Documenting SWICH

Publications

As a result of the SWICH project, several publications were produced: a Coffee Table Book, a book documenting the SWICH residencies, an academic publication and a series of booklets documenting the SWICH exhibitions.


The Art of Being a World Culture Museum

Futures and Lifeways of Ethnographic Museums in Contemporary Europe

Edited by Barbara Plankensteiner
Photography by Wolfgang Thaler

Publisher: Kerber Verlag

World Cultures and Ethnographic Museums are the museums of our time in Europe. They are in the spotlight in a changing society, confronted with public discourse about the legacies of colonialism and the challenges to live together in a society shaped by migration and globalization. The Art of Being a World Culture Museum sketches the variety and practices of these museums by giving a lively insight into the exhibition ambiances, working conditions and practices, the collections and the museum architecture. The book contains excerpts of interviews with museum directors and photographs capturing the sites, displays, work environments and dynamics of ten ethnography museums.

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Co-Creation Labs

Illuminating Guests, Artists and New Voices in European Museums of World Culture

Edited by: Georg Noack; Inés de Castro; Linden-Museum Stuttgart

Publisher: Sandstein Verlag

Eight European museums and their guests—artists, scholars and members of heritage communities—embarked on a series of experiments in search of new voices for ethnographic collections, new forms of presentation and new perspectives on the role of museums of world culture in the diverse societies of contemporary Europe and beyond. This book illustrates processes, experiences and results of these experiments.

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Matters of Belonging

Ethnographic Museums in a Changing Europe

Edited by Wayne Modest, Nicholas Thomas, Doris Prlić & Claudia Augustat
Publisher: Sidestone

Matters of Belonging foregrounds critical practices within ethnographic museums in relation to their diverse stakeholders, with a special focus on collaboration with artists and differently constituted, self-identified communities. The book emerges from the EU-funded project SWICH (Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage) that places ethnographic museums at the centre of ongoing debates about Europe’s shifting polity and questions around heritage, citizenship and belonging. Addressing diverse political climates and citizenship regimes, legal frameworks and colonial/migratory histories, the articles seek to question the role of ethnographic and world cultures museums within contemporary negotiations of how to define Europe, Europeans, and European heritage, especially mindful of the region’s colonial and migratory pasts.

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Several partner museums produced booklets documenting their SWICH exhibitions. You can find more information on this in the section documenting the exhibitions on this website:
Documenation of SWICH exhibitions

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Image below: Cover image The Art of Being a World Culture Museum, photo by Wolfgang Thaler.