Museum Anthropology最新文献

{"title":"Decolonization and the politics of display: A case study from the National Museum of Qatar","authors":"Alexandra Bounia","doi":"10.1111/muan.70005","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.70005","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The exhibition “On the Move: Reframing Nomadic Pastoralism” was the flagship exhibition organized by the National Museum of Qatar for the World Cup 2022 period. The exhibition aimed to contextualize the nomadic past of Qatar within a broader, global cultural frame, as well as to create an ethnographic exhibition that would be appealing to a variety of audiences. The challenges of such an ambitious project, however, were multiple: representing cultures that have been exoticized and “othered” by western societies for centuries comes with efforts to overcome deeply embedded stereotypes. These stereotypes are usually both external and internal; they are convenient and retaining them becomes part of multiple agendas. How is it then possible to confront these stereotypes and move beyond them? How is it possible to present the past not as a timeless situation of bliss, but as a historical process of continuous change? How it is possible to de-colonize representations of the self and others within the frame of a national museum and in collaboration with partner institutions having their own agendas and expertise? Who is to be included in this process and how? What is the role of the different stakeholders and what are the limits of their interventions? This paper presents reflection to the above questions and aims to encourage thought on the politics of representation and decolonization. Examples for specific exhibits and processes during the setting of this exhibition will be used to support the discussion and offer a comprehensive and reflective account of exhibition making in cultural heritage institutions in the Gulf.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.70005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145100908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"De-hoarding the museum: Repatriation and the “loss” of collections","authors":"Krystiana L. Krupa","doi":"10.1111/muan.70004","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.70004","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This essay explores the concept of hoarding and of “de-hoarding,” in the context of archaeological collecting institutions. I utilize the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) as a framework for understanding differing concepts of the “value” of the ancestral human remains and cultural belongings that comprise many such collections in the United States. By prioritizing the repatriation of Native American ancestral remains and cultural belongings, as well as deferring to tribal nations and lineal descendants in their care and curation—both required by NAGPRA legislation—collecting institutions can begin to shift their mentality from adding to these “hoards” toward providing appropriate care to the collections in their possession.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.70004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thinking about colonial institutions through a framework of hoarding","authors":"Brian Yang","doi":"10.1111/muan.70001","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.70001","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This commentary is an extension of the roundtable at the 2023 joint meeting of AAA and CASCA on the topic of “colonial hoarding.” When looking at the diagnostic criteria for hoarding disorder described by the DSM-5, the similarities are uncanny. From the ways museums and similar institutions obtain and maintain cluttered collections to the reasons for keeping these items, it seems that these institutions exhibit signs of hoarding disorder. This essay provides an overview of this concept of “colonial hoarding,” and argues that a framework of hoarding allows for a reconceptualization of the relationship between institutions that maintain ethnographic collections and the peoples it dispossesses.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.70001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Consulting the things of the spirits: Evidencing unseen presences in missionary collections","authors":"Marleen de Witte,&nbsp;Birgit Meyer","doi":"10.1111/muan.70002","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.70002","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Contributing to current efforts to grapple with museums' colonial legacies, this article takes the question of evidence as an entry point to unlock the multi-layered make-up of African spiritual artifacts in missionary collections. Focussing on Dutch and German missionary collections of legbawo and dzokawo from the Ewe region in Ghana and Togo, we analyze how such artifacts were subjected to “practices of evidencing” by multiple parties over a span of 120 years. These collections enshrine coexisting, clashing ways of evidencing: multiple possibilities of knowing (about) the items, their trajectories, and their relations with humans and other-than-human beings. Next to analyzing the missionary and museal frames imposed on these artifacts, we investigate contemporary Ewe religious practitioners' ritual technologies of knowing about the presence, identities, and wishes of spirits as alternative modes of evidencing unseen presences. Pluralizing evidencing, we argue, offers opportunities for decolonial critique and rethinking established museum and research frameworks.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.70002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bringing in others in a time of change","authors":"Katarzyna Puzon","doi":"10.1111/muan.12312","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.12312","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;“This exhibition is for Germans,” Taher&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; said to me and took a drag on his cigarette as we walked to the Museum of European Cultures (MEK) in Berlin's suburbs. He was referring to &lt;i&gt;daHEIM: glances into fugitive lives&lt;/i&gt;. Taher, who had fled his war-torn homeland of Syria, was not eager to delve deep into the contents of the exhibition. Familiar with most of it and tired of hearing refugee stories, he remarked though that it was important for Germans to visit the museum and learn about the background and struggles of those who had recently arrived from the Middle East seeking refuge in Germany. He joined the project because he wanted to engage in a creative practice with others when the group KUNSTASYL (Art Shelter) started work on a performance planned for the closing of the exhibition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;daHEIM was a collaboration between the MEK and KUNSTASYL, which was founded by a Berlin-based artist with the residents of a refugee shelter (&lt;i&gt;Heim&lt;/i&gt;) in Berlin-Spandau in 2015. The project started during the 2015 “refugee crisis” that unleashed a surge of participatory initiatives in cultural and heritage institutions in, albeit not only, Germany. Participation served as a label for such practices that aimed at including refugees in these institutions and helping them feel a sense of belonging. This participatory turn built on approaches propelled by critical museology's focus on social justice and the envisioning of museums as spaces to counter discrimination and prejudice. Looking at these developments in museums, which increasingly operate as sites for initiatives with “others” invited to participate in various roles, this commentary shows how “bringing in others” into such institutions can lead to a paradox that reinforces a sense of non-belonging, and draws attention to contradictions in collaborative initiatives with marginalized groups, such as refugees. This essay reflects on who these projects are for, who gets to speak, and who sets the overall framework.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;“How are we going to live together here?” was one of the questions that guided the daHEIM project. It pertained to the events of the “refugee crisis” and the changes in Berlin's social landscape—and in Germany in general, where more than one million people arrived in 2015 and 2016 in search of refuge. In the framework of “Wilkommenskultur” (culture of welcome), accompanied by the slogan “Refugees Welcome,” the statement “&lt;i&gt;wir schaffen das&lt;/i&gt;” (“we will manage this”) by then Chancellor Angela Merkel was intended to reflect a welcoming response towards refugees in Germany. It manifested in a large number of initiatives founded to support newcomers. However, there was also a great deal of ambivalence towards these developments, as evidenced by Islamophobic reactions such as weekly rallies of the anti-Islam movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident; in German: &lt;i&gt;Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes&lt;/i&gt;). The w","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.12312","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Weighing the value of repatriation against future scientific research","authors":"Trevor Engel","doi":"10.1111/muan.70003","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.70003","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How are museum objects valued and who decides? This commentary explores the relationship of perceived scientific value to the idea of hoarding applied to colonial institutions' holdings. By juxtaposing the possibilities of future scientific value with the value that these objects (primarily bodies) have held and still hold to their respective communities, I ask whose perception of value matters when it comes to deciding on what (or whom) stays in these collections.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.70003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hoarding the intangible: Language as an object of colonial collecting","authors":"Sarah Shulist","doi":"10.1111/muan.70000","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.70000","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This commentary builds on the concept of “colonial hoarding” by considering how it applies to intangible cultural practices, such as language. The central processes and practices that allow language to fit within this system are its artefactualization—its ontological transformation into something tangible—and its subsequent circulation through regimes of property and access. Building on my experience as a linguistic anthropologist working with Indigenous communities on language revitalization, I propose that these processes emerge, sometimes unintentionally, from the foundational ideologies that inform scholarly work on “endangered” languages. By using the concept of “colonial hoarding” in this way, I argue that we can further the discussion about Indigenous language reclamation by recognizing the relationship to what is happening to other types of ancestors.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.70000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Collections overlooked: The Chinese ethnic minority collections in an Asian Cold War context at the Department of Anthropology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong","authors":"Chon Hei Ao,&nbsp;Alvin","doi":"10.1111/muan.12309","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.12309","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the geopolitical influences on the making of the Chinese ethnic minority ethnographic collections at the Department of Anthropology (DOA), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) during the Cold War period. These overlooked collections originated from two Taiwanese department founders, Chiao Chien, and Hsieh Jiann, who used Hong Kong as a node to conduct Chinese ethnic minority studies in the 1980s. After analyzing the DOA's Chinese ethnic minority collections, archives, and virtual museum data, and conducting semi-structured interviews with DOA members, the study postulates why the collections have been overlooked and discloses the collections' association with the Cold War. This article contributes to understanding the origin of an East Asian anthropology department with its understudied collections in an Asian Cold War context and offers a paradigm of “anthropology of anthropology departments” to examine the departmental history from a collections-based perspective.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.12309","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Creation” of new possibilities in museum collections—Tamara Cardinal's jingle dress and its potential to disrupt hegemony in museum collections","authors":"Amanda Foote","doi":"10.1111/muan.12310","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.12310","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores the ways a work by Nêhiyaw (Cree) artist Tamara Cardinal (including performance art and a material item: a jingle dress with natural clay cones) takes an active role in transforming museum collection management. I argue that Cardinal's art, taken in context of Indigenous and museum interaction and some movements in performance art, transforms museum practice through its collection as a work of art.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.12310","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“It's your curse”: Perspectives on Philippine human remains in US museums","authors":"Deirdre de la Cruz,&nbsp;Ricardo L. Punzalan,&nbsp;Kristi Rhead","doi":"10.1111/muan.12311","DOIUrl":"10.1111/muan.12311","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the ethical, cultural, and legal challenges surrounding the collection and repatriation of Philippine human remains housed in US museums, with a particular focus on the University of Michigan's Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA). Using a participatory focus group methodology, the research engages diverse stakeholders, including individuals of Filipino and Indigenous descent, community organizers, cultural and curatorial experts, and legal professionals, highlighting multifaceted perspectives on human remains from the Philippines. In examining materialist, cultural, spiritual, and legal angles, and ultimately underscoring the moral burden of holding such remains, the article advocates for reparative approaches toward improved curation, creation of culturally appropriate rituals, and meaningful engagement with both Philippine-based and diasporic communities. These findings also contribute to broader discussions on reparative justice and decolonial methodologies in museum contexts by offering a nuanced perspective on the repatriation debate and proposing actionable steps even when immediate repatriation is not feasible.</p>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/muan.12311","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}