Interruptions: Challenges and Innovations in Exhibition-Making

Abstract

Anthropology and its institutions have come under increased pressure to focus critical attention on the way they produce, steward, and manage cultural knowledge. However, in spite of the discipline’s reflexive turn, many museums remain encumbered by Enlightenment-derived legitimating conventions. Although anthropological critiques and critical museology have not sufficiently disrupted the majority paradigm, certain exhibitionary projects have served to break with established theory and practice. The workshop described in this article takes these nonconforming “interruptions” as a point of departure to consider how paradigm shifts and local museologies can galvanize the museum sector to promote intercultural understanding and dialogue in the context of right-wing populism, systemic racism, and neoliberal culture wars.

Amazonian Activism for European Museum Audiences: Critical Reflections on the Development of an “Amazonia” Exhibition at the National Museum of World Cultures, the Netherlands

“…In spite of these exceptions, Andrea Scholz and Manuel Arroyo‐Kalin, who are specialists in Amazonian culture and have long‐standing projects in the Upper Rio Negro, rejoined that where local participants are keen to engage in international heritage projects, sustainability should be designed into the initial scope of the project, exhibitionary or otherwise. However, if projects cannot practically be long‐term (as the majority of museum funded projects presented at the symposium attest), then it falls to curators to devise collaborative projects that can become productive for all involved and to continue to be critical about what participating communities get in return, as well as to sustain the reflexive institutional critique that can make museums relevant (Osorio Sunnucks et al., 2020). In her presentation, and again in the discussion, Scholz stressed that none of the participants in her project had imagined that they would ultimately create a video projection.…”

La Musealización del Arte y la Historia: estrategias discursivas y de comunicación, inclusión, transformación digital y participación en museos

“…Y, en lo que respecto más específicamente al ámbito de la museología, de la tipología de las casas-museo, según defiende Mikula (2015). En este mismo sentido, Sunnucks et al, (2020) defienden que las museologías locales forman parte de la ruptura de los discursos hegemónicos, que los/las autores/as identifican con "el ala derecha del populismo, el racismo sistemático y la cultura neoliberal de las guerras" (p. 168). Y, por otro lado, aumentando y reforzando los vínculos y relaciones de las colecciones con las cuestiones sociales.…”