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Accepted Paper:
Colonial anthropometric photographs. When and how to present these collections?
Damiana Otoiu
(SNSPA, Bucharest)
In April 1996, the South African National Gallery organized an exhibition entitled "Miscast". It had generated a huge controversy regarding the representation of indigenous groups in museums: who has the right to expose anthropometric photographs and why?
Paper long abstract:
In April 1996, the South African National Gallery organized the exhibition entitled "Miscast. Negotiating Khoisan History and Material Culture", designed by artist Pippa Skotnes. By exposing anthropometric photographs, plaster casts and archival documents from several South African and European museums, the curator advanced the idea of museum collections as revealing colonial practices and political uses of anthropology. The exhibition was followed by a series of symposia and public forums (sometimes with up to 700 participants) where members of the communities represented in the exhibition had been invited to discuss various issues.
The exhibition "Miscast" had generated a huge scientific, artistic (and political) controversy on the representation of indigenous groups in museums: who has the right to expose physical anthropology specimens (human remains, anthropometric photographs, plaster casts) and why? How can museum professionals challenge the racial and ethnic labels, taxonomies, and classification systems inherited from colonial museology?
This paper proposal is based on about 17 months of anthropological fieldwork conducted in South Africa since 2014.