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- Convenor:
-
Helmut Groschwitz
(Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities)
- Stream:
- Museums
- Location:
- A124
Short Abstract:
A lot of ethnological museums all over Europa were renamed to "world museums", but still lack European collections. We have to ask: what could be "world culture", how can we represent an entangled history and transculturality and how can we transcend the borders between the collections.
Long Abstract:
The postcolonial approches led the European ethnological museums to a crisis of legitimation and a transformation process, connected with new concepts of exhibitions and new names. Very common are the "world museums" (i.e. Rotterdam, Göteborg, Leiden, Vienna, Basel, Cologne, Frankfurt). Simultaneously they furtheron lack European collections, perpetuating the colonial regimes of the gaze between "We and the Others". There is no way to maintain the distinction between Europe and Non-Europe, as contemporary research stresses on concepts of an entangled history, global art studies and transculturality. Europe can't be thought without Out-of-Europe, also the european view is enrolled within noneuropean artefacts, sometimes by production, always by the mode of collection, exploration and presentation. It's hardly possible to understand artefacts without these entanglements.
The panels wants to collect papers on the possibilities, how to show these transcultural aspects in the museums? How can we re-contextualize and re-interrogate the historical, more or less accidental, non-representative collections? How do we deal with the "implicit" european references? How can we tell the joint narratives within the artefacts and thereby connect european and non-european collections? What may be a "world culture" and how could we represent it within the museum?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Valentina Gamberi (Research Centre for Material Culture)
Paper short abstract:
By analysing ten different museum collections of Indian storytelling scrolls, the paper deconstructs Western conceptualisations of museum as a neat and distinct category. Particularly, Indian scrolls bring on surface the fusion of sacred and profane, which is repressed in Western culture.
Paper long abstract:
Because of the huge impact of local, religious culture on the way of dealing with material objects, Asian religious artefacts continue to highlight 'the animistic belief on the power of images' (Faure, 1998), namely the capacity of fusing together opposed categories, such as sacred and profane, art and not-art. For instance, the Indian concept of darśan explains why contemporary renditions of deities in mass media and folk art are characterised by cultic values.
By analysing ten different museum collections of Indian storytelling scrolls, the Bengali pats and the Rajasthani paṛs, scattered in Europe, UK and USA, the paper aims to deconstruct the same Western concept of museum and to single out its main components. Pats and paṛs cannot be easily grasped by rigid dichotomies such as material and immaterial, ordinary and religious, thus these scrolls sharpen significant hiatuses in museum and material cultural studies, even in the flourishing literature on the dialogue between religious and museum spaces. More clearly, not only do Western collections of Indian storytelling scrolls illustrate the impact of colonial acquisitions on the contemporary encyclopaedic approach to ethnographic material, but scrolls elucidate also the influence of Western aesthetic in representing not-Western artefacts within exhibiting spaces. These museum attitudes reflect a more general humanist paradigm, where (Western) humans would be fundamental means of comparison and judgement of world and phenomena.
Field work data on Western difficulties in coming into terms with challenging artefacts like Indian scrolls suggest possible paths towards more efficacious and not-ethnocentric museum presentations.
Helmut Groschwitz (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities)
Paper short abstract:
In 2019 the Humboldt-Forum will show a new presentation of ethnological and art objects - but will still lack European artifacts. The paper reflects both on the chances to integrate both views, and on experiments to fill this conceptual gap, i.e. the project "EuropaTest" by Humboldt Lab Dahlem.
Paper long abstract:
In 2019 the Humboldt-Forum will show a new presentation of ethnological and art objects - but will still lack European artifacts. The paper reflects both on the chances to integrate both views, and on experiments to fill this conceptual gap, i.e. the project "EuropaTest" by Humboldt Lab Dahlem.