Islam debate: Museums want to help overcome fears
Press release from 07/07/2016
The Museum of Islamic Art of the National Museums in Berlin and the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony want to place the cultural diversity of Islam at the centre of their work - interview in the new SPK magazine with Nanette J. Snoep and Stefan Weber
In their work, the Museum of Islamic Art of the National Museums in Berlin and the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony are committed to ensuring that Islam is not reduced to a few religious characteristics. Rather, both museums aim to show the cultural diversity of Islam through exhibitions and projects. "We need to expand our explanatory models instead of continuing to promote a narrow understanding of this culture with a few rudimentary interpretative models," says the Director of the Museum of Islamic Art, Stefan Weber, in an interview with the magazine of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which is being published today (7 July 2016). There is just as little one Islam as there is one Germanness - identities are becoming increasingly globalised today.
For the Director of the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony, Nanette J. Snoep, museums also have a bridging function. In her museums in Dresden, Leipzig and Herrnhut, she wants to tell much more about the everyday lives of Muslims, including their pop culture, for example. Nanette Snoep, who came to Germany from Paris, saw the country change: "When I came to Dresden in January 2015, I had left the Front National behind me and had landed in the middle of Pegida. I never thought I would have to be part of that in Germany. As director, I had to do something. My image of a museum has completely changed. Step by step, we can help overcome fear. On both sides. We may be small, but we can do something. Snoep and Weber agree: a country like Germany can not only tolerate different religious and cultural identities, but must also recognise them.
Further links
- Press release "SPK commissions new songs about Germany: Writers Tanja Dückers, Marica Bodrožić and Jan Koneffke offer their congratulations on the 175th anniversary of the Song of the Germans" (04/07/2016)
- Press release "The new SPK magazine will be published on 7 July and asks about home: a magazine about everything that belongs to it" (01.07.2016)
- Information about the SPK magazine
- SPK magazine, issue 1/2016: "Home?"