Humboldt Forum: Joint provenance research with partners from Amazonia at the Ethnological Museum
Press release from 10/10/2018
"Shared Knowledge" project analyses around 3,000 objects with guests from Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela - results on display in the new Berlin Palace
Guests from Amazonia are currently researching 150 artefacts from the Rio Negro region in the Dahlem depots of the Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin. This was made possible by the "Shared Knowledge" project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and the German Federal Cultural Foundation, which supports collaboration with partners from Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela. Together with the indigenous groups, around 3,000 ethnographic objects from the north-eastern and north-western Amazon lowlands in the museum collection will be analysed by 2020.
Provenance research on the objects is to be expanded in the course of the project to include content not previously included: Is it necessary to consider indigenous perspectives that have been underrepresented to date? What stories do the partners know about the objects? Which issues do the partners see as relevant? What importance do they attach to the objects? And what recommendations for action can be derived from this? The results of the research will be incorporated into the media stations of the permanent exhibition "The World as a Roundhouse - The Origin and Life of Things in Amazonia" in the Humboldt Forum.
Around 3,000 objects plus photographs, music recordings and films from the Ethnological Museum, whose provenance was previously documented from a Western perspective, form the centre of the collaboration. Many of the objects, such as vessels, jewellery and musical instruments, combine several levels of meaning in the cultures of origin, including the way they were made, the materials used, their function in exchange networks and, in some cases, their use in rituals.
The central working basis is an online database developed specifically for the project. Since 2015, information on the relevant objects from the Berlin collections and similar objects owned by the partners has been made available and discussed on a protected platform. The platform is multilingual and currently includes Spanish, Portuguese, German, English and nine indigenous languages.
The majority of the objects under consideration can be traced back to the collector Theodor Koch-Grünberg, who brought them back from his travels (1903-1905 and 1911-1913) in the area of the upper Rio Negro and the border region between Brazil and Venezuela. Thanks to his own documentation of his travels, a relatively large amount is already known about these objects. The object biographies of other collections, especially older ones, are largely obscure. The period in which all the collections researched in the project were created was historically post-colonial in Latin America, yet the circumstances were strongly characterised by unequal power structures.
"For the Humboldt Forum, working with the communities of origin is of central importance. The indigenous partners from Amazonia are not so much interested in the circumstances of the change of ownership, they want it to be clear what the objects mean and how they were used. They also all have a mythical origin. This is exactly what we want to make clear at the Humboldt Forum," says Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.
"We are meeting here in Berlin for workshops centred around the Mid-Term Symposium. This is a valuable opportunity for us and our project partners to work together intensively on the artefacts. The new findings will point the way for the second half of the project. Among other things, we were able to work out some recommendations for the exhibition and storage of ritual objects based on their function and significance for the partners," emphasises Andrea Scholz, research associate at the South American Collection of the Ethnological Museum, who is leading the project.
Some objects are considered to be living beings in the region, many are still in use in a similar form, others no longer exist and some have even been forgotten. What all the objects preserved in the museum have in common is that, from the perspective of the indigenous partners, they represent the territory from which they originate. New, respectful forms of storage are currently being designed and realised, particularly for ritual objects, which from the partners' point of view embody living beings or ancestors.
Project participants:
The research project is led by the Ethnological Museum and is supervised by Dr Andrea Scholz (project manager) and Helene Tello (conservator). The partners are indigenous organisations and institutions of higher indigenous education. What they have in common is the educational interests they are pursuing in the project. Through research on the artefacts, representatives of the younger generation in particular are to be encouraged to engage with the historical material culture and knowledge of the elders.
Partner in Brazil:
Conselho Indígena de Roraima (Roraima), Organização dos Professores Indígenas de Roraima , Associação Wanasseduume Ye'kwana (Roraima), Instituto Socioambiental, Federação das Organizações Indígenas do Alto Rio Negro (Amazonas)
Partner in Colombia:
Indígena María Reina (Mitú, Vaupés)
Partner in Venezuela:
Universidad Nacional Experimental Indígena del Tauca (Bolívar), organisación Indígena de la Cuenca del Caura "Kuyujani" (Bolívar)