Conserving ethnographic collections: problems of documentation (original) (raw)
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The Place of Indigenous Objects in Museum Conservation
PSSC Social Science Information, 2002
In many communities with continuing traditions of producing things from organic materials, there is a strong tendency to engage in the process of making rather than just the form of the objects themselves. Community members' access to these things privilege them to consider objects as products o f a combination offactors. These arecollective action, social relationships, artistryand materials. It is an attitude that is different [rom the form-oriented creativity of individualized production. Here authorship of the object takes precedence over use or relevance to others. In general, this distinction is often regarded in the academe and urban discourse as indigenous craftsmanship in contrast to Western art making. I intend to resist subscribing to this classification i f only to steer away from conventional binary labels. My concern here is to draw attention to the problem o f conservation practices involving the ethnographic collections in Philippine museums.
Things of the Past ? Museums and Ethnographic Objects
Journal des africanistes, 1999
La plupart des musées ethnographique européens ont été fondés dans un contexte colonial et les modes de collecte des objets étaient liés de près à ce contexte. La situation a fondamentalement changé. Cet article entend montrer que nous sommes mis au défi de trouver un intérêt nouveau à l'étude de la culture matérielle. Le monde moderne, où la distinction entre « nous » et « les autres » est loin de s'abolir, est à même de fournir le contexte de travaux à venir. Les musées ethnographiques ne sont plus seulement des institution du passé (colonial), ils sont aussi des institutions pour les temps futurs.
Ethnographic Museum Collections and Their Use by Anthropologists
Museum Anthropology, vol. 31, no. 1, 1989
Ethnographic collections in-museums have been heralded as the only information remaining about traditional cultures and as our main sources of information about extinct cultures. We cannot utilize these collections as cultural documents, however, without an understanding of how they came to be museum specimens. Museum specimens are assumed to represent "native" lifestyles, but some specimens may be nothing more than a fabrication of the ethnographer, either working alone or with the assistance of native consultants. Museum collections, by necessity, are a sampling of the larger whole that have been selected from the available objects in the field. What we know of native cultures is greatly dependent upon which objects are chosen. A desire to depict a culture in a preconceived manner often influences the anthropologist and/or native consultant on the types of materials selected. Availability of objects for sale (i.e., field collections) influences the choice of items sold to anthropologists by native people as well as the way the anthropologist constructs a cultured-inventory. This paper ẽ xplores various methods used to collect museum specimens.
Museums of natural and cultural history in the 21st century hold responsibilities that are vastly different from those of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the time of many of their inceptions. No longer conceived of as cabinets of curiosities, institutional priorities are in the process of undergoing dramatic changes. This article reviews the history of the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, Alaska, from its development in the early 1920s, describing the changing ways staff have worked with Indigenous individuals and communities. Projects like the Modern Alaska Native Material Culture and the Barter Island Project are highlighted as examples of how artifacts and the people who constructed them are no longer viewed as simply examples of material culture and Native informants but are considered partners in the acquisition, preservation, and perpetuation of traditional and scientific knowledge in Alaska. Résumé : Les musées d'histoire naturelle et culturelle au vingt et unième siècle ont des responsabilités qui diffèrent énormément du temps des musées du dix-neuvième et du début du vingtième siècle, date de fondation de plusieurs d'entre eux. Les musées ne sont plus conçus comme des cabinets de curiosités et les priorités institutionnelles sont dans le processus de subir des changements importants. Cet article passe en revue l'histoire du Musée de l'Université d'Alaska à Fairbanks en Alaska, depuis son développement au début des années 1920, décrivant l'évolution des moeurs du personnel travaillant avec des indi-vidus et des communautés indigènes. Les projets comme le « Modern Alaska Native Material Culture» et le « Barter Island Project » sont mis en évidence comme exemples du fait que des objets façonnés et les gens qui les ont fabriqués ne sont plus vus simplement comme des exemples de culture matérielle et d'informateurs autochtones, mais sont considérés comme
Needs and opportunities for research in ethnographic museums
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie
Much of the current discussion about ethnographic museums revolves around questions of their usefulness for society at large and for anthropology in particular: Are museums necessary? (Washburn 1968) Does anthropology need museums? For the purpose of the present discussion, it will initially be sufficient to assert that they exist. It will be necessary, however, to recognize that they exist as historical artifacts of Western culture, and that their artifactual nature imposes certain limitations upon their possible usefulness. But rather than give up on ethnographic museums because they will not serve certain changing needs of a changing society, I will argue that it might be better to keep them for what they still can offer, educate society to make use of these possibilities, and try to find other means to answer those new questions.
From ethnology to heritage: The role of the museum
Entre Autres/Among Others: Proceedings of SIEF …, 2005
During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, there was a close fit between ethnology as a knowledge formation, collections, and museums, whether museums of natural history, museums of ethnology or Völkerkunde or Volkskunde or les arts et traditions populaires. The museum was the home for these fields, indeed for any field whose research produces and requires collections, including archaeology, biology, and geology, among others. During the twentieth century and especially after World War II, the situation changed, as the knowledge formations, in our case ethnology, moved into the university, leaving their collections behind. Museum became custodians of the collections of outmoded scientific disciplines. In reinventing themselves, museums have become agents of "heritage." My remarks are organized around the following themes:
CHAPTER 9. MATERIAL CULTURE AND MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Practicing Historical Ecology. Methods for the Collection, Analysis, and Integration of Interdisciplinary Historical Data, 2024
As this Chapter’s focus is the relationship between Museum collections and Historical Ecology research, it is best to explain it by focusing on the way museums are organized, what their functions are, and how they can contribute to the Historical Ecology approach. Several examples will accompany our text, from museums from Europe, but mostly from the museums that we, the authors, are, or have been, working for for several years. More detailed examples will present our own activities. These include the activity of the Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and the way it is involved in reintroducing plants in the wild, in the case they have gone extinct, or are on the verge of doing so. Also interdisciplinary research concerning traditional ecological knowledge and how it was presented to the public by means of exhibitions at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant (NMRP), in Bucharest Romania. Finally, we present the way a transdisciplinary museum, such as the Lake Vänern Museum of Natural and Cultural Heritage in Sweden works together with local schools to educate the next generation in sustainable development. This is done by introducing the pupils to the rural way of life before electricity and fossil fuels, and the varied landscape with its biodiversity, and how rituals and customs research conducted in traditional communities can help understand the past and the present human-nature relationship.
The Future of Ethnological Museums
In his contribution entitled "Die Zukunft der ethnographischen Museen" (the future of eth-nographic museums) to the festschrift for Adolf Bastian of 1896, Franz Heger, director of the Anthropological-Ethnographic Department of the Imperial Museum of Natural History in Vienna, attempted to predict the future of ethnographic museums, which in his view would tend to become more general museums of cultural history. Whereas some of his observations and conclusions are still valid today, Heger was unable to foresee certain developments both in the field of anthropology and in the demands placed upon museum by society. His successor, today director of an ethnological museum that in the meantime has become part of a museum corporation under the domain of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History), finds himself – more than a century after Franz Heger – faced with the need of accommodating public expectations toward the services of an institution of the cultural service i...