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In this article, I explore the ways in which notions of the ancient and the modern have helped to shape early museological interest and practices in the Caribbean. I argue that the Caribbean, and for my purposes Jamaica, occupies an ambiguous place between the ancient and the modern worlds—not ancient enough yet not modern enough—which has resulted in the material culture of the modern Caribbean being largely absent from anthropological (and in fact history) collections both in the Caribbean as well as in museums across Europe. The result is that the region has come to be defined materially primarily through its natural and not its cultural history, and thus is represented as a place of nature and not culture.

This ambitious chapter draws on a range of voices to examine what the ethnographic museum is and what it can be for the benefit of diverse audiences around the world. Taking their 2013 publication, Museum and Communities: Curators, Collections: Collaborations as a starting point, the authors critically consider their own work internationally, for example with ICOM (The International Council of Museums) and ICOM Namibia, as well as at everyday level with local communities, such as youth groups in Europe. Against increasing fear of difference, and movements to the right in world politics, they foreground the values of human rights, artist collaborations and the development of feminist pedagogy in museum work. Theoretically, the chapter unpacks the notions of the ‘human’, the ‘cosmopolitan’ and the inextricable relation between theory and practice that can underpin collaborative activities in museums of ethnography/world culture today.

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