Paper short abstract:

Offering a perspective on current curatorial practice, the concept of 'occupation' (career, presence, engagement) also alludes to possible responses to forthcoming disruption of life as normal. Can this idea help museums negotiate uncertain times ahead?

Paper long abstract:

Most influential interpretations of museums and galleries, whether as instruments of authority or as spaces for critical discussion, were framed in times of economic growth and political optimism. Those whose insights they help popularise might consider whether museums' public-facing practices need revising if they are to serve as effectively in an uncertain future as they have done in the past. Can existing interest in, or affection for, museums be expanded into fully-engaged participation and an active sense of ownership? Standard curatorship, in which a collection or object-brokered theme is researched for the visitor's gaze, accommodates many variations from audio-guides to hands-on experience, yet public engagement is rarely sought or expected in the research phase. The visitor may say 'that's interesting' but rarely 'I helped with that'. The occupation of curator, and the occupation, interest or expertise of the visitor (or member of the public), are not only largely different but wholly separate. It would be no threat to curatorial independence - and may reinvigorate its prospects - if such occupations could occupy the same museum (and extra-museum) space and collaborate on a 'three-dimensional Wikipedia'. There are some partial precedents, but the main prompt for a distinctively new kind of curatorial practice, both to safeguard museums and more widely to inspire the tackling of social problems by imaginative collaboration, may be the sense of a world slipping out of control but not yet irretrievable.

Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the re-presentation of a historic University museum, focusing on the creation of a new introductory exhibit. It explores the processes through which the display has been developed, and the kinds of narratives and opportunities for participation that it presents to the visiting public.

Paper long abstract:

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) at the University of Cambridge reopens in 2012, after extensive renovation of its archaeology displays and reorientation of its public spaces. Central to this project is an effort to reintroduce the Museum, its collections and its ethos to a variety of local and international publics.

This paper reflects on this re-presentation of a historic institution, focusing on the development of and responses to a new introductory display - the first thing visitors see on entering the Museum. Introducing the Museum has involved attention to ways in which galleries and collections are experienced by visitors and to how we, as anthropologists, archaeologists and museum people, communicate our research to our publics.

With the overall goals of widening and enriching access to, and participation in, the work of the Museum, collections research, consultation with stakeholders and interpretative research with visitors have aimed to enhance the kinds of narratives and opportunities for participation that we present to the visiting public. What objects should be selected to best communicate the idea of the Museum and its collections? What do we want to communicate in the first place, given the constraints of the exhibition as a medium? How can we address the expectations of stakeholders within the Museum and beyond? Following exhibition and research projects that have sought to reconceptualise ethnographic exhibitions, the development of the new displays at MAA present a case study of continuing engagements between practice-based knowledge and the limits and potentials of the museum method.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on the National Museum of Ethnology's experience with working with indigenous peoples. It will explore recent collaborations with communities from Oceania, Greenland, and South America, and look into how the results of these experiences can be translated in exhibitions.

Paper long abstract:

The National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, The Netherlands, holds an impressive collection of 240.000 objects and a much larger (audiovisual) archive pertaining to cultures from around the world. Founded 175 years ago within the context of Dutch colonialism, recently the museum has been rethinking its practices of collecting and exhibiting objects. Much like anthropology itself, the very ways of doing research inside the NME have been subject to regular critique and adjustment. Recently, since 2007 the museum has started to reflect on how it might shape different tools, revise and renew research practices, categorization processes and as a result become more inclusive as a museum. The key to such reflections and changes has been the practice of working with stakeholder communities (including diaspora, institutional and indigenous peoples). In the paper we reflect on our experiences with indigenous community curators in particular. While in museums cultural heritage becomes 'museo-facted' and objects at times are taken to represent historical truths, indigenous peoples tend to look upon their heritage from different angles. Drawing on NME's recent experiences with indigenous communities from New Zealand (Maori), Greenland (Inuit), Suriname (Lokono, Kali'na, Wayana, Trio), and Brazil (Makurap, Aruá, Tuparí, Jaboti, Kanoé from the Guaporé and Rio Branco Area), this presentation will discuss working with source communities and the results it can deliver in terms of generating new knowledge about existing collections and building new collections. Additionally, it will look into how the results of these cross-cultural experiences can be translated to the public in the form of exhibitions.

Paper short abstract:

The particular challenges of communicating aspects of the contemporary Middle East to the general public by means of museum exhibitions, educational programmes and publications.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on my experiences as Curator for the Middle East at the Museum of Mankind, and as a consultant for a variety of Middle Eastern museums. It will explore the problems and challenges of communicating aspects of the contemporary Middle East to the general public by means of ethnographic exhibitions, educational programmes and publications.

Paper short abstract:

Given their histories of acquisition and display, the exhibition of Central Nigerian objects not originally made for the art world poses dilemmas that can be ‘explored’ and to which there can be 'response'. Resolution is both inappropriate and unfeasible. Can this anthropological framing itself be exhibited?

Paper long abstract:

Exhibition has become particularly acutely problematic in relation to places (like Africa), subjects (like historic religions) and times (such as the 'pre-colonial') that have been subjected to wideranging critiques of primitivism.

The curators (myself included) committed to staging a recent exhibition of artworks from Central Nigeria (which opened in LA in 2010 and will close in Paris in 2013) needed to seek resolutions to exhibiting such objects that would both inform visitors about works that had been made with regard to conventions probably unfamiliar to them, and simultaneously respond to a variety of likely misconstruals intrinsic to the very project of showing such works in museum spaces. The presentation reflects on the nature of these challenges and the kinds of responses to them essayed.

Paper short abstract:

A new online media format called “interactive documentary” is explored as a potential vehicle for extending anthropology’s reach beyond traditional academic and museum audiences and into online, broadcast, and mobile content distribution opportunities, with examples drawn from the Web and from the author’s own research on mobile phone filmmaking.

Paper long abstract:

The author explores the potential of a new online media format called "interactive documentary" as a vehicle for bringing "anthropology to the world" in an entirely new way by extending its reach beyond academic and traditional museum audiences and into online, broadcast, and mobile content distribution opportunities. Comparisons are made between this emerging media genre and traditional ethnographic film, with a brief review of the benefits and the disadvantages of adapting ethnographic visual material to this new type of media format. This is followed by a discussion of specific scholarly issues related to re-packaging ethnographic content for the interactive documentary genre, including the impact of very small screen and cell phone video capture technology ("pocket shooters") on traditional ethnographic film in general and on the documentary film genre, specifically.

The possible political implications of media products made possible by these low-cost, low-tech devices is discussed, and the ethical considerations of their likely migration to mainstream "docudrama" and "infotainment" commercial media outlets is examined. In addition, the author reports on her own research on the methodological usefulness and the ethical implications of re-purposing the kinds of video-capture technology usually found in social media situations to anthropological purposes, including the use of mobile phone video cameras and "Flip"-style point-and-shoot devices in field situations. Several versions of the "interactive documentary" genre will be discussed and screened, with examples taken directly from the Web.

Paper short abstract:

Cambridge graduate H. D. Skinner oversaw the redisplay of the Otago Museum’s Maori Hall on the basis of his theory of culture areas in New Zealand. In its 1922 Annual Report the Museum - visited in considerable numbers - claimed this new exhibition method would prove a fruitful field of study.

Paper long abstract:

Three years after he was appointed Assistant Curator at the Otago University Museum in New Zealand, Henry Devenish Skinner completely rearranged the artefacts on display in the Museum's Maori Hall.

Skinner had published 'Culture Areas in New Zealand' in the Journal of the Polynesian Society in 1921. The paper had revealed significant regional variation in Maori culture which Skinner felt had a bearing on the question of the settlement of New Zealand, since he believed the different areas reflected the cultures of different ethnic waves. It also formed the basis for the Museum's new-look Maori display.

The 1922 Annual Report claimed: 'practically the whole Maori collection is now arranged on a locality basis, a method never before adopted in New Zealand' and concluded the 'study of these differences in material culture...will prove a fruitful field of study in the future'.

Earlier exhibits had not lacked didactic purpose. In the previous decade there are descriptions of a case of bone implements, labelled and arranged in illustration of the manufacture of fish-hooks, and details of a rock art display believed to illustrate the art of the early inhabitants of the South Island. The institution was even then an important part of Dunedin's social and educational life, the curator commenting 'it is gratifying to find so much interest taken by one's fellow citizens in the Museum'.

Now, the 1922 gallery looks brown-linoleum-and-table-cases old-fashioned. But then it embodied an exciting new concept used to show the Otago public a scientific view of Maori culture.

Paper short abstract:

All too often objects are displayed without much reference to the processes (physical) and the processes (spiritual) being presented as a basis for their creation.

Paper long abstract:

I propose to present a basic plan for the cosmology of the Yoruba speaking people of Nigeria. Without some recognition of this, objects displayed in many museums simply remain chunks of material. There is very little on offer to the general public that explains or introduces the functional and religious basis the items displayed. My presentation is not intended to be a high level academic paper but rather template for consumption by the general viewing public.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the exhibition 'At Home in Japan' held at the Geffrye Museum in London in 2011, this paper explores how deeply embedded cultural stereotypes may be re-evaluated by encouraging active engagement with quotidian spaces, objects and images in the multi-sensory, spatial context of the museum.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on the exhibition 'At Home in Japan - beyond the minimal house' held at the Geffrye Museum in London from March until August 2011, this paper (re)examines the unique possibilities the multi-sensory, spatial context of the museum offers for questioning deeply embedded cultural stereotypes. The exhibition, based on my monograph about contemporary urban Japanese homes (Berg 2010), juxtaposes the stereotype of the Japanese house, that has reached iconic status in its architecture, decoration and style in the West, with the complexities and contradictions of real lives behind closed doors. Inspired by the literature about perception and the senses which argues that vision cannot be disconnected from the haptic experiences of the body in space, 'At Home in Japan' combines the use of photographs and written commentary with objects and sounds to recreate the atmosphere inside an urban 'mainstream' home. Through encouraging active engagement with these quotidian spaces, objects and images, we hope that visitors from various cultural backgrounds relate, through bodily memory, to another culture on an empathetic level instead of gazing at its exotic nature. Finally, we extended this experiment in 'living ethnography' beyond the museum by raffling the majority of the objects, sourced through donations made by participants in my 2003 ethnography and long-term Japanese friends, my personal collection, and purchases made during two shopping trips to Japan, in a free public event. The project, thus, highlights the need to rethink the nature of 'museum objects' and their role in disseminating performative, anthropological knowledge.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how different media furnish ways of expressing different aspects of anthropological research; and how different emphases, e.g. on craft practices, might resonate with audiences’ own experiences. It is based on experience of curating an exhibition based on my doctoral research.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers how different media or disciplines might furnish ways of expressing different aspects of anthropological research; and how different emphases, for instance on craft practices, might be made to resonate with audiences' own experiences. I draw on experience of curating an exhibition on Kazakh craftswomen and their textiles, based on my doctoral research and fieldwork in western Mongolia. Whilst my doctoral thesis inquired into theoretical questions relating to the nature of the processes involved in learning to make such textiles, curating the exhibition provided an opportunity to show another side of the research, displaying its material and technical aspects, as well as the living space which these textiles furnish, that is a yurt. The aim of the exhibition, then, was to introduce, not only the textiles from this region, but the women who make them and the techniques, tools and materials with which they work. The exhibition also provided an opportunity to collaborate with a composer and put on a series of concerts within the exhibition space, which again brought out different aspects of the research. Curating the exhibition and working with different perspectives brought up questions of the scope (and limitations) of ethnographic exhibitions and other disciplines and media. It also brought up questions of what audiences might gain from such exhibitions and events.

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on my recent Brunei Gallery exhibition on Moroccan weavers to discuss the politics of translating ethnographic data and the challenges of conveying the embodied dimension of weaving practice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on my recent Brunei Gallery exhibition that celebrates the skills and creativity of weavers of the Sirwa, a geographically marginal Berber region of southern Morocco, where the production of carpets constitutes a major source of income which complements subsistence agriculture; women producing carpets for the international market and men marketing them. My main aim was to highlight the aesthetic and technical quality of contemporary weaving production in the Sirwa as well as the socio-economic context of production: the ethnography shows that the weavers' hard labour is unrecognized and underpaid at the level of production, whereas it is sold as art to international buyers. One challenge of the exhibition was how to convey the embodied aspects of weaving as a labour-intensive, time-consuming and, at times, painful activity. This paper discusses the politics of translating ethnographic data into an exhibition that will appeal to a wider audience but at the same time that raises issues around labour, fair trade and gender relations in contemporary Morocco.

Paper short abstract:

This conference paper will review the ways that Djenné’s architecture and masons have been exhibited in the past, and it will propose a way forward in effectively communicating the nature of building-craft knowledge to a public audience.

Paper long abstract:

Since Djenné was added to UNESCO's World Heritage list in 1988, this West African town has become the focus of numerous academic studies, travel books, popular magazine and newspaper articles, and museum exhibitions hosted in North America, Europe and Asia. The literature and exhibitions have focussed narrowly (and almost exclusively) on the material form and aesthetics of the town's mud architecture and on related issues of tangible heritage and conservation. By contrast, my own research has endeavoured to bring focus to the much-underrepresented community of resident mud masons who design, build and sustain this living heritage.

In attempt to communicate my findings to a broader audience, I co-produced a documentary film (2007) and curated an exhibition and hosted an accompanying public lecture series on the art of mud building for the Royal Institute of British Architects in London (2010). Presently, I am preparing a new exhibition for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC (2013) that will concentrate on the masons' everyday work, life and problem-solving strategies. A core aim of the forthcoming exhibition is to challenge the still-prevalent archetype of the 'creative genius' working and cogitating in isolation, and to convey the important message that creativity, innovation and problem-solving occur in a complex and interactive field of tools, materials, bodies and social subjects.

This conference paper will review the ways that Djenné's architecture and masons have been exhibited in the past, and it will propose a way forward in effectively communicating the nature of building-craft knowledge to a public audience.