International Museum Conference: Collecting Institutions between Crisis and Creativity

News from 06/28/2022

Representatives of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, the Ethnologisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Museu Nacional met in Rio de Janeiro to discuss future opportunities and challenges for museums, libraries and archives.

Bildercollage aus zwei Bildern. Links spricht eine Frau zu einer Gruppe sitzender Männer, rechts mehrere Personen mit Bauhelm auf einer Baustelle
Fotos: Barbara Göbel

On September 2, 2018, the 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro (Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ) was almost completely destroyed in a devastating fire. The greater part of the outstanding scientific and ethnographic collections, consisting of approximately 20 million objects, was irrevocably lost to the flames – including unique artifacts of indigenous cultures and historical records of their languages. Since the fire, the German Foreign Office, the Goethe Institute and other partners in Germany have been lending the Museu Nacional a helping hand with the restoration work, the reconstruction of the building, and an international dialogue on the new development plan for the museum.

From June 2 to June 4, 2022, the Goethe Institute and the Museu Nacional (UFRJ) organized an international museum conference in Rio de Janeiro with the support of the German Foreign Office. Their intention was to create an intercultural, multi-institutional arena for dialogue and networking in order to discuss the social challenges faced by collecting institutions. To that end, they invited representatives of collecting institutions as well as cultural and scientific intermediary organizations from Germany, Europe, Brazil, and other Latin American countries. It was also important to the organizers that indigenous experts be present, so as to ensure a broad spectrum of cultural perspectives on objects and collections.    

The conference took place in a hybrid form at the Museu de Arte Rio (MAR) and emphasized participatory formats. It aimed to develop new approaches and strategies that will allow museums of natural history and ethnology to better face social challenges, engage in greater collaboration and give-and-take with external partners, and more broadly incorporate the wide variety of knowledge practices in use, especially in the context of the prevalence of digital technology. Other topics included museums in relation to conflicting social priorities; collections and archives; the future of museums; and sustainability.

During the conference, participants also had the opportunity to view the reconstruction efforts at the Museu Nacional.

Multiple cultural perspectives and spaces of negotiation

In the run-up to the conference, the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Ibero-American Institute) organized a workshop on “Knowledge, Things and Practices: Multiple Perspectives – Multiple Negotiations” in collaboration with the Ethnologisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin) and the Brazilian Museu Nacional (UFRJ). The workshop was made possible with financial support from the Goethe Institute and the German Foreign Office. The group of co-organizers consisted of the social and cultural anthropologists Carlos Fausto (Museu Nacional), Barbara Göbel (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut), Andrea Scholz (Ethnologisches Museum, SMB) and Thiago da Costa Oliveira (fellow of the Gerd Henkel Stiftung), as well as botanist Maria Franco Trindade Medeiros (Museu Nacional).

In addition, partners were invited from other Brazilian museums and from Mecila, a collaborative project based in São Paulo. Workshop participants included postgraduate students, some of them from indigenous backgrounds, at highly regarded Latin American programs in social and cultural anthropology and botany.

The workshop itself focused on approaches to dealing with multiple cultural perspectives and knowledge practices and their correspondingly different logics of research, administration, and the presentation of objects and collections. One central challenge that was identified by the workshop is overcoming historically evolved distinctions between different types of object (text, image, audio, ethnographic-historical objects, “natural” and “cultural” objects) and collecting institution (museums, libraries, archies). In this context, participants discussed what formats and methods of cooperation are needed in order to permanently embed multi-perspectival logic in collecting institutions. The opportunities and risks involved in digital technology were also discussed, including the challenges of digital exclusion.   

Some of the topics raised in the workshop tie in with a different collaborative project in which all three institutions are likewise participating, namely, the project “Connect – Comprehend – Communicate. Amazonia as a Future Laboratory ” (2020–2023), which is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). The issues addressed in the workshop are also linked to themes examined in a joint project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. That project is called “Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality” (2020–2026), and its research field “Medialities of Conviviality” is being coordinated by the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut.
The results of the workshop were presented in the panel “Crisis and Creativity: Rethinking Collecting Institutions” at the museum conference and were discussed with a larger audience.

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