Awkward Archives. Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum, 2022
This book offers a modular, teachable curriculum about awkward archives. It works with archives t... more This book offers a modular, teachable curriculum about awkward archives. It works with archives that cause disquieting frictions and sit uncomfortably in the contemporary world; whose archivists let their unease with them become a productive, troubling heuristic. Every module departs from a conversation, followed by working material, visual constellations, and methodological exercises about modalities of anthropological fieldwork.
Featured archives: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SAVVY Contemporary’s Colonial Neighbours Archive, the Hahne-Niehoff Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the database of German colonial punitive expeditions, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Naomi Wilzig Art Collection of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Das resonante Museum. Berliner Gespräche über mentale Gesundheit, 2023
Die Grundlage für dieses Buch ist das Gespräch über mentale Gesundheit. Die Gespräche sind eine M... more Die Grundlage für dieses Buch ist das Gespräch über mentale Gesundheit. Die Gespräche sind eine Momentaufnahme aus den Jahren 2021 und 2022 in Berlin. Personen aus Wissenschaft, Kultur, Politik und aktivistischen Kontexten äußern sich und zeigen auf: Wenn über mentale Gesundheit gesprochen wird, wird über Gesellschaft gesprochen.
Diese Gespräche entstanden im Rahmen einer Kooperation zwischen dem Gropius Bau und Mindscapes, dem internationalen Kulturprogramm zum Thema mentale Gesundheit von Wellcome. Einleitende Texte diskutieren Öffnungsprozesse im Museum, und stellen die Frage, wie Museen zu gesellschaftswirksamen Orten werden können.
The Resonant Museum. Berlin Conversations on Mental Health, 2023
The starting point for this book is the conversation on mental health. The conversations capture ... more The starting point for this book is the conversation on mental health. The conversations capture a specific set of circumstances in Berlin from the years 2021 and 2022. Interlocutors from the fields of science, culture and politics and activist contexts reflect on and articulate their experiences. They render one thing evident: speaking about mental health means also speaking about society.
These conversations emerged from a cooperation between the Gropius Bau and Mindscapes, Wellcome's international cultural programme on mental health. Introductory texts discuss the processes through which museums can open up towards society and ask how these institutions can become socially relevant places capable of effecting change.
Working Through Colonial Collections. An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, 2022
What are the possibilities and limits of engaging with colonialism in ethnological museums? This ... more What are the possibilities and limits of engaging with colonialism in ethnological museums? This book addresses this question from within the Africa department of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. It captures the Museum at a moment of substantial transformation, as it prepared the move of its exhibition to the Humboldt Forum, a newly built and contested cultural centre on Berlin’s Museum Island. The book discusses almost a decade of debate in which German colonialism was negotiated, and further recognised, through conflicts over colonial museum collections.
How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists,... more How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised ‘elsewhere’ and ‘otherwise’. They do so by unfolding ethnographic case studies from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland – and through conversations that expand these geographies and genealogies of contemporary exhibition-making. This collection considers where and how anthropology is troubled, mobilised, and rendered meaningful.
Across Anthropology charts new ground by analysing the convergences of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe’s reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies.
Preface by Arjun Appadurai. Afterword by Roger Sansi
Contributors: Arjun Appadurai (New York University), Annette Bhagwati (Museum Rietberg, Zurich), Clémentine Deliss (Berlin), Sarah Demart (Saint-Louis University, Brussels), Natasha Ginwala (Gropius Bau, Berlin), Emmanuel Grimaud (CNRS, Paris), Aliocha Imhoff and Kantuta Quirós (Paris), Erica Lehrer (Concordia University, Montreal), Toma Muteba Luntumbue (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Wayne Modest (Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Margareta von Oswald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Roger Sansi (Barcelona University), Alexander Schellow (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Arnd Schneider (University of Oslo), Anna Seiderer (University Paris 8), Nanette Snoep (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne), Nora Sternfeld (Kunsthochschule Kassel), Anne-Christine Taylor (Paris), Jonas Tinius (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The book is funded by Sharon Macdonald's Alexander Von Humboldt-Stiftung Professorship, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Leuven University Open Access Fund.
How to deal with the legacies of colonial and other problematic pasts is a challenge shared by mo... more How to deal with the legacies of colonial and other problematic pasts is a challenge shared by most museums of ethnography and ethnology. In this introduction to the following special section on the same topic, the section editors provide an overview and analysis of the burdens and potentials of the past in such museums. They set out different strategies that have been devised by ethnographic museums, identifying and assessing the most promising approaches. In doing so, they are especially concerned to consider the cosmopolitan potential of ethnographic museums and how this might be best realized. This entails explaining how the articles that they have brought together can collectively go beyond state-of-the-art approaches to provide new insight not only into the difficulties but also into the possibilities for redeploying ethnographic collections and formats toward more convivial and cosmo-optimistic futures.
Berlin: Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), Jun 7, 2018
The essays collected together here each explore a concept that o ers the potential to think and d... more The essays collected together here each explore a concept that o ers the potential to think and do museum and heritage practice otherwise – that is, to think and do museums and heritage differently from the ways in which they have more recently or more usually been done. This ‘otherwising’ is thoroughly anthropological. It draws from a disciplinary approach that seeks to explore diverse ways of doing and thinking – to
learn from other ways of being wise – in order to rethink, re-do, and transform, what might otherwise be taken for granted or unexamined.
In the fall of 2010, Jessica Warboys discovered photographic portraits of dancer Hélène Vanel in ... more In the fall of 2010, Jessica Warboys discovered photographic portraits of dancer Hélène Vanel in the disused Bibliothèque Smith-Lesouëf, Nogent-sur-Marne. Among these photographs were images of Vanel performing L'Acte manqué at the opening night of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Paris, 1938. Soon after, an unpublished manuscript by Vanel was found in the adjoining archives of the Maison nationale des artistes, a retirement home for elderly artists. Between 1984 and 1985 Vanel had collected and typed up her memories. Within Vanelephant is a largely edited overview of Vanel's ten original chapters. This edit plays out alongside portraits of herself, interspersed with a selection of attributed images and text. Warboys translated the texts herself and condensed the drama, and thus Vanel's role has shifted from manuscript to script.
While it might seem as though only one thing is certain about anthropology – namely, that it is i... more While it might seem as though only one thing is certain about anthropology – namely, that it is in “a permanent identity crisis” (Geertz 2000: 89) – this volume takes a different look at what anthropology is and how it is rendered meaningful. After decades of intense and productive critique of anthropological practices and knowledge production from ‘within’, we address the ways in which anthropology has been reformulated, rethought, and even repractised ‘elsewhere’ and ‘otherwise’. What is anthropology? Where and how is it negotiated? What new understandings of anthropology emerge from beyond the classical fields, practices, institutions, and modi of anthropological knowledge production?
Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial, 2020, 2020
“Museums are Investments in Critical Discomfort”, Wayne Modest in Conversation with Margareta von... more “Museums are Investments in Critical Discomfort”, Wayne Modest in Conversation with Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 65-75.
Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial, 2020
A dialogue between Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius and Nora Sternfeld on curating, curatorial ... more A dialogue between Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius and Nora Sternfeld on curating, curatorial subjectivity and contradictions.
Book Title: Across Anthropology Book Subtitle: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial Book Editor(s): Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius Published by: Leuven University Press. (2020) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv125jqxp.24
“What happens in that space in-between and beyond this relation” (Conversation between Bonaventur... more “What happens in that space in-between and beyond this relation” (Conversation between Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 278-287.
“On Decolonising Anthropological Museums: Curators Need to Take ‘Indigenous’ Forms of Knowledge ... more “On Decolonising Anthropological Museums: Curators Need to Take ‘Indigenous’ Forms of Knowledge More Seriously” (Conversation between Anne-Christine Taylor, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius), in Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 97-105.
“Against the Mono-Disciplinarity of Ethnographic Museums” (Conversation between Clémentine Delis... more “Against the Mono-Disciplinarity of Ethnographic Museums” (Conversation between Clémentine Deliss, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius), in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 130-141.
“Finding Means to Cannibalise the Anthropological Museum” (Conversation between Toma Muteba Luntu... more “Finding Means to Cannibalise the Anthropological Museum” (Conversation between Toma Muteba Luntumbue, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius), in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 174-185.
“Translating the Silence” (Conversation between le peuple qui manque, Margareta von Oswald, and ... more “Translating the Silence” (Conversation between le peuple qui manque, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. pp. 210-221.
"Dissonant Agents and Creative Refusals" (Conversation with Natasha Ginwala, Margareta von Oswald... more "Dissonant Agents and Creative Refusals" (Conversation with Natasha Ginwala, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 242-253.
“Suggestions for a Post-Museum” (Conversation between Nanette Snoep, Margareta von Oswald, and Jo... more “Suggestions for a Post-Museum” (Conversation between Nanette Snoep, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 324-335.
Wie weiter mit Humboldts Erbe? Ethnographische Sammlungen neu denken, 2018
This review gives an overview of the first reactions to the so-called ‘restitution report’ handed... more This review gives an overview of the first reactions to the so-called ‘restitution report’ handed in to French president Emmanuel Macron on Nov 23, 2018 by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy. The debate and reactions in politics, museums, academia, but also from the art market have been polarized and emotionally charged. Starting with first reactions in France, the review then gives an overview of the official responses by museums and politics in different European and African national contexts. After that, it attempts to resume how the report has been debated, challenged, and commented, notably in academia. Due to the quantity and speed of publications and reactions in circulation, this review can only present a selection of arguments and articles.
This article addresses the question of how to go beyond the conceptualization of museums as islan... more This article addresses the question of how to go beyond the conceptualization of museums as islands in museum ethnography without losing the ethnographic depth and insights that such research can provide. Discussing existing ethnographic research in museums, the ethnographic turn in organization studies, and methodological innovation that seeks to go beyond bounded locations in anthropology, we offer a new museum methodology that retains ethnography's capacity to grasp the often overlooked workings of organizational life – such as the informal relations, uncodified activities, chance events and feelings – while also avoiding 'methodological containerism', that is, the taking of the museum as an organization for granted. We then present a project design for a multi-sited, multi-linked, multi-researcher ethnography to respond to this; together with its specific realization as the Making Differences project currently underway on Berlin's Museum Island. Drawing on three sub-projects of this large ethnography – concerned with exhibition-making in the Museum of Islamic Art, in the Ethnological Museum in preparation for the Humboldt Forum (a high profile and contested cultural development due to open in 2019) and a new exhibition about Berlin, also for the Humboldt Forum – we highlight the importance of what happens beyond the 'container,' the discretion of what we even take to be the 'container', and how 'organization-ness' of various kinds is 'done' or 'achieved'. We do this in part through an analysis of organigrams at play in our research fields, showing what these variously reveal, hide and suggest. Understanding museums, and organizations more generally, in this way, we argue, brings insight both to some of the specific developments that we are analysing as well as to museum and organization studies more widely.
Awkward Archives. Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum, 2022
This book offers a modular, teachable curriculum about awkward archives. It works with archives t... more This book offers a modular, teachable curriculum about awkward archives. It works with archives that cause disquieting frictions and sit uncomfortably in the contemporary world; whose archivists let their unease with them become a productive, troubling heuristic. Every module departs from a conversation, followed by working material, visual constellations, and methodological exercises about modalities of anthropological fieldwork.
Featured archives: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SAVVY Contemporary’s Colonial Neighbours Archive, the Hahne-Niehoff Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the database of German colonial punitive expeditions, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Naomi Wilzig Art Collection of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Das resonante Museum. Berliner Gespräche über mentale Gesundheit, 2023
Die Grundlage für dieses Buch ist das Gespräch über mentale Gesundheit. Die Gespräche sind eine M... more Die Grundlage für dieses Buch ist das Gespräch über mentale Gesundheit. Die Gespräche sind eine Momentaufnahme aus den Jahren 2021 und 2022 in Berlin. Personen aus Wissenschaft, Kultur, Politik und aktivistischen Kontexten äußern sich und zeigen auf: Wenn über mentale Gesundheit gesprochen wird, wird über Gesellschaft gesprochen.
Diese Gespräche entstanden im Rahmen einer Kooperation zwischen dem Gropius Bau und Mindscapes, dem internationalen Kulturprogramm zum Thema mentale Gesundheit von Wellcome. Einleitende Texte diskutieren Öffnungsprozesse im Museum, und stellen die Frage, wie Museen zu gesellschaftswirksamen Orten werden können.
The Resonant Museum. Berlin Conversations on Mental Health, 2023
The starting point for this book is the conversation on mental health. The conversations capture ... more The starting point for this book is the conversation on mental health. The conversations capture a specific set of circumstances in Berlin from the years 2021 and 2022. Interlocutors from the fields of science, culture and politics and activist contexts reflect on and articulate their experiences. They render one thing evident: speaking about mental health means also speaking about society.
These conversations emerged from a cooperation between the Gropius Bau and Mindscapes, Wellcome's international cultural programme on mental health. Introductory texts discuss the processes through which museums can open up towards society and ask how these institutions can become socially relevant places capable of effecting change.
Working Through Colonial Collections. An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, 2022
What are the possibilities and limits of engaging with colonialism in ethnological museums? This ... more What are the possibilities and limits of engaging with colonialism in ethnological museums? This book addresses this question from within the Africa department of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. It captures the Museum at a moment of substantial transformation, as it prepared the move of its exhibition to the Humboldt Forum, a newly built and contested cultural centre on Berlin’s Museum Island. The book discusses almost a decade of debate in which German colonialism was negotiated, and further recognised, through conflicts over colonial museum collections.
How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists,... more How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised ‘elsewhere’ and ‘otherwise’. They do so by unfolding ethnographic case studies from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland – and through conversations that expand these geographies and genealogies of contemporary exhibition-making. This collection considers where and how anthropology is troubled, mobilised, and rendered meaningful.
Across Anthropology charts new ground by analysing the convergences of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe’s reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies.
Preface by Arjun Appadurai. Afterword by Roger Sansi
Contributors: Arjun Appadurai (New York University), Annette Bhagwati (Museum Rietberg, Zurich), Clémentine Deliss (Berlin), Sarah Demart (Saint-Louis University, Brussels), Natasha Ginwala (Gropius Bau, Berlin), Emmanuel Grimaud (CNRS, Paris), Aliocha Imhoff and Kantuta Quirós (Paris), Erica Lehrer (Concordia University, Montreal), Toma Muteba Luntumbue (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Wayne Modest (Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Margareta von Oswald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Roger Sansi (Barcelona University), Alexander Schellow (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Arnd Schneider (University of Oslo), Anna Seiderer (University Paris 8), Nanette Snoep (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne), Nora Sternfeld (Kunsthochschule Kassel), Anne-Christine Taylor (Paris), Jonas Tinius (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The book is funded by Sharon Macdonald's Alexander Von Humboldt-Stiftung Professorship, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Leuven University Open Access Fund.
How to deal with the legacies of colonial and other problematic pasts is a challenge shared by mo... more How to deal with the legacies of colonial and other problematic pasts is a challenge shared by most museums of ethnography and ethnology. In this introduction to the following special section on the same topic, the section editors provide an overview and analysis of the burdens and potentials of the past in such museums. They set out different strategies that have been devised by ethnographic museums, identifying and assessing the most promising approaches. In doing so, they are especially concerned to consider the cosmopolitan potential of ethnographic museums and how this might be best realized. This entails explaining how the articles that they have brought together can collectively go beyond state-of-the-art approaches to provide new insight not only into the difficulties but also into the possibilities for redeploying ethnographic collections and formats toward more convivial and cosmo-optimistic futures.
Berlin: Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), Jun 7, 2018
The essays collected together here each explore a concept that o ers the potential to think and d... more The essays collected together here each explore a concept that o ers the potential to think and do museum and heritage practice otherwise – that is, to think and do museums and heritage differently from the ways in which they have more recently or more usually been done. This ‘otherwising’ is thoroughly anthropological. It draws from a disciplinary approach that seeks to explore diverse ways of doing and thinking – to
learn from other ways of being wise – in order to rethink, re-do, and transform, what might otherwise be taken for granted or unexamined.
In the fall of 2010, Jessica Warboys discovered photographic portraits of dancer Hélène Vanel in ... more In the fall of 2010, Jessica Warboys discovered photographic portraits of dancer Hélène Vanel in the disused Bibliothèque Smith-Lesouëf, Nogent-sur-Marne. Among these photographs were images of Vanel performing L'Acte manqué at the opening night of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Paris, 1938. Soon after, an unpublished manuscript by Vanel was found in the adjoining archives of the Maison nationale des artistes, a retirement home for elderly artists. Between 1984 and 1985 Vanel had collected and typed up her memories. Within Vanelephant is a largely edited overview of Vanel's ten original chapters. This edit plays out alongside portraits of herself, interspersed with a selection of attributed images and text. Warboys translated the texts herself and condensed the drama, and thus Vanel's role has shifted from manuscript to script.
While it might seem as though only one thing is certain about anthropology – namely, that it is i... more While it might seem as though only one thing is certain about anthropology – namely, that it is in “a permanent identity crisis” (Geertz 2000: 89) – this volume takes a different look at what anthropology is and how it is rendered meaningful. After decades of intense and productive critique of anthropological practices and knowledge production from ‘within’, we address the ways in which anthropology has been reformulated, rethought, and even repractised ‘elsewhere’ and ‘otherwise’. What is anthropology? Where and how is it negotiated? What new understandings of anthropology emerge from beyond the classical fields, practices, institutions, and modi of anthropological knowledge production?
Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial, 2020, 2020
“Museums are Investments in Critical Discomfort”, Wayne Modest in Conversation with Margareta von... more “Museums are Investments in Critical Discomfort”, Wayne Modest in Conversation with Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 65-75.
Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial, 2020
A dialogue between Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius and Nora Sternfeld on curating, curatorial ... more A dialogue between Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius and Nora Sternfeld on curating, curatorial subjectivity and contradictions.
Book Title: Across Anthropology Book Subtitle: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial Book Editor(s): Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius Published by: Leuven University Press. (2020) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv125jqxp.24
“What happens in that space in-between and beyond this relation” (Conversation between Bonaventur... more “What happens in that space in-between and beyond this relation” (Conversation between Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 278-287.
“On Decolonising Anthropological Museums: Curators Need to Take ‘Indigenous’ Forms of Knowledge ... more “On Decolonising Anthropological Museums: Curators Need to Take ‘Indigenous’ Forms of Knowledge More Seriously” (Conversation between Anne-Christine Taylor, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius), in Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 97-105.
“Against the Mono-Disciplinarity of Ethnographic Museums” (Conversation between Clémentine Delis... more “Against the Mono-Disciplinarity of Ethnographic Museums” (Conversation between Clémentine Deliss, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius), in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven University Press, pp. 130-141.
“Finding Means to Cannibalise the Anthropological Museum” (Conversation between Toma Muteba Luntu... more “Finding Means to Cannibalise the Anthropological Museum” (Conversation between Toma Muteba Luntumbue, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius), in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 174-185.
“Translating the Silence” (Conversation between le peuple qui manque, Margareta von Oswald, and ... more “Translating the Silence” (Conversation between le peuple qui manque, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. pp. 210-221.
"Dissonant Agents and Creative Refusals" (Conversation with Natasha Ginwala, Margareta von Oswald... more "Dissonant Agents and Creative Refusals" (Conversation with Natasha Ginwala, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 242-253.
“Suggestions for a Post-Museum” (Conversation between Nanette Snoep, Margareta von Oswald, and Jo... more “Suggestions for a Post-Museum” (Conversation between Nanette Snoep, Margareta von Oswald, and Jonas Tinius, in: Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 324-335.
Wie weiter mit Humboldts Erbe? Ethnographische Sammlungen neu denken, 2018
This review gives an overview of the first reactions to the so-called ‘restitution report’ handed... more This review gives an overview of the first reactions to the so-called ‘restitution report’ handed in to French president Emmanuel Macron on Nov 23, 2018 by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy. The debate and reactions in politics, museums, academia, but also from the art market have been polarized and emotionally charged. Starting with first reactions in France, the review then gives an overview of the official responses by museums and politics in different European and African national contexts. After that, it attempts to resume how the report has been debated, challenged, and commented, notably in academia. Due to the quantity and speed of publications and reactions in circulation, this review can only present a selection of arguments and articles.
This article addresses the question of how to go beyond the conceptualization of museums as islan... more This article addresses the question of how to go beyond the conceptualization of museums as islands in museum ethnography without losing the ethnographic depth and insights that such research can provide. Discussing existing ethnographic research in museums, the ethnographic turn in organization studies, and methodological innovation that seeks to go beyond bounded locations in anthropology, we offer a new museum methodology that retains ethnography's capacity to grasp the often overlooked workings of organizational life – such as the informal relations, uncodified activities, chance events and feelings – while also avoiding 'methodological containerism', that is, the taking of the museum as an organization for granted. We then present a project design for a multi-sited, multi-linked, multi-researcher ethnography to respond to this; together with its specific realization as the Making Differences project currently underway on Berlin's Museum Island. Drawing on three sub-projects of this large ethnography – concerned with exhibition-making in the Museum of Islamic Art, in the Ethnological Museum in preparation for the Humboldt Forum (a high profile and contested cultural development due to open in 2019) and a new exhibition about Berlin, also for the Humboldt Forum – we highlight the importance of what happens beyond the 'container,' the discretion of what we even take to be the 'container', and how 'organization-ness' of various kinds is 'done' or 'achieved'. We do this in part through an analysis of organigrams at play in our research fields, showing what these variously reveal, hide and suggest. Understanding museums, and organizations more generally, in this way, we argue, brings insight both to some of the specific developments that we are analysing as well as to museum and organization studies more widely.
How an ethnographic collection is received depends entirely on the narrative that accompanies the... more How an ethnographic collection is received depends entirely on the narrative that accompanies the individual objects. Digging into the origins, making the diversity of cultural perspectives visible – this was the goal of “Object Biographies.” Taking three objects from the Africa collection as case studies, this collaboration between African and European scholars found new ways to tell the objects’ story, travelling back to their origins to bring them closer to Berlin’s museum-going public.
In Germany, the new cultural center Humboldt Forum (to open in 2019) has become a major site of d... more In Germany, the new cultural center Humboldt Forum (to open in 2019) has become a major site of debate. It will include the contested collections of both the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, which contributed to the negotiation of the role of colonial legacies and their reverberances on contemporary Germany. We took those contestations as a point of departure for the exhibition Object Biographies (2015), part of the program Humboldt Lab Dahlem designed to experiment with innovative displays for the Humboldt Forum. Here we reexamine our research collaboration with the Beninese art historian Romuald Tchibozo that was part of the exhibition. His call for the “decolonization of research” was the central guideline in our museum practice aiming for cosmo-optimistic futures. We argue that focusing on processes and questions engaged by the exhibition project can transform contested museum spaces to enable negotiations on ownership, representation, and memory politics.
A conversation between Wayne Modest, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Margareta von Oswald abou... more A conversation between Wayne Modest, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Margareta von Oswald about crisis and migration - through the perspective of objects - discussing ethnographic collections and the museum as "space for working through".
This paper takes an ethnographic approach to the analysis of the making of Okwui Enwezor’s exhibi... more This paper takes an ethnographic approach to the analysis of the making of Okwui Enwezor’s exhibition La Triennale: Intense Proximity (Palais de Tokyo, 2012). It examines the different actors involved in the project - curators, politicians and cultural administrators - and assesses their interests and inherent values in order to show how the concept of the exhibition gradually took shape within the particularly delicate political context of France's 2012 presidential elections.
Tagungsbericht des Workshops "Transkulturelle Kunstgeschichten im Museum", Projekt ”Gegenstände d... more Tagungsbericht des Workshops "Transkulturelle Kunstgeschichten im Museum", Projekt ”Gegenstände des Transfers/Objects in Transfer”, 25.09.2015– 26.09.2015. (FU Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst)
Museum Worlds: Engaging Anthropological Legacies, 2017
How to deal with the legacies of colonial and other problematic pasts is a challenge shared by mo... more How to deal with the legacies of colonial and other problematic pasts is a challenge shared by most museums of ethnography and ethnology. In this introduction to the following special section on the same topic, the section editors provide an over- view and analysis of the burdens and potentials of the past in such museums. They set out different strategies that have been devised by ethnographic museums, identifying and assessing the most promising approaches. In doing so, they are especially concerned to consider the cosmopolitan potential of ethnographic museums and how this might be best realized. This entails explaining how the articles that they have brought together can collectively go beyond state-of-the-art approaches to provide new insight not only into the difficulties but also into the possibilities for redeploying ethnographic collec- tions and formats toward more convivial and cosmo-optimistic futures.
Documentation of the exhibition "Object Biographies" - Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, March - Octo... more Documentation of the exhibition "Object Biographies" - Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, March - October 2015
Bocios are protective figures from Benin, brought to
Europe as collectors’ items for a long time.... more Bocios are protective figures from Benin, brought to Europe as collectors’ items for a long time. The Beninese art historian Romuald Tchibozo discovered figures of this kind in the depot of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin. Together with a German-Beninese research group, he traced the figures’ paths between museum, art market, research and religious use. The video installation deals with the Bocios’ circulation, and contrasts various perspectives on the objects.
If you want to see the video online, please contact me and I'll send you a link.
Ce séminaire portera sur les formes de réécriture, de renégociation et de réappropriation contemp... more Ce séminaire portera sur les formes de réécriture, de renégociation et de réappropriation contemporaines des collections constituées pendant la période coloniale, sur le continent africain, et qui sont depuis lors conservées dans des institutions muséales. Ces collections comprennent les objets ethnographiques ainsi que des archives écrites et visuelles, acquises ou produites par ou pour les musées.
Panel discussion: Nick Thomas (Director, MAA, Cambridge) will be in conversation with Inka Bertz ... more Panel discussion: Nick Thomas (Director, MAA, Cambridge) will be in conversation with Inka Bertz (Head of Collections, Jewish Museum Berlin), Verena Lepper (Curator, Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, Berlin), Sven Sappelt (Curator, Humboldt-Lab, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), and Bernd Scherer (Director, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin), chaired by Sharon Macdonald (CARMaH)
In recent years and especially across European postcolonial contexts, the renaming, reform, and e... more In recent years and especially across European postcolonial contexts, the renaming, reform, and even reconstruction of anthropological museums is embedded within and reinforced by a fierce debate about the legitimacy, location, and expertise for anthropological representation. This has led to what we describe as a post-anthropological moment in which anthropology becomes problematised beyond itself. Inflected by our own research of these developments in anthropological museums, and their convergences with contemporary art and debates on colonialism in Europe, we have witnessed and been struck by the extent to which both anthropology as a discipline (including its history and institutions, such as museums and archives) and themes traditionally associated with it have become central topics of discussion beyond the discipline's institutional confines. We have identified three areas of debate-current transformations of anthropological museums, contemporary art, and post-colonial critique-that have arguably become the most productive and vibrant 'post-anthropological' fields. We take the tension implied in the 'post' not to represent a crisis of identity for anthropology, but a productive moment that may open up new ways of negotiating anthropological representation beyond itself. This debate is thus not just one within anthropology, but also and perhaps more significantly, about the elsewhere and otherwise of anthropology. The discussion on the post-anthropological is situated in current debates in museum studies, anthropology, and curatorial studies as well as linking discussions on colonial legacies with those on contemporary art. We seek contributions which respond to and challenge the notion of the 'post-anthropological' and the fields and debates associated with it: current transformations of anthropological museums, contemporary art, and post-colonial critique. We are particularly interested in case studies and observations, historic and contemporary, from outside of Europe. Please send your abstract of 250 words (max) to the convenors Margareta von Oswald (margareta.von.oswald@hu-berlin.de) and Jonas Tinius (jonas.tinius@hu-berlin.de) by 29 March 2019.
Call for Papers - Panel at upcoming fourth major RAI Conference at the British Museum, 1-3 June 2... more Call for Papers - Panel at upcoming fourth major RAI Conference at the British Museum, 1-3 June 2018
The Future of Anthropological Representation: Contemporary Art and/in the Ethnographic Museum
Short abstract
Interactions between ethnographic museums and contemporary art have been contentious-appropriative and short-lived for some, a creative and necessary way forward for others. This panel investigates the manifold possibilities, histories, and possible futures of this relation.
Long abstract
Interactions between ethnographic museums and contemporary art have been contentious; while artists have become more sensitised to anthropological issues in recent years and many museums worldwide have invited artistic interventions in their collections, many see these exchanges as short-lived, superficial and appropriative responses to a deeper crisis of representation and legitimation. This panel investigates which possible other futures of this relation between ethnographic museums (and their collections) and contemporary art are imaginable, and which histories or traditions of this exchange have preceded the present situation. Ethnographic museums are no longer mere repositories of anthropological knowledge and ethnographic items, but are opening up as relational research sites. Museums around the world open their stores for (artistic) research collaborations, working towards a relational museum that itself becomes a fieldsite. At the same time, the contemporary art world has appropriated and worked with theories, discourses, and methods formerly associated with anthropological research. Encapsulated in Hal Foster's seminal article on the artist as ethnographer, artistic interest in alterity, indigeneity, and decolonisation has taken centre stage at the biggest contemporary art exhibitions, from documenta to the Venice Biennale. This panel welcomes papers, from artistic, anthropological, and/or curatorial perspectives, that may address the following themes: comparative and/or historical case studies of exemplary exhibitions, studies of collaborations between ethnographic museums and artists beyond exhibitions, critical examinations of the role of indigeneity, identity, and cultural appropriation in artistic engagement with ethnographic museums, the role(s) of the curator as mediator, analyses of prevalent theoretical concepts (alterity, 'the ethnographic', Global South, world cultures, decolonisation).
Panel conceived with Margareta von Oswald (Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage, Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Conference outline
Museums and heritage are a dynamic field in which scholars and practitioners ... more Conference outline
Museums and heritage are a dynamic field in which scholars and practitioners are in search of new ways of thinking and doing. What are some of the liveliest areas of debate and conceptual energy? How do or might these reshape museum practice?
This conference, which takes place from 26th – 28th July 2017, brings together international scholars and practitioners to think creatively, critically, and anthropologically about some of the liveliest concepts and practices circulating in museums and heritage today. The conference explores their potential for transforming museum practice. What do they change? Who and what do they bring into museums and heritage and who and what do they leave out? And what are their conceptual limitations or stumbling blocks in practice?
Thinking even further, how can such concepts be extended or reshaped to further energise their transformative potential? Or what happens when we put them into dialogue with other areas of theorising or practice?
In a format designed to foster such exchange and questions, this conference seeks to look at other ways of being wise in order to think otherwise about museums and heritage today.
Call for Contributions
For this call for contributions, we are seeking proposals that explore currently underused concepts, especially those drawn from ethnographic theory or practice, which are productive for analysing or rethinking museums and heritage. We therefore invite abstracts of 250 words that set out a chosen concept, explaining its source (including in your own work if relevant) and why you think it should be taken up in the theory and/or practice of museums and heritage in the future.
Further details
Selected participants will become table hosts during a world café, a format that aims to facilitate open discussion and link ideas within a larger group to access the collective intelligence in the room. World café participants move between a series of tables to join into a discussion in response to a set of questions, which are predetermined and focused on the specific topic of the table. The discussions of the day will be summarized at the end by table hosts.
Applicants should be at least in the third year of PhD and within less than three years after completion.
Selected participants will receive a travel bursary up to 300 € (Europe) or 800 € (outside Europe). We gladly provide help with accommodation, if requested.
Application
Please submit the separate application form from this page to carmah-conference(at)hu-berlin.de by 15th February 2017.
We aim to inform applicants of the outcome by 1st March 2017 so that appropriate travel arrangements can be made in advance.
In recent years and especially across European postcolonial contexts, the renaming, reform, and e... more In recent years and especially across European postcolonial contexts, the renaming, reform, and even reconstruction of anthropological museums is embedded within and reinforced by a fierce broader debate about the legitimacy, location, and expertise of anthropology itself. This 'climate' is marked by multivocal struggles including challenges to the institutions of anthropology from within, as well as by different communities and (indigenous) activists. Fundamentally, therefore, particularly regarding issues of restitution and ownership, this debate is not just about institutional change, but about transnational and transcultural reparation, repair, and justice. These climates of change have, however, also facilitated new kinds of collaborations and translations, such as between museums and artists, activists and scholars, that have, we observe, taken the debate about the legitimacy of anthropology beyond itself. In this panel, we interrogate the meaning and consequences of this, as we call it, 'post-anthropological' dynamic. Inflected by our own research of these developments in anthropological museums, and their convergences with contemporary art and debates on colonialism in Europe, we have observed that three areas of debate-current transformations of anthropological museums, contemporary art, and postcolonial critique-have arguably become the most productive and vibrant 'post-anthropological' fields. We take the tension implied in the 'post' not to represent a crisis of identity for anthropology, but a productive moment that may open up new ways of negotiating anthropological representation beyond itself. This debate is thus not just one within anthropology, but also and perhaps more significantly, about the elsewhere and otherwise of anthropology. The discussion on the post-anthropological is situated in current debates in museum studies, anthropology, and curatorial studies as well as linking discussions on colonial legacies with those on contemporary art. This panel responds to and challenges the notion of the 'post-anthropological' and the fields and debates associated with it: current transformations of anthropological museums, contemporary art, and post-colonial critique. It does so in particular by exploring case studies, both contemporary and historic, that extend this debate beyond European institutions and fields. In particular-and by way of a discussion led by Anthony Shelton (director of the Museum of Anthropology at UBC), we link these debates on the post-anthropological grappling with the legacies of the European colonial project with the changing climates in Canadian, Indian, and South Pacific contexts. These contributions also reflect on the ongoing struggles, and the limits as well as possibilities, afforded by calls for the decolonisation of anthropology and its related institutions.
Co-sponsored by: Council for Museum Anthropology and Society for the Anthropology of Europe
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Featured archives: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SAVVY Contemporary’s Colonial Neighbours Archive, the Hahne-Niehoff Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the database of German colonial punitive expeditions, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Naomi Wilzig Art Collection of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Diese Gespräche entstanden im Rahmen einer Kooperation zwischen dem Gropius Bau und Mindscapes, dem internationalen Kulturprogramm zum Thema mentale Gesundheit von Wellcome. Einleitende Texte diskutieren Öffnungsprozesse im Museum, und stellen die Frage, wie Museen zu gesellschaftswirksamen Orten werden können.
These conversations emerged from a cooperation between the Gropius Bau and Mindscapes, Wellcome's international cultural programme on mental health. Introductory texts discuss the processes through which museums can open up towards society and ask how these institutions can become socially relevant places capable of effecting change.
Across Anthropology charts new ground by analysing the convergences of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe’s reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies.
Preface by Arjun Appadurai. Afterword by Roger Sansi
Contributors: Arjun Appadurai (New York University), Annette Bhagwati (Museum Rietberg, Zurich), Clémentine Deliss (Berlin), Sarah Demart (Saint-Louis University, Brussels), Natasha Ginwala (Gropius Bau, Berlin), Emmanuel Grimaud (CNRS, Paris), Aliocha Imhoff and Kantuta Quirós (Paris), Erica Lehrer (Concordia University, Montreal), Toma Muteba Luntumbue (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Wayne Modest (Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Margareta von Oswald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Roger Sansi (Barcelona University), Alexander Schellow (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Arnd Schneider (University of Oslo), Anna Seiderer (University Paris 8), Nanette Snoep (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne), Nora Sternfeld (Kunsthochschule Kassel), Anne-Christine Taylor (Paris), Jonas Tinius (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The book is funded by Sharon Macdonald's Alexander Von Humboldt-Stiftung Professorship, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Leuven University Open Access Fund.
learn from other ways of being wise – in order to rethink, re-do, and transform, what might otherwise be taken for granted or unexamined.
Within Vanelephant is a largely edited overview of Vanel's ten original chapters. This edit plays out alongside portraits of herself, interspersed with a selection of attributed images and text. Warboys translated the texts herself and condensed the drama, and thus Vanel's role has shifted from manuscript to script.
Book Title: Across Anthropology
Book Subtitle: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial
Book Editor(s): Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius
Published by: Leuven University Press. (2020)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv125jqxp.24
Featured archives: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SAVVY Contemporary’s Colonial Neighbours Archive, the Hahne-Niehoff Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the database of German colonial punitive expeditions, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Naomi Wilzig Art Collection of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Diese Gespräche entstanden im Rahmen einer Kooperation zwischen dem Gropius Bau und Mindscapes, dem internationalen Kulturprogramm zum Thema mentale Gesundheit von Wellcome. Einleitende Texte diskutieren Öffnungsprozesse im Museum, und stellen die Frage, wie Museen zu gesellschaftswirksamen Orten werden können.
These conversations emerged from a cooperation between the Gropius Bau and Mindscapes, Wellcome's international cultural programme on mental health. Introductory texts discuss the processes through which museums can open up towards society and ask how these institutions can become socially relevant places capable of effecting change.
Across Anthropology charts new ground by analysing the convergences of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe’s reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies.
Preface by Arjun Appadurai. Afterword by Roger Sansi
Contributors: Arjun Appadurai (New York University), Annette Bhagwati (Museum Rietberg, Zurich), Clémentine Deliss (Berlin), Sarah Demart (Saint-Louis University, Brussels), Natasha Ginwala (Gropius Bau, Berlin), Emmanuel Grimaud (CNRS, Paris), Aliocha Imhoff and Kantuta Quirós (Paris), Erica Lehrer (Concordia University, Montreal), Toma Muteba Luntumbue (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Wayne Modest (Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Margareta von Oswald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Roger Sansi (Barcelona University), Alexander Schellow (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Arnd Schneider (University of Oslo), Anna Seiderer (University Paris 8), Nanette Snoep (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne), Nora Sternfeld (Kunsthochschule Kassel), Anne-Christine Taylor (Paris), Jonas Tinius (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The book is funded by Sharon Macdonald's Alexander Von Humboldt-Stiftung Professorship, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Leuven University Open Access Fund.
learn from other ways of being wise – in order to rethink, re-do, and transform, what might otherwise be taken for granted or unexamined.
Within Vanelephant is a largely edited overview of Vanel's ten original chapters. This edit plays out alongside portraits of herself, interspersed with a selection of attributed images and text. Warboys translated the texts herself and condensed the drama, and thus Vanel's role has shifted from manuscript to script.
Book Title: Across Anthropology
Book Subtitle: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial
Book Editor(s): Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius
Published by: Leuven University Press. (2020)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv125jqxp.24
assesses their interests and inherent values in order to show how the concept of the exhibition gradually took shape within the particularly delicate political context of France's 2012 presidential elections.
26.09.2015. (FU Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst)
Europe as collectors’ items for a long time. The Beninese
art historian Romuald Tchibozo discovered figures of this
kind in the depot of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin.
Together with a German-Beninese research group, he
traced the figures’ paths between museum, art market,
research and religious use. The video installation deals
with the Bocios’ circulation, and contrasts various
perspectives on the objects.
If you want to see the video online, please contact me and I'll send you a link.
Open to all. Registration required, please email:
carmah-conference@hu-berlin.de
4 July 2016
5-7pm
Room 408
Institut für Europäische Ethnologie
Mohrenstraße 40/41, 10117 Berlin
https://www.euroethno.hu-berlin.de/de/carmah/upcoming.events
The Future of Anthropological Representation: Contemporary Art and/in the Ethnographic Museum
Short abstract
Interactions between ethnographic museums and contemporary art have been contentious-appropriative and short-lived for some, a creative and necessary way forward for others. This panel investigates the manifold possibilities, histories, and possible futures of this relation.
Long abstract
Interactions between ethnographic museums and contemporary art have been contentious; while artists have become more sensitised to anthropological issues in recent years and many museums worldwide have invited artistic interventions in their collections, many see these exchanges as short-lived, superficial and appropriative responses to a deeper crisis of representation and legitimation. This panel investigates which possible other futures of this relation between ethnographic museums (and their collections) and contemporary art are imaginable, and which histories or traditions of this exchange have preceded the present situation. Ethnographic museums are no longer mere repositories of anthropological knowledge and ethnographic items, but are opening up as relational research sites. Museums around the world open their stores for (artistic) research collaborations, working towards a relational museum that itself becomes a fieldsite. At the same time, the contemporary art world has appropriated and worked with theories, discourses, and methods formerly associated with anthropological research. Encapsulated in Hal Foster's seminal article on the artist as ethnographer, artistic interest in alterity, indigeneity, and decolonisation has taken centre stage at the biggest contemporary art exhibitions, from documenta to the Venice Biennale. This panel welcomes papers, from artistic, anthropological, and/or curatorial perspectives, that may address the following themes: comparative and/or historical case studies of exemplary exhibitions, studies of collaborations between ethnographic museums and artists beyond exhibitions, critical examinations of the role of indigeneity, identity, and cultural appropriation in artistic engagement with ethnographic museums, the role(s) of the curator as mediator, analyses of prevalent theoretical concepts (alterity, 'the ethnographic', Global South, world cultures, decolonisation).
Panel conceived with Margareta von Oswald (Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage, Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Museums and heritage are a dynamic field in which scholars and practitioners are in search of new ways of thinking and doing. What are some of the liveliest areas of debate and conceptual energy? How do or might these reshape museum practice?
This conference, which takes place from 26th – 28th July 2017, brings together international scholars and practitioners to think creatively, critically, and anthropologically about some of the liveliest concepts and practices circulating in museums and heritage today. The conference explores their potential for transforming museum practice. What do they change? Who and what do they bring into museums and heritage and who and what do they leave out? And what are their conceptual limitations or stumbling blocks in practice?
Thinking even further, how can such concepts be extended or reshaped to further energise their transformative potential? Or what happens when we put them into dialogue with other areas of theorising or practice?
In a format designed to foster such exchange and questions, this conference seeks to look at other ways of being wise in order to think otherwise about museums and heritage today.
Call for Contributions
For this call for contributions, we are seeking proposals that explore currently underused concepts, especially those drawn from ethnographic theory or practice, which are productive for analysing or rethinking museums and heritage. We therefore invite abstracts of 250 words that set out a chosen concept, explaining its source (including in your own work if relevant) and why you think it should be taken up in the theory and/or practice of museums and heritage in the future.
Further details
Selected participants will become table hosts during a world café, a format that aims to facilitate open discussion and link ideas within a larger group to access the collective intelligence in the room. World café participants move between a series of tables to join into a discussion in response to a set of questions, which are predetermined and focused on the specific topic of the table. The discussions of the day will be summarized at the end by table hosts.
Applicants should be at least in the third year of PhD and within less than three years after completion.
Selected participants will receive a travel bursary up to 300 € (Europe) or 800 € (outside Europe). We gladly provide help with accommodation, if requested.
Application
Please submit the separate application form from this page to carmah-conference(at)hu-berlin.de by 15th February 2017.
We aim to inform applicants of the outcome by 1st March 2017 so that appropriate travel arrangements can be made in advance.
Co-sponsored by: Council for Museum Anthropology and Society for the Anthropology of Europe