ICME Ethnography - Ethnographie - Etnografia
International Committee for Museums of Ethnography -
ICOM/ICME
http://icme.icom.museum
Contents:
ICOM Newsletter 50, May 2008
1. Words from the President
2. 2nd call for papers for 'Pilgrimmage, Migration
and Diaspora'
3. Report from the MEG Conference 2008, 'Ethnography
at Home'
4. Report on the Virtual European Association of Museum
Ethnographers
5. Board member bios
6. Obituary: Agniet van de Sande
7. Upcoming conferences and events
8. Words from the editor
________________________________________________________________
1. WORDS FROM THE PRESIDENT
At the end of the month of May, I will be attending the ICOM Advisory
Committee meetings in Paris. Board member Barbara Woroncow will
also be attending. We will be discussing varied subjects including
the progress of ICOM's new long-range plan and the 2010 Triennial
in Shanghai.
On the subject of the long-range plan, I'd like all members think
of how ICME can extend collaborations with other International and
National Committees of ICOM or other related professional organizations.
In this issue of the ICME newsletter, you'll read a synopsis of
the recent meeting of the Museum Ethnographers Group in England.
Another collaborative effort ICME is entering into is the Wiki initiative
with regards to digitizing ethnographic collections (see below).
I just returned from Denver, Colorado, and the annual meeting of
the American Association of Museums. There I was able to observe
the workings of ICOM-US, the board of our national committee of
ICOM. I also met a number of colleagues who are active in different
aspects of ICOM both American and from other nations. Several American
colleagues expressed interest in joining ICME. This meeting further
reinforced the outreach that ICME can be making in terms of collaboration.
One area of collaboration can be in publication. You might have
seen the International Journal of Intangible Heritage, published
by the National Folk Museum of Korea. I now serve on their editorial
board. They are actively seeking articles that address issues and
concerns of intangible heritage based on recent research. In addition
to articles, the have expanded their publication to include photo
essays and exhibition and book reviews. I encourage each of you
to visit their website and consider making a contribution. http://www.ijih.org/
In terms of the future meeting in China, I invite each of you for
your input. We have no ICME members in China, nor information about
ethnographic museums or collections in the Shanghai area. Do any
of you have connections there that will help us strengthen the content
of that meeting? I have been reaching out to my network of anthropologists
and will continue to do so that we can plan the most informative
meeting we can have there.
Immediately following the Advisory Committee the Wiki group will
be meeting to make more concrete plans for their project (see Newsletter
49 for details). They are seeking a few ethnographic museums that
are willing to serve as pilot sites for this digitization project.
IF any of you would like to get involved, please contact me. Speaking
of meetings, please plan to attend and participate in the upcoming
2008 ICME meeting in Jerusalem. This year's gathering promises to
be a rich mix of presentations, papers and visits to museums all
centered on the interrelated themes of Pilgrimage, Migration and
Diaspora.
The block of hotel rooms will be held only until mid summer, then
the rates will rise, since Jerusalem is a very popular place to
visit, by tourists and people making pilgrimages. By registering
early, you will be able to save money on the fees and help us plan
for the details of the meeting. I look forward to seeing many of
you at our annual meeting in November!
With warmest regards,
Annette B. Fromm: president@icme.icom.museum
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2. 2ND CALL FOR PAPERS FOR 'PILGRIMMAGE, MIGRATION, DIASPORA
The call for papers for the ICOM-ICME Annual Meeting in Jerusalem,
Israel, November 16 - 19 (20/21), 2008 has been extended until the
end of May. So those of you who consider giving a paper still have
time!
"MIGRATION, DIASPORA, PILGRIMAGE"
People move. Some movement is voluntary - better economic and political
situations are sought. Other movement is involuntary. Through the
processes of migration and in the diaspora, many people keep alive
their identity through the continuity of language, social structure,
traditional culture, and belief systems. Part of this latter cultural
expression leads people to return to their places of origin to reverence
sites they consider to be holy or to hold power. Many as individuals
and as groups return from the diaspora to their places of origin
in the process of pilgrimage. The sites to which they return might
be sacred or they might be secular. Nonetheless, pilgrimage is a
process that crosses many lines of meaning.
Museum of ethnography and ethnology hold material culture, which
speaks to the origins of many peoples. What is the role of museums
of ethnography and ethnology in these processes - migration, diaspora,
pilgrimage? Do research and collecting policies and public programs
bring light to these processes with reference to communities in
which the museums are located? On the other hand, have museums become
sites of pilgrimage for those who cannot make return visits home?
Do museums of ethnography and ethnology work with community leaders
to help members keep alive their traditional culture, beliefs and
memories?
ICME invites papers discussing "Migration, Diaspora, Pilgrimage"
for the 2008 Annual Conference. Paper proposals of up to 300 words
should be submitted to: president@icme.icom.museum
For further information see http://museumsnett.no/icme/icme2008/index.html
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3. REPORT FROM THE MEG CONFERENCE 2008, 'ETHNOGRAPHY AT HOME'
By Inbal Livine
The theme of the 2008 MEG conference 'Museum Ethnography at Home'
stemmed from the project currently being run by the Pitt Rivers
Museum (host institution of MEG 2008) titled 'The Other Within:
An Anthropology of Englishness at the Pitt Rivers Museum'. A key
aim of the project is to use the 40,000 plus English collections
in the museum, and their associated documentation, to understand
the construction of the idea of 'Englishness'. Yet to many people,
the Pitt-Rivers and other such institutions are viewed as recording
the exotic and unfamiliar, which begs the question; is our own past,
our 'English' past, something familiar and understood or, in the
words of Lesley Poles Hartley, is the 'past a foreign country'?
A recurring idea in many conference papers was that of E.B Tylor's
'Survivals'(i), the legacy of which seems to have lead us to view
our past as something foreign and unconnected, where the characters
that inhabited our home then (then being a fluctuating term for
any number of measurements of time), are 'others' and we are not
insiders in their world but outsiders. The 'Englishness' of the
Pitt-Rivers Project did not stop the conference papers from being
hugely varied (ii) with their ideas as to what 'Ethnography at Home'
could be. Papers covered mainland Europe, Canada and Cuba as well
as the British Isles. The title of the Pitt-Rivers Project and the
ideas of E.B Tylor were relevant to many of the papers. The Sessions
started with Ollie Douglas' paper on the collecting of Robert Craig
Maclagan, who was influenced by ideas such as E.B. Tylor's survivals
and Darwinism and collected and interpreted the dead and dying traditions
of Argyll. This paper raised interesting questions on the approach
to recording lost traditions and whether or not the anthropologist
and his informants were 'inventing' traditions to some extent. Chris
Wingfield's paper on 'defining the self and collecting the other
at the centre of the Empire' looked at the ideas laid out by Douglas'
paper but on the world stage. Wingfield suggested that English identity
in the 19th century was formed as part of the Empire, not as a distinct
place and thus 'Englishness' as a construct is quite complex. Coming
back to Tylor, he suggested that he was working in a similar way
a colonial might collect the 'other' outside of England, and to
understand his work and the ideas of 'survivals' in an English context,
it is necessary to understand colonialism.
Seemingly in contrast, the work of Frederic Mistral in Provence,
as read by Veronique Dassie and Dominique Serena, was to create
a direct link to the past and build a positive image of 'self' in
Provence through the objects that were beginning to go out of use,
as a counter-measure to the force of industrialisation, which would
support and bolster his regionalist notions. In fact, these items
are the 'other' to the younger generation today, who are strangers
to their own culture and now need a museum to help reinterpret them.
Mistral was attempting to re-establish a sense of place and identity
in Provence. Elizabeth Edward's paper on 'Visualising English Histories'
looked at how in early 20th century England, the rise of pageants
attempted something similar. In conjunction with the rise of amateur
photography, they sought to re-enact an invented past which mixed
national and local history with myth and folklore. Often involving
the whole community and set in historic landscapes, they attempted
to literally connect the players to the past, establishing a past
and present identity. Angela McClanahan's paper on how ethnography
and ethical philosophy have been played out over a proposed wind
farm site in Orkney, shows how, as with pageants, people's experiences
with the past help to define them in the present. In Orkney, the
ideas of the 'authenticity' of the landscape setting versus the
dynamism and resilience of the 'authentic' Orcadian community creates
a continuous dichotomy where ethnographic knowledge can be implicated
with contested and ongoing community actions and interactions on
heritage issues.
Invented traditions based on a known past also came out in Barbara
Knorpp's paper on 'Heimat' museums and notions of home in Germany.
She looked at how, following the formation of Germany, there were
strong attempts to create an artificial national identity amidst
so many regional ones. These museums evoked a sense of nostalgia
for home and a vague and veiled collective past based on natural
history and archaeology. All these papers in some way looked at
'the other within' but what if the past we seek to untangle isn't
our own? Michelle Flikke's paper on working within the Cuban museum
system looked at the pitfalls of trying to implement one's own ideas
on methodology and interpretation on someone else's 'home', where
a host of complex and unwritten rules on history and society are
unknown to the outsider. In contrast to this, Kathryn Burnett's
paper on working in her home of the Isle of South Uist looks at
how a researcher contends with being an insider and an outsider
- being a native resident and a visiting academic attached to a
'foreign' institution. Nathalie Hamel's study of the Cloverdale
Collection, a collection made under very unique circumstances by
one man who sought to represent and invent a common history for
French and British Canadians, shows how a collection made by an
English Canadian could become a central part of Quebec folk history
and the Quebec national art collection. Cloverdale's collection
is a good example for looking at how the collector looks at the
'other' and how this then impacts on the late life of the collection
away from its initial context.
In her paper on the place of Laver in Welsh identity, Kaori O'Connor
uses her position as an outsider to unravel the internal complexities
that exist in regard to Welsh identity. She talked about what isn't
in Welsh museums (laver) rather then what is. O'Connor's paper also
raises an interesting point about how ethnography can study and
understand the intangible. Food, as seen in O'Connor's paper on
Wales, is one such area. Another is memory. In Rosemary Eshel's
work with the Libyan Jewish community in London she discussed whether
or not objects could embody memories brought from another time and
place and how we then use these objects to allow personal stories
to be kept in a more tangible way. The significance we imbue in
certain objects was also central to Lynne Heidi Stumpe's paper on
the veneration of Christian relics and their display within a museum
setting. She looked at how relics are venerated and cared for at
St. Winifred's Well museum and Stonyhurst College and the different
ways in which we view relics compared with ethnographic human remains.
Another strong theme within the conference, again within a British
context linked to the ideas of E.B. Tylor and his contemporaries,
is that of folklore and the collecting and documenting of traditions
undertaken by the Folklore Society in England and others elsewhere.
Tabitha Cadbury looked at the history of the folklore collections
at Cambridge, which include the collections of the Folklore Society.
Her assessments of the collections show that there wasn't, and possibly
still isn't, a consensus of what 'folklore' actually meant at Cambridge
and so the boundaries of the term were left to constantly shift.
Instead of representing English or British 'folk' culture, the collection
reflects a way of thinking in the late 19th century in relation
to the study of one's own culture.
Perhaps Jenny Brown's paper on the Beamish museum came most within
the literal sense of 'ethnography at home'. She explored the attempts
in the late 1940s to create an 'English' museum with a vernacular
focus. What Beamish represents today is far more of a regional museum.
In his final summing up session, Chris Wingfield talked about a
recent campaign for a museum of British history, endorsed by the
Prime Minister and yet what many of the papers have shown is that
there is often no consensus within a small local community about
what 'our' past is, let alone on a national scale.
This year's MEG conference showed that both 'home' and 'ethnography'
are complex terms in their own right, even more so when coupled
together and used to create a context in which to understand museum
collections.
Museums historically promote the curiosity cabinet - the exotic
and unfamiliar. The conference papers presented many interesting
and conflicting ideas of ethnography at home; many suggesting that
historically at least, the home is often as foreign and distant
as the other side of the world. The question is; is there a way
that we as museum professionals can reconcile this 'foreign' past
with how we understand and appropriate museum ethnography at home
today. Many thanks to Alison Petch and all those at the Pitt-Rivers
Museum for organising and hosting the conference.
(i)The 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' defines survival's as 'a cultural
phenomenon that originates under one set of conditions and persists
in a period when those conditions no longer obtain.' The term was
first employed by the British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor
in his Primitive Culture (1871)
http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-575456/survival
(ii) In addition to the papers mentioned below, there was a 'work
in progress/short papers' session including the following: Alice
Little 'Captain Kennedy's Mandolin and other English Musical Accessions
at the Pitt-Rivers Museum'; Inbal Livne 'A Reassessment of the life
and work of Annie Royle Taylor'; Jonathan Zilberg 'The Acehnese
Museum Conflict or does Aceh really need a $7.5 million Tsunami
Museum?'; Lyndsay McGill 'National Museums of Scotland Southeast
Asian Collections'; Hilde Nielssen '"To the Ends of the World".
Bringing the World to Norway and vice versa through Ethnographic
Mission Exhibitions'; Len Pole 'World Cultures in Wales Project'.
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4. REPORT ON THE VIRTUAL EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF MUSEUM ETHNOGRAPHERS
From the report of MEG's AGM:
Virtual European Association of Museum Ethnographers [VEAME] At
the 2008 MEG Annual General Meeting, members agreed that it would
be a good idea to investigate the possibilities of setting up a
virtual group to foster more formal links with European colleagues
and take the opportunity to shape the agenda for European museum
ethnography. MEG is a UK based organization, and its charitable
status means that it must put its UK responsibilities first. In
any case, there are some specific issues that are still primarily
UK ones, likely to be interesting only to museums from the UK. But
there are many, many issues, debates and solutions that are of interest
to all museum ethnographers in Europe. One of the possible solutions
would be to establish a mail group and newsletter to which interesting
MEG members and European museum ethnographers (and academics interested
in museum ethnography) could subscribe. It might also be possible
to set up a website for publicity and added communication. The final
shape of the group and its discussions would evolve over time. At
the AGM it was suggested that: o all MEG members could join the
mailing list for free but that non-MEG members from Europe (who
only wished to join the virtual association VEAME) could perhaps
pay a nominal fee of say £10 to MEG for the costs of administering
a site and newsletter. The VEAME newsletter would be produced only
in PDF form and circulated via email, and VEAME associates would
get the MEG quarterly newsletter by PDF as well o A virtual association
removes the problems of travelling to meetings (and financial support
thereof). It would allow a forum for discussion and for MEG to gauge
whether there really is an interest in a European association, without
incurring large amounts of expenditure. The network would allow
experience to be shared, news to be distributed, conference dates
to be circulated, burning issues to be debated in a wide context,
exhibitions to be advertised etc. I would expect any newsletter
to be short at first, perhaps including some short articles on relevant
issues or just news etc to get the ball rolling for a more rapid
news exchange. In the long term it might be that the newsletter
would be superseded by a more rapid use of the mail group facility.
In general the virtual nature of the group should facilitate rapid
and informal contact between museum professionals and academics
who have a great deal in common, but different experiences to share.
In the end, maybe the newsletter would not be needed at all, as
the MEG newsletter already hosts many of these functions (though
with MEG's UK focus, it should not become too European focussed
at the expense of the UK). There would therefore need to be a number
of volunteer posts linked with the association, particular an editor
for the newsletter, a website co-ordinator and a convenor for the
mail group. In addition it is probably a good idea for the MEG committee
to assign one committee member as VEAME coordinator. After the AGM
the document circulated at the AGM was distributed to as many European
ethnographers as we had email addresses for. I have received quite
a number of interested responses. All responses have been very positive
and a number of issues that will need to be resolved have been raised
already. One of these is the establishment of a support group and
a number of possible members have been suggested. If you are interested
in becoming a member of the support group please contact me, it
is hoped that it will not require too much effort or commitment
from individuals. If you have any comments or suggestions then please
also send them to me at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Alison Petch, Pitt Rivers Museum University of Oxford
Email: alison.petch@prm.ox.ac.uk
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5. BOARD MEMBER BIOS
Beate Wild,
Born in 1956 in Cologne/Germany - studied Romance Languages and
Literature, Linguistics and European Ethnology at the universities
of Cologne, Bonn and Salamanca/Spain. - Ethno-linguistic field research
on Aromanian groups in Greece, former Yugoslavia and Romania. -
M.A. and PhD on the Meglenoromanian dialects in northern Greece
and southern Yugoslavia - Professional career: intern at the Berlin
State Museums - various exhibitions - worked on documentation and
research projects in different departments of the Berlin State Museums
(Kunstbibliothek, Ethnologisches Museum, former Museum für
Deutsche Volkskunde - now Museum Europäischer Kulturen) - Curator
at the Transylvanian Museum Gundelsheim, Germany (1992 - 2004) -
since 2004: coordinator for Central and Eastern as well as South-eastern
Europe at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen in Berlin. Special
interests: migration, identity and ethnicity / clichés and
stereotypes / Roma cultures / transhumant sheepherding groups in
the Balkans / textiles / Networking in South-eastern Europe. Current
topics for discussion: new aims, possibilities and tasks for museums
within contemporary societies in process of transformation / new
forms of presentation and mediation Contact:Museum Europäischer
KulturenStaatliche Museen zu Berlin Koordinierung Ostmittel- und
Südosteuropa Im Winkel 6/8D-14195 Berlin
Tel.: 0049-(0)30-83901-268Fax: 0049-(0)30-83901-283
Mail: b.wild@smb.spk-berlin.de
Peter Bjerregaard
Born in 1971 in a village outside Aalborg, Denmark. Since 1995 I
have been working on and off at Moesgård Museum in Århus,
Denmark. My interest for museums came up by coincidence as I got
my first student job at Moesgård. A few years later, in 1997-98,
I took the MA in Anthropology of Art at University College London.
This was a real eyeopener to me into the possibilities of material
culture studies. I have done fieldwork on the Seraikella chhau-masks
in Jharkhand, India, and since 2005 I have been working on a phd-project
on contemporary ethnographic exhibitions.My current interests concern
issues of materiality and agency, the organization of innovation,
and the role of ethnography (particularly at the museum) in the
current political climate of Western Europe. I hope in the future
to return to work on Indian folk drama, and the relations between
performance, ritual and social change. Contact: Peter BjerregaardMoesgård
Museum,Moesgård Alle 8270 Højbjerg Denmark
Phone: +4589424642E-mail:
peter.bjerregaard@hum.au.dk
editor@icme.icom.museum
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6. OBITUARY: AGNIET VAN DE SANDE
From the website of the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, Netherlands:
Agniet van de Sande was the deputy director of Museum Volkenkunde.
She was hit by a car when cycling in the green pastures around Utrecht
with her husband Peter van Mourik a few weeks ago. She fought for
her life and so did the doctors at the intensive care unit, but
to no avail. Our beloved Agniet passed away in the late evening
of May 19th. This is an enormous loss for Museum Volkenkunde. If
anyone was, Agniet was the heart and soul of the museum. She was
superb in motivating and inspiring people to give the best and more
of their abilities to any difficult and challenging task. It was
under her general management that the museum completely transformed
and renovated its buildings and exhibitions in the 1990s and early
2000s. Later, she became involved as project manager also in the
new Museum of World Cultures in Gothenburg. Flying out to Sweden
for two days every fortnight she assisted Jette Sandahl in creating
the magnificent African Horizons exhibition. At the same time she
was acting director of Museum Volkenkunde with its director on sabbatical
leave. There are so many more examples of Agniet's wonderful effectiveness
and dedication which made great ideas become true. The upcoming
Inclusive Museums Conference in Leiden is yet another example. We
will so much miss her lovely and inspiring presence! And pledge
to foster the memories of a great woman!
http://www.volkenkunde.nl/agniet/
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7. UPCOMING CONFERENCES
June 6-9 2008, "New Worlds, New Sovereignties: A cross-community
interdisciplinary international conference", Melbourne, Australia
http://www.newsovereignties.org The conference will address pressing
issues facing native title and related matters in today's globalised
climate with the political shifts of the contemporary era. It will
bring together distinguished international scholars, policy-makers
and community organisations in an exchange of information that will
make the fruits of rigorous specialised scholarship available to
those responsible for delivering practical outcomes at the local
level. At the same time, it will alert academics to the practical
experiences and problems that should be informing our scholarship.
Tessa Fitzpatrick Email: conference@union.unimelb.edu.au
June 17-18 2008, "Exhibiting Polynesia, Past Present and Future",
a symposium jointly convened by the Sainsbury Research Unit and
the Département de la recherche et de l'enseignement at the
Musée du Quai Branly. This will take place on Tuesday-Wednesday
to coincide with the opening of the exhibition, Polynésie:
arts et divinités 1760-1860 at the Musée du Quai Branly,
Paris, France.
http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/research-symposia.php
July 5 to 7 2008, "1st Global Conference: Diasporas: Exploring
Critical Issues", Oxford, United Kingdom http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/transformations/diasporas/d1/cfp.html
July 5 to 7 2008, "4th Global Conference: Creative Engagements:
Thinking
with Children", Oxford, United Kingdom http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/education/cp/ce4/cfp.htm
August 26-20, "Biennial Conference EASA 2008", The 10th
Biennial conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists
(EASA) jubljana, Slovenia. http://www.easa2008.eu/en/informacija.asp?id_meta_type=13
August 30, 31, Sept 1, 2008, "The 25th Conference on Shamanism
and Alternative Modes of Healing", Dominican College Campus,
San Rafael, CA 94901 This is a working conference, gathering together
from a variety of indigenous cultures shamans, healers, scientists,
anthropologists, teachers and artists. The purpose is to preserve
and further the integrity of shamanism, including the exploration
of 21st Century shamanism, and share the latest insights in the
field of alternative healing. Current topics include global warming
and planetary healing. Email: roztaichi1@pacbell.net
30 August 2008 to 6 September 2008, "Intellectual Property
& Intellectual Technology", Seattle -Alaska, Cruise from
Seattle Washington, UnitedStates - Canada - Russia http://www.cruise.apollomuses.com/
September 9-12, "Discovering the Power of Transformation",
American Association for State and Local History 2008 Annual Meeting,
, Rochester, NY http://www.aaslh.org/anmeeting.htm
October 22-26, American Folklore Society 2008 Annual Meeting, Louisville,
Kentucky http://www.afsnet.org/annualmeet/index.cfm
November 16 - 19 (20/21), "Migration, Diaspora, Pilgrimage",
ICOM-ICME Annual Meeting 2008, Jerusalem, Israel http://museumsnett.no/icme/icme2008/index.html
20-21 November 2008, "The Contentious Museum", The sixth
biennial University Museums in Scotland, Aberdeen, Scotland. For
further information contact:Neil Curtis, Senior Curator Marischal
Museum, University of Aberdeen Marischal CollegeAberdeen AB10 1YS,
Scotland
T: (+44) 01224 274304
F: (+44) 01224 274302
E: neil.curtis@abdn.ac.uk
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8. WORDS FROM THE EDITOR
With this newsletter I am happy to announce that we finally have
brought together a number of the papers given at the annual meeting
in Vienna last summer. These papers are now accessible on the ICME
website http://museumsnett.no/icme/icme2007/index.html
A part from some a good selection of the papers from the ICME sessions
we are also happy to present Susan Legêne's keynote presentation
from theICOM General Conference.
Peter Bjerregaard
The deadline for the next issue is August 29 2008. Please send
news and contributions to: editor@icme.icom.museum
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----------------------------------
Peter Bjerregaard
PhD candidate
Moesgård Museum/
Dept. of Anthropology and Ethnography
University of Aarhus
Moesgård
DK-8270 Højbjerg
Denmark
Phone: +45 89424642
Fax: +45 89424655
ICME - International Committee for Museums and
Collections of Ethnography
Updated by webmaster,
May 29, 2008
http://icme.icom.museum
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