ICME Ethnography - Ethnographie - Etnografia
International Committee for Museums of Ethnography -
ICOM/ICME
http://icme.icom.museum
Contents:
1. Words from the President
2. New ICME board
3. ICME sessions in Vienna 2007
4. ICME post conference tour
5. Report on the AVICOM meetings
6. Up-coming conferences
7. Call for papers
8. Other events
9. Words from the editor
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1. WORDS FROM THE PRESIDENT
What a wonderful meeting we had in Vienna just two short months
ago. The papers addressing the theme of "The World under One
Roof: Past, Present and Future Ethnographic Approaches to Universality"
and its two sub-themes presented a variety of approaches and experiences
from colleagues in many nations. We opened on the first day with
a good session held in tandem with the International Committee of
Regional Museums. Towards the end of the week, a special session
on Diversity in Museums drew away a number of ICME members, with
discussions relevant to our concerns.
After long days at the University of Vienna, ICME members were
introduced to some of the ethnographic and ethnological museums
in Vienna. These evenings were enlightening. They also provided
easy times for socializing and sharing in relaxed settings. Not
enough thanks can go to Matthias Beitl, our man in Vienna, for all
the arrangements he made.
Another way ICME members have found of sharing is during our legendary
post-conference tours organized in conjunction with the annual meetings.
I know each of us take bus-man’s holidays and use our vacation time
visiting museums. It’s in our blood! What else can we do? I will
enjoy reading about this year’s tour of Burgenland which I could
not join. If you have photos from either the conference or the tour,
please send them to our newsletter editor for inclusion.
I was honored to be asked to lead this committee of which I’ve
been a member since 1980. It was somewhat difficult to realize how
long I’ve known so many ICME members and how rewarding it is to
renew our friendships at our meetings. ICME has grown since Mexico
City. We have a phenomenal track record of significant annual meetings
in many locations.
At Vienna, the ICOM membership approved a long-range strategic
plan One Global Vision. It is opportune for ICME to adopt some of
the overall ICOM goals for our own purposes over the next three
years. To do this, we need to find out more about ICME’s members.
In the next few months, look for a membership survey. Please fill
it out and return it so we can learn who are members are and what
we can do together.
Collaborative networks is one of the goals of the long-range plan.
ICME has always reached out to other committees. This outreach can
continue on several levels. We can plan our annual meetings in with
partnership with one or more of the other international committees.
ICME will remain involved in discussions of Intellectual Property
with representation with WIPO.
A third way in which ICME can expand networks is to partner with
museum organizations on all levels possible – local, regional, national
and international. Each ICME board member serves as a correspondent
for their country or region. They keep us informed of the activities
among ethnographic museums worldwide through this newsletter. In
addition, I have challenged board members to try to organize ICME
oriented panels at the professional meetings in which they are involved.
Through such an effort, we can engage ICME members who for a variety
of reasons find it difficult to attend ICME meetings.
Our goals over the next three years are to continuing with collaborative
efforts and getting to know the ICME membership.
With warmest regards,
Annette B. Fromm
[ mailto:president@icme.icom.museum%20 ]president@icme.icom.museum
2. NEW ICME BOARD
At the conference in Vienna a new ICME board was elected for the
period 2007-2010.
The members of the new board are:
Annette Fromm, USA
President
Victoria Phiri, Zambia
Secretary
Zvjezdana Antos, Croatia
Treasurer
Matthias Beitl, Austria
Webmaster
Peter Bjerregaard, Denmark
Newsletter Editor
Martin Skrydstrup, Denmark
Anders Björklund, Sweden
Henry C. Bredekamp, South Africa
Ralf Ceplak Mencin, Slovenia
Arun Kumar Chatterjee, India
Denis Chevallier, France
Anne Therese Fabian, Philippines
Mihai Fifor, Romania
Yang Jongsung, South Korea
Tone Karlgard, Norway
Rongsenla Marsonsang, India
Anette Rein, Germany
Beate Wild, Germany
Barbara Woroncow, United Kingdom
3. THE WORLD UNDER ONE ROOF: THE ICME SESSIONS AT THE ICOM GENERAL
CONFERENCE IN VIENNA 2007
The ICME sessions of this year’s ICOM general conference reflected
the general conference theme of ‘Universal Heritage’ by asking for
past, present, and future ethnographic approaches to universality
and holism.
Bearing in mind ICME’s strong engagement in questions of intellectual
property the title of the general conference naturally also inspired
a number of presentations on the question of property rights and
intangible heritage.
In accordance with Annette Fromm’s suggestion elsewhere in this
newsletter that ICME should establish partnerships with other international
committees, two of the sessions of this year’s conference were kept
as joint sessions. The first day featured a joint session with the
International Committee of Regional Museums, and the very last session
was a workshop on copyright and intellectual property rights arranged
by ICME in corporation with the ICOM legal affairs committee and
the ICOM ethics committee.
In general one may argue that despite the current orientation towards
universalistic approaches, particularly in Western European museums,
the papers presented at the conference posted a healthy scepticism
towards this trend. Not in the sense that universality should be
discarded as a central approach for ethnographic museums dealing
with humanity in its local and global settings, but rather from
a questioning of how to create universalistic approaches on the
basis of colonial collections, and what kind of understanding of
universality we ought to embrace.
The two keynote speakers, Jane Leggett from New Zealand and Rick
West from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian,
both represented approaches to ethnographic museums based in the
recognition of community interests, and the need to carry these
interests through in museum activities and exhibitions. In this
sense, both speakers represented an approach that, based in the
world views of the represented (and
representing) populations, may rather be termed holistic than universalistic.
To some extend Amaraswar Galla presented the same kind of view in
his presentation of museum projects related to sustainable development.
As with the NMAI, and the examples Leggett presented from New Zealand,
the focus was on the needs and wishes of communities rather than
the alleged universality conserved by object holdings.
Another theme covered by the presentations was examples of current
approaches to universality in past and present ethnographic cases
inside and outside the museum.
Bärbel Kerkhoff-Häder suggested water, with its live-giving
and life-threatening qualities as a topic that might be approached
on a universal scale with an eye to local, cultural solutions to
dealing with water. Based in his detailed study of musical instruments
Jeremy Montague emphasised that the concern with the universal should
not only look at, how and why some traits apparently become universal,
but also why other traits don’t.
As contrast to these kinds of universal perspectives, some presentations
were concerned with the way universality is enacted locally. Anne
Therese Mabanta-Fabian showed how we may turn the idea of the universal
around and see it as represented in the regional, as when inputs
from a range of different cultural traditions come together in the
celebration of the Giant Lanterns in Pampanga in the Philippines.
Peter Bjerregaard suggested that ‘particular universality’ might
be a practicable concept for museums, stressing that we can not
assemble the world under one roof, but we may approach universal
themes in local settings (of both the museum and its collections),
and in the universal themes growing out from the particularity of
our collections. Kishor K. Basa elucidated how the impressive range
of projects dealing with intangible cultural heritage at the Museum
of Mankind in Bhopal, may be perceived as India’s contribution to
a universal cultural heritage. And, finally, Mathilda Burden suggested
a model through which we may evaluate whether an exhibition can
truly be regarded as ‘holistic’, and applied this model to the exhibitions
at the Stellenbosch Village Museum.
A number of presentations compared approaches to universality,
both historically and geographically. Marilena Alivizatou presented
a comparative study of approaches to ‘universal heritage’ in three
major ethnographic museums, while Darn van Dartel presented the
changing styles of presentation at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam,
asking the question whether the focus on ‘the universal’ is just
yet another way stressing the alleged ‘Western superiority’. Indeed,
one may question if it is possible to talk about a universalistic
approach at all, given the many different perspectives on ‘what
is universal’, which was one of the points of the well coined critical
presentation by Mille Gabriel.
This critical approach to universality was to some extend backed
up by Victoria Phiri’s presentation of the development of new exhibitions
at the Livingston Museum in Zambia. While the universalistic approach
is often seen in opposition to orientations towards national history
and identity, this presentation showed us how important a national
approach has been in overcoming the colonial focus on ethnic differences.
Four presentations suggested in more general terms how we may deal
with ethnographic objects and collections in the future. Nicolette
Prince approached collections from people of the North American
Plateau region as one large collection scattered over several museums,
showing how digitalisation of museum collections may enable us to
trespass the idea of individual collections. Zvjezdana Antos presented
different uses of ethnographic film in the presentation of cultural
heritage, and Yang Jongsung showed us how the National Museum of
Korean Folk Life have applied digital media to document intangible
cultural heritage. Seong Eun Kim analysed how the Pitt Rivers Museum
has engaged with artists, allowing them to intervene in the otherwise
unchanged displays of the museum, to create counter-images to the
revered exhibitions of the Pitt Rivers.
Finally, Per Kåks told the thought provoking story of the
Cultural Heritage Without Borders project in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
While these projects have literally consisted in building museums
up from the ground, they also reflect the ways in which certain
time periods become ’uninteresting’ to museums, and how we may deal
with this in order to include elements that are not considered part
of our ‘proper’ cultural heritage.
On the last day of the sessions, ICME had arranged a workshop on
Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights. The presentations by
Martin Skrydstrup on WIPO, Daniel Winfree Papuga on ICME’s continued
engagement in the field of intellectual property, and Leif Parellis
on his own experiences working with Sámi, stressed how important
it is that ICME continues its engament in these debates, since this
have been one of the areas, where we have really succeeded in pushing
the debate on an ICOM level.
It’s not really an easy task to come up with a concise conclusion
on a long and diverse list of presentations, as we witnessed in
Vienna. Anyway, I will dare an eye and make some final remarks on
the overarching theme of the conference, universality.
We may ask whether it is possible at all to approach universality
lacking a general framework for outlining what is universal. Is
universality purely based in biology or adaptation to the environment?
Or do we find universalities in the way we approach social life
– and if so, what is then universal, and what is ‘merely’ global?
These kinds of questions may seem unnecessarily trivial. But, as
with any concept that comes to rule the day, we have to be critical
towards the way ‘universality’ is applied in museums. While universality
may stress a much needed focus on the common existential ground
of being human, it may also be a disguise for less laudable intentions.
Peter Bjerregaard
4. ICME POST CONFERENCE TOUR TO BURGENLAND
A group of some fifteen ICME members started out on Saturday, 25th
of August to join in the post-conference tour organized by Matthias
Beitl (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art) in collaboration
with Wolfgang Gürtler (County Museum of Burgenland) to discover
the easternmost and least populous land of Austria’s federal republic.
It became part of the present Austrian Republic in the 1920s after
having been part of the Hungarian Kingdom in the Double Monarchy.
At the time of the Monarchy most of the property was owned by some
noble families for example the Batthyánys or the Esterházys,
people worked on their huge domains living very modestly. Built
on the top of a small mountain and overlooking the plain, the castle
of Forchtenstein was one of the fortresses against the Turkish invasions
held by the Esterházy family and is now a museum. In a rather
conventional set-up it retraces the history of this important family
which has reinvented themselves with a genealogy reaching as far
back as Adam and Eve, and ordering portraits of non existent relatives
to enrich the lineage of the family’s ancestors.
Patrons of artists (e.g. Haydn) they accumulated rich collections
shown partly in the museum. In spite of the changes of History,
the Esterházy family are still one of the big landowners
in the region.
Due to the lack of private property and later on handicapped by
its isolation by the Iron Curtain (borders to former Czechoslovakia,
Hungary and Yugoslavia), the region was poor and underdeveloped.
Many people had to emigrate, either far away to the US (Chicago
is said to be the “biggest town of Burgenland”) or to Vienna, where
they worked principally on construction sites as bricklayers. Even
today they are well-known as chimney builders all over the world.
A very interesting, well done and didactical museum in Neutal is
dedicated to this profession. The museum based on a concept of Susanna
Steiger-Moser is principally staffed by local people who themselves,
or whose relatives, had worked in the construction business. An
archive brings together a wide range of tools and objects related
to this activity in the form of an open stack room.
Recalling historical events, photos, documents, objects and interviews
retrace the hard work of these men, women and children obliged to
leave their hometown to earn a living.
The Dorfmuseum in Mönchhof offers a more nostalgic look backward.
It was created by a bricklayer who collected over the course of
some twenty years everything his fellow village people threw away.
Arranged in houses, either transferred from their original situation
or built by the collector himself, he created an “archetypical”
village with its craftsmen shops, its school, cinema, church, inn
and farmhouses. Attracting a large number of visitors to this charming
place it seems difficult – and even unnecessary – to insist on a
more “scientific” or purist approach, an opinion confirmed by several
museums awards given to the Dorfmuseum. The lively evocation of
a not so distant past is accompanied by serious ethnographical work,
provided by students from the Vienna University who participate
in the inventory of the huge number of objects collected by the
tireless Family Haubenwallner.
The borderline situation of the Burgenland has always inspired
artists to settle down in this plain country foreshadowing the Hungarian
Puszta, as they did the way in another former border region in the
North of Austria, the Waldviertel. In 1959 Karl Prantl founded an
international symposium for sculptors in the Roman quarry of St.
Margarethen. The art works resulting of these meetings are dispersed
on a hill so that they seem to be part of the landscape. A walk
from the concrete building, combining Japanese and monastic influences
and housing the members of the workshop, up the hill in company
of a young artist participating in the actual work-shop was a very
special experience. A look down in the quarry allowed also a glimpse
on the scenery for a yearly summer opera festival, a scenery which
is also part of the Passion of Christ performed by the local village
people and taking place every five years. Other artists like Robert
Schneider and Evelyn Lehner carry on the pottery tradition as well
as that of hospitality, welcoming the group to their workshop and
home.
Another very pleasant stop was the Cselly mill in Oslip. Opened
in the late 1970’s it is now a place combining alternative forms
of culture with more classical ones, as we could see – or better
hear – assisting to a short concert of young musicians. It is fascinating
to notice that this place could become an internationally known
cultural institution despite its location in a small village, quite
far away from any urban center.
Aside from the artists who took part in the evolution of this part
of Austria there were also two other major factors influencing its
destiny.
One was the entrance of Austria to the European community and thus
the possibility to profit from a large funding program for disadvantaged
regions and the other was the opening of the Iron Curtain, changing
the “dead end” situation to that of a “bridge” between East and
West. Taking advantage of European funding and forced to rethink
their approach after the so-called “wine scandal”, the wine growers
managed to transform small local family properties to international
business units. An example was shown to the group at the Pfneisl
winery. Posed in the vineyards, a black brand-new building shows
the devise “Born 2 make wine”…. Architectural critic, Otto Kapfinger,
gave an interesting overview of the renewal of the local wine business
improving the quality and reaching out for new markets while calling
on architects to innovate and create an international image.
Innovation also in the sector of ecology has since become one of
Burgenland’s new characteristics, allowing the country to develop
from a backward to a precursor region. The rather sophisticated
approach of the Pfneisl winery found its counterpart in the Esterházy
wine museum and shop, where tradition is the key-note, as well in
the description of the products as in the quite old fashioned display
of the museum.
The regional museum in Eisenstadt offered a good overview of the
region’s history and present and in a special exhibition on the
Neusiedlersee, a lake between Hungary and Austria and the biggest
lake without natural outflow in Europe. It was the place where local
people got fish and reed before becoming an attractive tourist place
especially for Viennese and a natural reserve.
Burgenland is also characterized by its minorities. Hungarian-
and Croatian-speaking people are part of it as well as Roma. The
Jewish community has nearly disappeared in the cataclysm of World
War 2. A small museum with a synagogue and the old cemetery are
testament to their former presence in Eisenstadt.
Thanks to the diversified program by Matthias Beitl, the detailed
explanations of Wolfgang Gürtler and Veronika Plöckinger
and – last but not least – wonderful weather and great food and
wine, Burgenland can be sure to have won new fans from Israel to
the Netherlands, and from Spain to Norway, including Denmark, Romania
and France.
Eva Chevallier-Kause
5. THE AVICOM MEETINGS IN VIENNA 2007
The AVICOM (International committee of museums promoting audiovisuals,
new images and sound technologies,
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/avicom/index.php?section=&langue=en)
section at the ICOM conference in Vienna had two main topics in
two round tables. The first was New technologies and universal heritage,
and the second FI@MP, The International Festival of Audiovisual
and Multimedia on Cultural Heritage.
Three papers of the New technologies and universal heritage part
promoted three different possibilities of education concerning the
audiovisual contents and technologies in the museum. Canadian professor
Eric Langlois has established a university programme in Quebec,
called Cyber-Museology (held in French). Alexandra Bunia presented
the study Museums and new technologies at University of the Aegean
(held in Greek). Karina Rebeca Durand Velasco leads educational
courses for museum workers in Latin America. One of the themes is
devoted to audiovisual contents and technologies while others cover
a holistic image of museum, marketing and advertising of the museum,
and museum friends (held in Spanish).
Canadians (Lyse Cyr, Vincenc Renaud) and Australians (Timothy Heart)
acknowledged us with two cases of three-dimensional presentations.
Due to enormous distances and scarce settlements of Canada they
designed a three-dimensional interactive project Canadian Parks,
which virtually presents Canadian natural and cultural heritage,
ethnological communities and also women, important for their history
(www.pc.gc.ca/3d). In Melbourne’s Museum Victoria they even designed
a special virtual room. A visitor enters the place and virtually
moves across the virtual space using a special console. Their technology
enables the visitor to be really absorbed by the contents, either
these are records of existing ancient temples or virtual dinosaurs
([ http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/infosheets/11137.pdf
]www.museum.vic.gov.au/infosheets/11137.pdf).
Museum of Albert Kahn in Paris keeps a rich collection of photographs
and films, shot by banker Kahn (one of the pioneers in the field
of visual
anthropology) on his travels around the world. Director Gilles Baud-Bertier
reported how they document and archive visual materials, kept by
the museum. The interest for their materials is growing bigger and
bigger, so they can hardly meet the demand. The copyrights are mostly
respected, and when not, they usually avoid lawsuits, especially
in countries outside Europe, where copyright law is not well established.
Institutions that are caught using the materials without permission
are invited to sponsor the future projects, if possible in their
own country.
Mostly the negotiations are successful for the museum. (The museum
does not yet have its own website - you can find some information
on http://judaisme.sdv.fr/perso/akahn.htm,
http://english.pidf.com/page/p-291/art_id-1025/idf-PCUIDF5920000007/).
Nadja Valentincic Furlan, a curator of ethnographic film at the
Slovene Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana, Slovenia, reported how
they have applied audiovisual media at the first part of their permanent
exhibition
(http://www.etno-muzej.si/eng_razstave_stalna_avdio.php) for four
different purposes:
- to enhance knowledge bound to exhibited cultural heritage, bringing
the information the museum object itself can not reveal (the so
called complementary information may cover the making and the function
of the object, its users and its meaning, and also the mode of its
treatment in the museum),
- to present the heritage not kept by the museum, either this is
non-movable material heritage, such as buildings and types of settlement
or intangible heritage, such as music, dances and narrations,
- to reconstruct lifestyle of the ancestors from eras with scarce
material, written and pictorial evidence, thus enabling the visitor
to better understand the past, which of course clears the context
of the exhibition,
- introductory film functions also as “rite de passage” preparing
a visitor for the exhibition.
Papers of the first day mostly reported on possibilities of education
dealing with the audiovisual sphere in the museums and about application
of AV contents and new technologies in the museums to widen the
accessibility of the heritage, and in some cases also to engage
people’s senses in new ways. The virtual trends above all address
young people inviting them to visit the (virtual) museum. We have
been told that in Italy they are even going to establish a museum
in virtual application Second Life.
Plenary session on the future of audiovisual and multimedia in
museums revealed, that there exist two rather opposed points of
view. On one side there are people, who stress the media and try
to follow the latest visual interactive three-dimensional trends,
because they believe, young people would not go to the classical
museum at all. They quote the importance of senses and experience
studying psychology of net users and interactive games, so they
could integrate that knowledge into the presentations of museum
contents. On the other hand are traditional museum workers, who
repeat that the contents, concept and aim of any application should
be above the medium and that we are not to forget the social, psychological
and ethic point of view. They see media as a means of two-way communication
with visitors. The undersigned believes that the contents define
the form, but she is of course very much aware, that the future
is the synergy of both points of view.
The second day the president of AVICOM Marie-Francoise Delval invited
representatives of museums, whose products were awarded in Fi@mp.2006
([ http://www.unesco.org/webworld/avicom/
]http://www.unesco.org/webworld/avicom/) to present the production
policies, awarded programmes (films, DVDs, CDs, websites, multimedia
kiosks) and the integration of new technologies in their exhibition
design.
Stephane Bezombes and Christine Hemmet presented Museum Quai Branly
from Paris ([ http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/accueil/index.html
]http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/accueil/index.html) and its interactive
terminals with data on museum and exhibitions. Interactivity at
the exhibition is based in three levels. As a part of exhibition
visitors can watch short clips without interactive access. In each
section presenting one of four continents there is a special niche,
where visitors can deepen their knowledge individually on touch
screens (up to 15 minutes of audiovisual materials, photographs
and text, stress on contextualization and multilinguality). The
most demanding visitors are invited to study room where they have
access to data and pictorial bases, which can take several hours
or days (researching approach, 40 languages, bases connected with
intranet). Behind the whole project there is a philosophy of the
dialog of different cultures.
The awarded museum’s web pages and museums itself were presented
by Lin Mun Lee, a director of Taiwan National Palace Museum (http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/home.htm),
Rainer Hubert, director of Mediatheke of Technickes museum in Vienna
(http://www.tmw.ac.at/), Wendy Thomas, project leader of Heritage
Canada, and a member of a project of virtual museum (http://www.tipatshimuna.ca)
on Innu people Kanani Panashue, herself an Innu.
The partners of the last mentioned website underlined cooperation
with members of Innu people: Innus were asked the permission that
their intellectual heritage is being presented in the website, they
cooperated in recording the narratives, and the images were drawn
by an Innu artist.
One of the listeners later remarked that the structure of website
seems very western and wondered how the page would look if revealing
Innu’s concepts and their organisation of data. We have been told
that Innus had only oral tradition till some years ago, that their
language is now taught also in the schools and that they encountered
computers and websites for the first time in this project.
Best CDs and DVDs in 2006 were done by Hungarians - the awards
went to Museum of Literature Petrofi (http://www.pim.hu/index1.ivy)
for Awakening and to Ethnographic museum Budapest
(http://www.neprajz.hu/english/index2.html) for The Peacock Song.
The first was presented by director Csilla E. Csorba, and the second
by ethnologist Janos Tari, who is the author of both creations.
The third award went to Latvian DD Studio (http://www.dd.lv/studio/klienti.php?lang=eng),
that created a virtual exhibition for the City Museum Jrmala (the
museum does not have its own website).
Madame Delval invited director Gilles Baud-Bertier, to explain
the concept and the aim of the awarded film on Albert Kahn, but
we have seen no visuals, which was true also about some other awarded
programmes. Even at Thursday’s FIAMP 2006 Awards Ceremony only two-minute
excerpts were shown.
I believe that showing the integral versions of awarded programmes
would make a strong and important guideline for the museum people
interested in developing the audiovisual sphere in their museums.
I’ve added web addresses of institutions mentioned to enable the
readers to make contacts and also to get an insight into the state
of audiovisual culture in the museums and on their web expositions.
I conclude with a Rainer Hubert paraphrase: »What is today
not available on the web that does not exist«.
Nadja Valentincic Furlan
6. UP-COMING CONFERENCES
November 9-10 2007, “Image as Embodiment: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives”,
The Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and
the Americas, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/embodiment-workshop-nov07.php
Nov 28–Dec 2, 2007, “Difference, (In)equality & Justice.”,
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, 106th annual meeting, Marriott
Wardman Park Hotel, Washington DC. Contact: AAA Meetings Dept, 2200
Wilson Blvd, Suite 600, Arlington, VA 22201; tel 703/ 528-1902 ext
3025; kminter@aaanet.org
December 14 2007, "Extreme Collecting", a series of four
workshops taking place between December 2007 and April 2008, organised
by University
College London in cooperation with the British Museum.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/extreme-collecting/
18-20 February 2008, “NaMu IV: Comparing - national museums, territories,
nation-building and change” Linköping University, Norrköping,
Sweden [
http://www.namu.se/ ]http://www.namu.se/
Mar 19–23, 2008, “Consciousness and Spirit”, SOCIETY FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGY
OF CONCIOUSNESS, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT. For information,
see [ http://www.sacaaa.org/sacmeetings.htm ]www.sacaaa.org/sacmeetings.htm
Mar 25–29, 2008, “The Public Sphere and Engaged Scholarship: Challenges
and Opportunities for Applied Anthropology”, SOCIETY FOR APPLIED
ANTHROPOLOGY, annual meeting, Memphis, Tennessee. For information,
see [ http://www.sfaa.net/ ]www.sfaa.net
Apr 3–5, 2008 AMERICAN ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY AND SOCIETY FOR THE
ANTHROPOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA, Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort, Wrightsville
Beach, NC. For information, see [ http://www.aesonline.org/ ]www.aesonline.org/
or [ http://sananet.org/ ]http://sananet.org/.
June 16-20, 2008 , “Transcending ‘European Heritages’: Liberating
the Ethnological Imagination”, 2008 International Society for Ethnology
and Folklore (SIEF) meetings will be held on the Magee Campus of
the University of Ulster in Derry, Northern Ireland, http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/sief2008/docs/sief2008_firstcall.pdf
July 15-23 2008, “Humanity, Development and Cultural Diversity”,
The 16th World Congress, The International Union of Anthropological
and Ethnological Sciences, Kunming, China.
http://www.icaes2008.org/
7. CALL FOR PAPERS
MUSEUMS AND REFUGEES, Museum in Docklands, London, 13-14 March
2008 End of call date: 17 October 2007
How do museums and more broadly the heritage sector engage with
refugees and asylum seekers and the increased global focus on forced
migration?
The collective and individual voices of the people are rarely heard
and often misrepresented in the media. Museums, academic research
centres, non-government organisations and government departments/agencies
now see the need to explore the cultural contributions to and impact
of refugee and asylum seeker groups on urban and regional centres.
The conference aims to explore how museums and other heritage agencies
are responding to complex ethical, legal, social and political issues.
How can museums inform debate and, given recent trends in immigration
and asylum polices, highlight international and national obligations
to protect people from persecution?
These issues impact on the work practices of museums in terms of
curatorial decisions, collecting strategies, partnerships, approaches
to programming, as well as shared decision making in collaborative
exhibitions and public events. Are museums agents and forums of
cultural change or do they reflect social change? Is there a new
role for museums in terms of cultural facilitation and mediation?
Should museums be more proactive as places for cross-cultural exchange
and developing understanding between 'new' communities and peoples
of diverse backgrounds? Are there appropriate ethical codes of practice
in place to facilitate these new agendas?
We invite a range of papers that might be prompted by these questions
as well as the three strands of the conference:
1. Giving voice: the museological agenda
- what are the current museological strategies to record, engage
and reflect diverse tangible and intangible heritage?
- what resources and expertise can museums offer to and exchange
with individuals and community groups and in turn serve as a counterpoint
to the dominant discourses?
- to what extent do current practices inform museological policies,
practices and long term agendas for working with refugee and asylum
seeker groups?
2. Culture as a key player: evidencing social impact
- how can social capital be an effective means of to measure museums'
effectiveness, develop responsive practices and inform policies
and funding opportunities?
- can museums be effective forums for bridging and encouraging
cross-cultural discussions, debate, understanding and active participation
- and, if so, how can this be realising measured in terms of evidence
that will convince policy makers?
- where does the work of museums sit with political and social
policies on measuring social impact, eg in terms of regeneration,
social cohesion?
- can we ensure that notions of citizenship and values are not
used to promote the cultural values of a more dominant group over
another?
3. Innovation and research
- how can museums and heritage agencies be more creative and innovative
in addressing these issues?
- how can museums develop more flexible spaces to present plural
perspectives of groups and their histories and heritage (tangible
and intangible)?
- how can museums work better with refugee and asylum seek groups,
universities and other agencies as a knowledge base and communicate
these issues to the public.
We would welcome abstracts of 1-2 pages on these issues and other
issues pertinent to the aims of this conference - these might include
partnership work, community cantered museum work, social inclusion,
diasporas and translational social movements, gender and sexuality,
deportation and detention, and combating racism.
Please send abstracts and/or proposals to dmcintyre@museumoflondon.org.uk
or korchard@museumoflondon.org.uk by 17 October 2007. Responses
to abstracts will be by 1 December 2007.
A selection of papers will be published in the Museums and Diversity
series, which is published by UNESCO.
FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
'MUSEUM ETHNOGRAPHY AT HOME'
Museum Ethnographers' Group Annual UK Conference 2008, Thursday
and Friday 10-11 April 2008, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.
Museums of anthropology are supposed to be fascinated by 'the other',
the material culture of exotic cultures and remote places, far from
the site of the museums. However, the Pitt Rivers Museum is not
the only UK ethnographic museum which actually has large ethnographic
and archaeological collections from its own country.
This conference will explore the many aspects of museum ethnography
at home. It is hoped that participants will explore this theme as
widely as possible and it is anticipated that not all of the 'homes'
that will be explored will be English or British. Papers might consider
the kind of issues that arise when carrying out ethnographic research
in a home country or else look at historic research or historic
collections of 'home' material.
It is hoped that one of the sessions will be led by Chris Gosden,
Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University, who is currently
the leader of an ESRC-funded 3 year research project looking into
precisely these issues regarding the large English collections at
the Pitt Rivers Museum. Other sessions may focus on other museums
and collections.
In addition, a 'work in progress' session is planned for up-to-date
information on current and on-going projects, this may relate to
any field of museum ethnography not just this year's conference
theme (informal 5-10 minute presentations are required).
Papers from the conference may be considered for publication in
the Journal of Museum Ethnography published annual by the Group.
For further information or to propose papers or sessions contact:
Alison Petch, Pitt Rivers Museum, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1
3PP, United Kingdom
Tel: [+44] [0]1865 613007 Email: alison.petch@prm.ox.ac.uk
The closing date for submissions and abstracts is Friday 1 February
2008.
8. OTHER EVENTS
October 2nd 2007 – April 30th 2008, Ethnographic museum in Zagreb,
Croatia
Exhibition : “The Miraculous World of Angels”
http://www.etnografski-muzej.hr/intro.html
Websites of interest
http://museumanthropology.blogspot.com/Museum Anthropology This
Weblog is an Online Supplement to Museum Anthropology, The Journal
of the Council for Museum Anthropology. Museum Anthropology is published
twice a year by the Council for Museum Anthropology, a section of
the American Anthropological Association, in partnership with the
University of California Press. Museum Anthropology publishes articles,
commentary, review articles, exhibition and book reviews, and research
notes relevant to museum anthropology and the study of material
culture.
Museum Anthropology
A Peer-Reviewed Journal of Museum and Material Culture Studies http://museumanthropology.wordpress.com/index-of-authors/
http://www.materialworldblog.com/
9. WORDS FROM THE EDITOR
I would like to open my first remark as editor of the ICME newsletter
by acknowledging the major work put into the newsletter by my predecessor
Viv Golding. Browsing through former newsletter I’m struck by the
range of information and articles included. I hope that, with the
collaboration of the new board, I will be able to keep the newsletter
as vibrant and relevant as it has been up till now.
As you probably all know the ICME newsletter has been distributed
as a simple text message, as well as being published on the ICME
website. We wish to continue this practice, but have to make an
exception for this issue. Right now we are working on changing the
website, which will take a little while. But hopefully it will be
up and running for the next newsletter which will be issued around
New Year. Therefore, this newsletter can not be found on the website
before the new version is ready.
For the same reason, the online publication of the papers presented
at the ICME sessions in Vienna will also have to wait. I will use
the occasion, though, to ask all contributors at the Vienna-sessions
to send a text version of their paper, including relevant photos,
to me (see address below). Hopefully we will be able to present
a large selection of the papers on the ICME website in the beginning
of 2008.
Finally, I will encourage all subscribers to the newsletter to
send suggestions for improvements of the newsletter. As you may
know, a relatively large board was elected at the conference in
Vienna. We intend to take advantage of this, asking board members
for reports on regional and thematic issues. But we may also consider
running a more formalised debate evolving around recurrent themes
as property issues, new trends in exhibitions, theoretical debates,
the current politics of ethnographic museums – or whatever you may
be interested in! So please voice your wishes so that the newsletter
can reflect our common concerns and interests.
Peter Bjerregaard
The deadline for the next issue is 21st December 2007. Please send
news and contributions to:
editor@icme.icom.museum
ICME - International Committee for Museums and
Collections of Ethnography
Updated by
webmaster,
January 28, 2007
http://icme.icom.museum
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