Co-collecting workshop: Monday 19 October & Tuesday 20 October 2015. Research Center for Material Culture, National Museum of Worldcultures, Leiden (NL). This trans-disciplinary workshop explored trajectories towards collaborative practices for collecting and documenting collections within ethnographic museums.
During the workshop experts from across the world explored best practice examples as starting points for developing new theoretical models and practical policy suggestions for how ethnographic and world cultures museums can adopt collaborative models for rethinking collecting and representational practices.
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The founding principles around which many ethnographic museums in Europe have historically operated have been that of collecting, studying and representing those ‘others’ to the West. The last few decades have seen growing and robust (auto)critique of ethnographic museums and collections. This critique has taken different forms and has been generated from different quarters. Firstly, for some within originating communities, critical questions have revolved around issues such as who owns cultural objects; who should collect them; how and under what conditions are they being preserved; and how are they interpreted and represented. Secondly, scholarly critique (including but not restricted to indigenous scholars), has taken up similar concerns, such as ethics of collecting ‘other’ cultures, questioning representational paradigms, as well as critiquing authority, and the inclusion/exclusion of different stakeholder groups from museum practices.
Finally, criticism has also come from different groups within Europe itself, mostly from post colonial, labor migrants and post migrant citizens. They have been critical about what they see as their heritage, is or is not represented in these museums.
This workshop took these critical discussions as starting points to explore possible methodologies for developing new collections, collaboratively with different stakeholder groups. We take collections as sites of relations, as fulcrums around which different communities claim different stakes, sometimes competing, as they negotiate their belonging to different citizenship regimes. With citizenship and belonging as critical lens, the workshop was organized to focus on different national, regional and international factors that impact the ways in which collaboration is defined and practiced. What should be the drivers for collaborative collecting practices, and how do earlier collections and collecting practices impact on how we collect for the future?
What should ethnography museums collect today and in the future?
Joe Horse Capture, Associate Curator, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Sean Mallon, Senior Curator Pacific Cultures, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington
Maureen Matthews, Curator of Ethnology, The Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg
Denis Chevallier, Scientific Co-Director, MuCEM, Marseille, Danielle Kuiyten, Freelance Curator and Museologist, Imagine IC, Amsterdam, Helen Mears, Keeper of World Art, Brighton Museum, Brighton, Luit Mols, Curator Middle-East and West and Central Asia, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden, Nicholas Thomas, Director, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, Martin Petersen, Curator, Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen, Claudia Augustat, Curator South America Collection, Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna and Laura Van Broekhoven, Chief Curator, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden, Cunera Buijs, Curator Artic region, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden, Wonu Veys, Curator Oceania, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden
Laura Van Broekhoven, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden (NL), Bettina Zorn, Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna, Bojana Rogelj Skafar and Marko Frelih, Slovene Ethnographic Museum Ljubljana (SI), Denis Chevallier, MuCEM, Marseille (FR), Rosa Anna di Lella, Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico "Luigi Pigorini", Rome (IT), Chris Wingfield, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge (UK), Guido Gryseels, Royal Museum for Central Africa Tervuren (BE), Michel Lee, Varldskulturmuseerna (SE), Georg Noack, Linden-Museum Stuttgart (DE)
Ian Lilley, o Professor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (ATSIS) and Willem Willems Professor of Archaeological Heritage Studies, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, Bart Barendregt, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Director of Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, Wonu Veys, Curator Oceania, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden, Lotten Gustafsson Reinius, Museum Director Etnografiskamuseet, Stockholm and Associate Professor of Ethnology
Lotten Gustafsson Reinius, Sean Mallon, Joe Horse Capture, Leah Enkiwe Abayao, Maureen Matthews, Wayne Modest.
Download pdf with details on programme here
