions and crises. The analysed museums are the National Museum of BiH, the History Museum of BiH, and the Museum of the Republic of Srpska. The source material analysed consists of the directories and the titles of exhibitions; secondary material, which describes previous exhibitions; and virtual museum tours.The article illustrates that during the Austrian- Hungarian Empire, which established the National Museum in 1888, the museum played an important part in the representation of Bosnian identity (bosnjastvo). After World War II, in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, all three analysed museums were summoned to interpret the past in accordance with the guidelines of the communist regime. Since the 1990s, a highly ethnicized process of identity building and of the musealization of heritage, and history permeates all three museums analysed here. When it comes to the central exhibition-themes following the 1990s war, one could conclude that whereas the National Museum and the History Museum highlight the recent creation of an independent BiH and ostracize BIH-Serbs, the Museum of the Republic of Srpska asserts the ostensible distinctiveness of the Republic of Srpska and excludes the narratives about BiH as a unified and independent nation- state. If an agreement about the future of BiH and its history is to be reached, a step towards multivocal historical narratives has to be made from both sides.
Discuss Ing Her Itag e a ND Museums: Cross Ing Paths of FR a Nce a ND Serb I a
2017
After the fall of Communist regimes in Europe an important part of the monumental propaganda remained as a haunting memory of the past. Just like after every revolution, one of the first impulses was to take down the statues or to de-sanctify them by painting them over with graffiti. This impulse was sooner or later stifled, depending on the country, and in most cases this was achieved by removing the monuments from the public space and relocating them to what is commonly defined as "sculptural graveyards". Temporary solution or permanent open-air museums, this is one of the new phenomena in museum practices in Central and Eastern Europe from the last couple of decades. In this paper we examine the practice, but also the linguistic code behind it. The idea of a graveyard, burying, is opposite to that of heritage and preservation of memory. Thus the inauguration of sculptural parks-museums could be part of what James Young defined as an attempt to forget. By examining the differences those open-air museums represent in their museum practices, the question of memories of the recent past and the conflicts arising from them, as well as the intent behind the common use of the term "graveyard", our INA BELCHE VA /103 "SCULPTURAL GRAVEYARDS": PARK-MUSEUMS OF SOCIALIST MONUMENTS AS A SEARCH FOR CONSENSUS "When men die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art. This botanic of death is what we call culture." Les Statues meurent aussi, 1953 1
Qualestoria, 2024
Looking at three museums: in Zagreb – Croatian History Museum –, and in Belgrade – Historical Museum of Serbia and Museum of Yugoslavia –, we analyze institutional narrative shifts during the dissolution of the country and the Yugoslav wars, and since 2010 till today. Using critical discourse analysis, embedded in memory studies, we analyze museums’ websites, and catalogues, complemented with ethnographic visits. While in the socialist Yugoslavia national historical museums had limited impact, during the 1990s they became actors of conflict narratives in the war-affected States, focusing on exhibitions reinforcing ethno-nationalist discourses, preserving the same narrative to the present. On the contrary, the Museum of Yugoslavia serves as an example of ambivalent politics towards socialist heritage, placing itself as a paradoxical hegemonic countermemory actor.