Museum in an age of migrations, Oslo KHM

MUSEUM IN AN AGE OF

µI‫פ‬RÅTFÖNS, OSLO KULTURHISTORISK MUSEUM

* STUDENT

Rachele Albini TUTOR

Gennnaro Postiglione

MeLa*project DIPLOMA PROJECT

Museum in an age of migrations, Oslo Kulturhistorisk Museum STUDENT

Rachele Albini

TUTOR

Gennnaro Postiglione

MILANO, 2013

ABSTRACT*

The world we live in it’s becoming everyday more a world of ‘others’ rather than a world of ‘self’. Students, workers, professionals and tourists are the new nomads, protagonists of a dynamism now more intense than in the past and which interests all kind of spheres: from the economical to the demographical one, from the political to the cultural one. This phenomenon, increased by Internet and globalization, is being responsible of a change in our way to perceive the history, art and the idea of nationality.

In this climate of trans-culturalism and transnationalism, a multiplicity of voices is required for the narration of different stories, which is why the ethnographic museum as it was in the colonial era is not appropriate anymore.

Ethnographic museums’ role today should be to express the contemporary age by representing all the different points of view through different ‘lens’.

But, how to represent each identity without giving a wrong interpretation? How to neutralize the political influences? What to show and how to make it talk to the visitors? What to tell them and what not to tell?

Those choices are turning the institution of the ethnographic museum from a temple of conservation of material colonial memory to a forum of debate and experimentation, a place of meeting and discussion among cultures.

A new approach to the museum and exhibition design, possibly enriched by the use of new successful tools, will be essential to acquire a new sensitivity with which to generate a new museum type.

My design-based discourse will focus on a new Kulturhistorisk museum in Oslo and on how to rethink the way its ethnologic section works and exhibit in a post-colonial era.

Rachele Albini

Content

The ethnographic museum

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Desk and field research

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Project for the Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo

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Elaborating new visions and policies

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BOOK MAP**

The ethnographic museum

Main theoretical frameworks

An age of migrations 14

MeLa* project 17 The ethnographic museum 19 The exhibition of ‘the other’ 27 Key words 36 Research questions 46 Hypothesis 48 Methodology and objectives Notes

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Desk and field research

Case studies

New generation of museums 53

Museums already changed 68 Museums ‘change in progress’ 76 In deep analysis of the selected case Oslo Kulturhistoriske Museum 92 The ethnographic collection

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Statistics about immigration

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Relationship between immigrants and items provenience

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Elaboration of critical apparatus

Evaluation grid

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Project proposal for Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo

Need of a new solution for the KHM The future of the museum

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Debate and reasons

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Which site for the KHM? (Pro and cons)

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Tullinløkka potentialities and area’s value

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Contacts with the museum’s staff

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Project New museum manifesto and program

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Architectural project

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Site choice

Elaborating new visions and policies

Preliminary conclusions and findings on exhibitions

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Goals

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Good practices examples

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Good practices proposed

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Exhibition design

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Conclusions

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Proposed actions and strategies

Page 11 The Louvre and its visitors, AlĂŠcio de Andrade, Paris, 1968 Page 12 Paris, 1993

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Quote

Global migration is here to stay. (...) This will not be something that can be turned off. The result is more complex societies, with minorities, with de facto multicultural populations. This is not a transitory state, this will be the case in the foreseeable future. One may like this or dislike it, but this is the necessary starting point for any kind of reasoning.

We have to live with difference and manifold.

(Knut Kjeldstadli, Key note speech at IFLA Multicultural Populations, Copenhagen, 17-18. August 2010)

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AN AGE OF MIGRATIONS the contemporary era

The age of migrations is a paradigm of the contemporary globalized and multicultural world. Three million people migrate annually in the world, 180 millions live in different countries from where they born, 900 millions travels for tourism1. The result of these continuous movements is a dynamic reality with an incursion of the other in our daily life. Thus migration provokes layering and hybridation of society. People and places shift, change, multiply, fragment and move.

In this frame, globalization had the bigger responsibility in changing people experience of time and space. We are witnesses of a switch from stasis to life in motion, which is motivated mostly by work, study, research and tourism. The new nomads are families, individuals, students, professionals, workers and tourists. All of them are different city users who experience the Heidegger concept of disorientation2: they don’t feel to be at home any more.

Anyway, the acceleration of mobility and nomadism doesn’t only involve people but also goods, ideas, knowledge and information. Indeed, while economy becomes planetary, culture fragments, being victim of strong contamination fluxes and border crossings.

Besides this new epoch brings with it a new concept of identity and a new definition of geographical borders. We now transcend the boundary of state with a transnationality in economy, culture and politic, now more visible and decipherable than before.

The main consequence of all these changes is a tension between selfness and otherness, inclusion and exclusion, insiders and outsiders.

Marginalized groups such as ethnic, religious, political minorities and immigrants have to face local communities within the mosaic of a new global society with more complex cultural needs.

In this new context everybody claims for representation, even in museums. That’s why there is a need of refashioning the cultural and political sphere by moving from a reassuring vision of the past to transformation, discontinuity and disorder. We are no longer able to find straight answers in history, so we should abandon solidity and permanence, because they lack of flexibility.

In conclusion globalization has complicated the relationship between European museums and identity, with a nomadism that brings metamorphosis in a world where also art and artists are mobile.

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“In This (Inhuman) World, No one Will Love You Like a Dog Will” Sion Fullana, New York City, 2010

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“What Do (Subway) Women Think Of?” Sion Fullana, New York City, 2010

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MELA* PROJECT the European research project for museums

Mela-European museum in age of migrations it’s an interdisciplinary four years research project founded in the 7th Framework Program, the main instrument with which European Union finance research, under the Socio Economic Science and Humanities in 2011. It is led by Politecnico of Milano to reflect on the role of museum and heritage in the forthcoming years.3 Its mission is to overturn the long established idea of a museum as a place for the consolidation and transmission of the identity of a dominant social group, answering to the call ‘Reinterpreting Europe’s cultural heritage: toward 21st century library and museum’.

The meaning of its name is thus explained: ‘Mela is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘gathering’ or ‘to meet’. Today it is used for intercultural assemblies, intended as opportunities for community buildings that can perform a strong socially cohesive form.’ 4 To tackle with such complex research topics Mela is articulated in six detailed domains of study, among which my work will mainly deal with: Research Field 01 ‘Museums & Identity in History and Contemporaneity’, Research Field 02 ‘Cultural Memory, Migrating modernity and Museum practices’ and Research Field 06 ‘Envisioning 21st Century Museums’. They respectively treat the historical and contemporary relationship between museum, place and identity; memory as a cultural and historical problematic; the development of contributions and proposals for practicing a design of museum in the contemporary multicultural society.

Mela is developed by a consortium made by nine European organizations with recognized experience in the field: the Politecnico of Milano, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, the ‘Istituto di tecnologie industriali e automazione’, the University of Glasgow, the MACBA Museum in Barcelona, the French Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, the Royal College of Art in England, the Newcastle University and the University of Naples ‘L’orientale’.5 The tools of the research are desk research, field investigation and international conferences, with workshops and brainstorming sessions.

There will also be a research by design, with the goals of creating various experimental exhibition projects, virtual or real, and prototypes. These applications are a tool to measure the effectiveness of the developed theoretical reflections.

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THE ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM How it should change and why

‘A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.’6 This was the definition of museum by the International Council Of Museums (ICOM) in 2007. But what happen when the people and places involved in museum representation shift, change, multiply, fragment or move? At this moment a careful reconsideration of the existing museum is needed. In an age of ‘museumification’7, when the number of museum is increased of the 63% in 22 years, museums have to rethink their role, mission, communication strategies and exhibition to let the complexity of our multicultural society acquire a visible form.

The museum is an institution for the ‘representation and construction of inclusive scenarios’8 (Peressut) and it expresses a particular time and place, linked to the changing social, political, and cultural development of a society.

That’s why it should start today making a holistic change on its mission, curatorial practice, exhibition layout, architectural space, network with other cultural institutions and the use of information communication technologies (ICT).

Many kinds of museums should be involved in this change: the history museums, the archaeology museums, but also art, science, and of course local museums, city museums, museums of emigration or holocaust, etc...

But there is one museum type that in particular should put itself under discussion: the ethnographic museum.

One of the reasons why the so-called ‘museum of cultures’ needs to have a special behaviour is that from the colonial age it pushed toward classification, evolutionism and racism, creating a strong gap between western and non-western countries. The most common narration now is still the narration of ‘the self’ opposed to ‘the other’ or vice versa. So, since ethnographic museums are also powerful instruments to create a sense of belonging to a world, a sense of being in the world, they should erase this imperialist heritage and open themself to a new required multiplicity of voices. But how to create cultural integration and inclusion within ethnographic museums?

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Ethnographic museum ‘Amazonia, Africa, and Tibet have invaded all our book stalls. Travel-boob, expeditionary records, and photograph-albums of destinations abound and as they are written or compiled with an eye mainly for effect the reader has no means of estimating their value.’9 Anthropology is the science that has always structured the way we think about other cultures and it is anthropology that gave rise to the ethnographic museum as a place of communication, expression and presentation of other identities. Its space became as a journey into the ‘other than selves’ where cultural pluralism is displayed, and its purpose is to provide windows to other cultures in the world, cutting some portions of reality with particular visual angles and perspectives.

The paradox of the ethnographic museum is that we are, in it, at the same time objects and subjects of knowledge. Another important aspect of these institutions is that ‘Museums, are cannibalistic in appropriating other peoples’ material for their own study and interpretation, and they confine their representations to glass box display cases’10. People go to ethnographic museums to look at the objects as they could absorb some of the energy that flowed once in those bodies. They expect authentic artefacts, material witnesses of past civilizations, brought here by somebody and then collected. The act ‘to collect’ is a universal activity on which these museums rely, that translates a will to search for a space in which the objects are ‘semioforos’: they bring a meaning; or ‘ambassadors’: they talk for the people and for the civilization that they represent.11 Anyway when looking at these objects we might question ourselves: ‘With regard to the people who created these things and had these beliefs, are they still here?’12 There is a delicate passage indeed between the original context, function or user of an item and the moment in which it is exhibited in an ethnographic museum of a certain city with some specific visitors. This means also that there are problems concerning with the restitution of a patrimony, the property of a collection, the sacredness of an object and the relationship between museum institution and the represented community.

Still focusing on the type of collection, that most of the times determines the function of a museum, we must take into account that the majority of ethnographic museum collections comes from a colonial past. The colonial past is present in the collection of the museum and in the material culture, museum is thus ‘a product of colonialism in a postcolonial era’13. But how can an occidental concept as the one of museum be reinterpreted and adapted to the new social realities? Is it possible to decolonize it? Is it necessary to rethink the ethnographic museum?

The unquestionable contingence and relativity of the statute of a collection answer positively to that question: there must be a change in the meaning of ethnographic collections through new discourses.

Some other main features of a museum of cultures are its relationship with the history and its approach, that can be ethical, aesthetical, etc. ...

In conclusion, all the topics suggest that this museum type should now deal with some

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important issues brought by the new world situation, like identity recognition and demand for egalitarian representation.

History of ethnographic museums In the past, when the modern age led to the discovery of new worlds, the European man started to confront himself with ‘the other’. Reactions of curiosity and stupor were increased by the ‘cabines of curiosities’ and the ‘naturalia et mirabilia’, both born during the 16th and 17th centuries and both showing the new desire of esotique in Europe.

Expeditions for encyclopaedic purposes made man discover how singular he was but also how, at the same time, he was everywhere the same. The ‘kunstkammer’ and the ‘wunderkammer’ were places where any kind of question could be made, fertile terrains for spontaneous curiosity and ‘inter-regna’ between the restrictions of religion and scientific rationality. The figure of the ‘collector’ started to appear at this moment. He was an important figure who used to create storehouses of a rare and exclusive knowledge that was intelligible only to those with a certain inclination, cultural training and time.

Only afterwards there is a shift to a new scientific rationality on common things, more pedagogic and less secrete, mirrored by a passage from the greatest possible amount of information in a moderate space at a glance to sequential rooms where locomotion was required. ‘While earlier collections (whether of scientific objects, curiosities, or works of art) had gone under a variety of names (museums, studiolo, cabinets des curieux, Wunderkammer, Kunstkammer) and fulfilled a variety of functions (the storing and dissemination of knowledge, the display of princely and aristocratic power, the advancement of reputations and careers), they had mostly shared two principles: that of private ownership and that of restricted access. The formation of the exhibitionary complex involved a break with both in effecting the transfer of significant quantities of cultural and scientific property from private into public ownership where they were housed within institutions administered by the state for the benefit of an extended general public.’14 In 1875 Pitt Rivers selected and arranged in sequence ordinary and typical specimens, rather than rare objects. ‘The aspiration of the 19th century museum is to give by the ordered display of a selected artefacts a total representation of human reality and history’15 In all of these first exhibition attempts white man is put on the top of the human beings hierarchy within an evolutionary itinerary, authorizing the practices of colonialism and slavery. Mainly during the 19th century, indeed, other peoples were moved from the world’s extremities to the initial stages of the human history. Colonized people were seen as animals or savages, and the structure of the museum used to privilege men over women and white European over black and colonized people. There was a general belief in the museum’s role in the progress.

Only during the post-war period there is a new interest in an extended social range and museum arrange their displays so as to simulate the organization of the world.

Some main intellectuals such as Gaugin, Picasso, Appollinaire and Andrè Breton began

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to appreciate the aesthetic of the black, the alter. Fauvism and cubism put a special attention to the nigger art, which radically influence European art history.

But there is still an evolutionist and derogatory reading of the non-European cultures in the similitude with children art and proximity to nature.

Is clear that the museum exhibitory changed many times in philosophy and style during the years, because the ‘objective’ truth becomes no longer fashionable every once in a while. Museum exhibition reflect the changing images of other cultures that anthropology produces, that’s why it should be different from the others in terms of architecture, culture, society and civilization.

Museum as a ‘contrast zone’ Museum has a fundamental role in the production of public culture. It is not any more an immobile container but a theatre in which different actors play with their particular interests and objectives. That’s why they are places of tension, frictions and controversial discussions.

While Mary Louise Pratt defines the concept of museum as a contact zone16, a social space where culture meet, a point of gathering, where reciprocity, negotiation, contact and interactive processes between the museum and the people from different cultures happen, I would first underline with ‘contrast zone’ the neuralgic aspects of these meetings.

Today the huge debate about pluralism, about the representation of minority and nonwestern cultures and about the role of museum in civil society in according or denying identity are transforming museums in arenas of discourse and negotiation.

Museums are essential forms through which to make statements about history, identity, values, place and to claim recognition. Their roles, definitions and relations involve conjunctions that produce debate, tensions, collaborations and conflicts of many sorts, and at many levels, that have both positive and negative outcomes. What happens for example when an hegemon institution exhibits the art of a minority group? Is it possible to create an intercultural dialogue that leave to every participant the possibility to speak?

How to describe and interpret the ‘other’? How are social identities constructed and for whom?

Exhibition choices and consultation of the represented communities can be some of the possible conflict terrains, because today those communities don’t require just a place inside an accepted scheme but they want a revision of the scheme itself. Different cultures should now be exhibited and represented on their own terms rather then being ranked in evolutionary sequence from the perspective of a single, euro-centric set of values and optical vantage point.

Other important responsible in generating various kinds of frictions and contradictions are globalization and the balance between custom and innovation: museums are the best cultural machines for balancing the tensions of modernity.

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‘Culture, in simultaneously articulating a sense of sameness and difference, inscribes our identities in the tension it produces between inherited and shared customs and traditions, on the one hand, and the restless striving for new and distinguishing forms of individuality, on the other.’16 Anyway museum frictions are remapping the museum. Many situations and processes are involved in this reshaping the museum in its different essences: as a site, as an institution, as a category, as a set of social processes, as a technology through which values are produced, as a domain of interaction.

The challenge is to recognize and embrace museum frictions with all their potential and their risks, and to find ways to work with them not only to let museum survive but flourish.

The nature of an exhibition is that of a complex social process. Frictions, transience, instability and conjunctural qualities are often central in the cultural and social progresses.

The exhibitionary complex Bennett17 used to analyse the historical development of European museums as part of a self-regulating civic public sphere is being refashioned. Frictions, contradictions, and tensions are a guiding metaphor for exploring this process. We are in a time of transition. What is striking is the extent to which minorities are able to use museums as vehicles for self-representation, cultural production, activism, and to create exchange and alliance relationships with outsiders.

That’s why museums and heritage organizations addresses need to be rethought, particularly in light of changing institutions, policies and practices.

But some of the conflicts that happen in the museum don’t find easy solutions. The right way to act is to be careful and relative, the solution is different case by case.

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Pages 18-23-24 The Louvre and its visitors, no date - 1985 Above Paris, 1990 26

THE EXHIBITION OF ‘THE OTHER’ How we exhibit other cultures

In ‘Exhibiting cultures. The poetics and Politics of Museum Display’ by Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine18, Michael Baxandall explains his theory about the ‘Exhibiting intention’.

The frame in which he sets his theory is the one of some specific kinds of exhibitions, among which we can easily locate the ethnographic one: ‘In order to get a minimal specificity of focus on the problem, I think I must begin by positing both a certain sort of exhibition and a certain sort of viewer. The sort of exhibition I have in mind is, broadly speaking, traditional, by which I mean that it consists of the display of objects for examination. The objects are presented in vitrines, on stands, or on walls and are accompanied by labels, leaflets, or a catalogue. There may be additional elements-video displays or films, theatrical or musical performances, perhaps even cuisine-but the centre of the exhibition consists of objects offered for inspection and to some extent expounded. This may seem a very conservative sort of exhibition, but it seems likely, particularly in the case of permanent displays as opposed to temporary exhibitions, that an array of objects and artefacts offered for inspection will remain the central element.’19 The structure that he recognizes as salient for all of those kinds of settings is a triangular relationship among three main actors: the maker, the exhibitor, and the viewer.

‘Three cultural terms are involved. First, there are the ideas, values, and purposes of the culture from which the object comes. Second, there are the ideas, values, and, certainly, purposes of the arrangers of the exhibition. These are likely to be laden with theory and otherwise contaminated by a concept of culture that the viewer does not necessarily possess or share. Third, there is the viewer himself, with all his own cultural baggage of unsystematic ideas, values and, yet again, highly specific purposes.

Rather than one static entity representing another, I would prefer, as more productive, a notion of exhibition as a field in which at least three distinct terms are independently in playmakers of objects, exhibitors of made objects, and viewers of exhibited made objects.’20 In the ethnographic museum the maker is clearly a very necessary figure. He has a partic-

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ular relation to his culture, understanding it more immediately and spontaneously than any outsider. Much of his understanding of it takes place without rational self-consciousness; much of his knowledge of it is dispositional. He has tact and a flexibility no outsider can aspire to. He is active in the field of exhibition through the artifacts, which are the deposit of his activity.

The exhibitor has the responsibility to select the items for display, making statements about their cultural interest. He implicates relations among different objects when exhibiting them one close to the other. The purposes of his activity are complex: to put on a good show and to instruct the audience, validating a theory of culture.

The viewer is considered to be an adult member of a developed society with a sense of the museum. He has come to the exhibition mostly to look at visually interesting objects.

In looking at the objects he will find some of them more interesting than others, for reasons coming out of his own culture. He wants to know what an artifact is. He often reads a label or catalogue to learn about what he sees. When the viewer looking at an artifact comes from another culture respect to the one showed he is in a complicated position, and if he looks at an anthropological exhibition he is subject to further complications and pressures.

I would say that in this main triangle we could point out some dual deeper relationship or field of interests linked to the different couples: exhibitor-viewer, viewer-maker and makerexhibitor. To any of those dual relations some specific themes regarding the ethnographic museum belong.

I would mention the selection of the object as a first point of what happen and of which are the themes that develop when the exhibitor meet the viewer. At the beginning of every ethnographic exhibition the curator takes authoritative and sometimes-contested decision on what type of reality or value the object represents only by choosing them among a bigger collection. He can also choose to use temporary exhibitions to make a rotation of the objects. His authoritativeness generates some kind of trust in the viewer, ready to see important and interesting things coming from far. Anyway many of those things were probably chosen just because they could strengthen the traditional historic or colonial conception.

Then he chooses how to formulate the verbal discourse with which to show them to the visitor. He choose a narrative, that can be mono-centric or polycentric, he gives messages of inclusion or exclusion, he use a multiple or a single voice to tell histories, and he tries to fulfil a pedagogic function. When he speaks he take into account that he has a certain catchment area of multiple or single addresses. Ethnographic objects indeed are what someone says they are, they are less important then the knowledge about them and how it is transmitted.

The function of the label is very important in the relation among visitor, object and curator: it shows what the curator knows about the object or what he wants to communicate to the people. It can be informative, descriptive, explicative, or just a name of the object. In

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the traditional ethnographic exhibition there are also different ways to put a text close to the object: through a catalogue, an informative paper, a video, a technological device. All of them can favour inclusion or exclusion, depending on the language they they use. Is not possible anyway to exhibit an ethnographic object without making a frame around it.

This frame can encourage an interaction among visitors; it can address to different levels of people (by age, language, instruction), or create discussion, assent or dissent around the theme. It can be more or less declaratively an opinion of the curator. Visitors often don’t perceive how much they are influenced from it.

But there is an intellectual space among the label and the object, and in this space the visitor moves, because he is an active emancipated character, free to read descriptions or not, and free to built his own description on the object. The exhibition is thus a place of free choice. Introducing an identification of who wrote labels could be a relevant way to make clear how everything the visitor sees was subject to a previous interpretation by someone else before being shown to him.

Both of the representations made by the curator, the ‘verbal’ and the ‘visual’ one, suggest that he can never be neutral, and even in the order that he chooses (chronological, thematic, by single population, by historical events) he will give them different values. He will also give a definition of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and choose how ‘the other’ is represented.

He plays the act ‘to exhibit’ by making projects, strategies, installations.

Since museum erases the provenience context of an artifact and elaborates new contexts for it, the exhibitor has the role of mediating between the life of the objects in their natural context and the freezing that happen in the museum.

The main risks are that he provokes misunderstandings or that he tells stories in a way that is hard to be understood from visitors.

In the new social panorama the curator should try to present the multiple perspectives.

How to interpret, communicate, and reveal some stories?

There is a need of new narratives to challenge the authoritarian and mono-centric one.

Unless it seems that much of the power is in the exhibitor hands, probably the bigger role in the narration is the one of the viewer: he is the learner and he gives the final interpretation of the whole exhibition depending on how he observes, what he reads, how quickly, with which interest and with which cultural background.

In the last years even in some ethnographic museums he changed from museum visitor to museum user: his participation is now required in all the interactive exhibitions, where every object is subject to mediation and interpretation and not only to contemplation. The narrative happens and it is constructed in the public.

This public often has prejudice and it’s not familiar with the object, the evoked events and places or times are often far from the visitors. Consequently there are problems in the transposition and representation of objects with no voice: they bring the voice of who chose them and put them there.

The ways in which different visitors move and interact with exhibition displays and narra-

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The Louvre and its visitors, AlĂŠcio de Andrade, Paris, no date

The Louvre and its visitors, AlĂŠcio de Andrade, Paris, 1990

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tives is a personal experience. Each of them is singular and sees things differently. Each of them has a personal experience of time. They have in common that they often find it difficult to establish a relationship with the museum and to understand deeply what they see.

But who is the visitor of an ethnographic museum today? Visitor today is de-territorialized.

When the viewer sees an exhibition of objects he can, in different ways, meet their ‘maker’. This meeting can happen through the verbal discourse with the presence of a text by the user/maker, in addition or in substitution of the one of the curator. Maker in some cases represent their intangible heritage with shows or talks, cultural events and performances. Ethnographic museum becomes a place of meeting, a journey into the ‘other than self’ that develops our relation with the other.

In many cases, mostly recently, happened that the maker is the viewer itself: the inheritor of a culture finds himself in front of the objects made by his ancestors.

In other cases the exhibition can help with the creation of comprehension or empathy among different cultures.

Even the relation between the maker and the exhibitor is fundamental.

This is the field where most of the contrasts happen: any exhibition will provoke discussion. Denunciation and miscomprehension by the people belonging to the ‘maker’ ethnic group are some of the possible risks that every curator must take.

Controversy will probably be eased just when we will offer to other cultures a sufficient number to be seen. Ethnographic museum also hosts religious extremism, intolerance, fundamentalism, economic deprivation, and ethnic conflicts.

On the contrary, in a climate of cooperation, the ethnographic museum can generate reciprocal communication with the community whose art, culture and history is exhibited. The collected object is often not primary art but record, myth, history, and only the maker can help to a full understanding of it. Different roles of curator, guest institution, committee. The museum thus becomes a ‘contact zone’ where ‘auto-ethnographic text’ or ‘transculturation’21 are two of the possible ways the ‘maker’ participate in the curatorial process, both described in Pratt’s essay Museum as a contact zone of 1997. In the auto-ethnographic text people describe themselves in ways that engage with the representations others have made of them. They address to a metropolitan audience or to the speakers’ own community. This kind of narration always involves collaboration between people and the use of more than one language.

Transculturation happens when members of subordinated marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture.

Ethnographic museums, if they involve the culture of the other in an active way, become gathering points, forum for a discussion about the priorities and the narration that are best shared with the represented culture.

Critique collaboration with those two sides of the triangle can create interesting situations.

For example bilingualism in the labels, including words or texts in the original language of the maker, act as witnesses of this important figure that penetrate into the speech and

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directly talk to the visitor.

After a long history of exotic displays of primitive people in civilized places and power imbalance, the ethnographic exhibition should stop representing a major commercial interest or national polity.

The other is not simply ‘out there’ or ‘back then’, but he is here, with or close to us.

The collection of an ethnographic museum is made with objects taken from people that might be now part of the European community.

Another important theme is the one of repatriation of ancient artifacts and cultural property. The movement of objects from a tribal place into metropolitan museum always sounds like an outcome of colonial dominance. Ethnographic collections are matter of power and negotiation.

But some native groups don’t want physical possession of traditional object but simply an on-going connection and control.

Their heritage is shown in the exhibition. In a global context where having a culture represents collective identity, museum thus make sense.

In conclusion the moment in which the three of them encounter each other is the common field of the ethnographic exhibition itself.

Four ways ethnographic collections have been displayed in museums Michael Ames in Cannibal tours and glass boxes describes the four ways he considers most salient concerning with exhibitions of ethnographic collections. Each one of those is derived from a different set of assumptions about Third world people and ethnic minorities. ‘These four perspectives may be represented by different museums, by stages in the evolution of a particular museum, or by separate components of a single large museum.’22 The first one listed by Ames is the ‘Cabinets Of Curiosities’, which in a way precedes the development of professional anthropological perspectives. This way of seeing was born several hundreds years ago, when tribal people objects were collected as trophies, objects of delight, souvenirs or curiosities, after travels to far places. The exotica were the passion of many nobles and royals during the 16th and the 17th centuries. They were unsystematic and filled to the overflowing. The objects had the purpose to stimulate admiration and wonder. These cabinets of curiosities provided the foundations for major museum collections in Europe, and ‘the curiosity they provoked contributed to the development of a scientific interest in the study of cultural and natural materials’. The progress and professionalization happened later made the museum a more organized and systemized institution that replaced the cabinets of curiosity.

The second way to exhibit an ethnographic collection is the ‘Antropology Museum And The Natural History Approach’. At the end of the 19th century anthropology emerges as a discipline and one of its objective becomes to present artefacts from ‘primitive societies’, considered as part of nature. Similarity of form, evolutionary stage and geographical

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origins were some of the classification methods. This early anthropological perspective can still be found in many museums of natural and human history, and in the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The third way consist in ‘Modern Anthropology And Contextualism’ and it’s mostly linked to the anthropologist Franz Boas, supervisor of the arrangement of the ethnographic collections for the Chicago Expo in 1893. Through his work he popularized a new form of display that exhibits artefacts in fabricated settings that simulate the original cultural context from which they came. Objects should be grouped together to illustrate a way of life, thus gaining more meaning. Artificial contexts functioned to see the object ‘from the native point of view’ and to fulfil the anthropologist’s mission.

As a fourth way, still attributed to Boas’s inspiration, but taking us back to the curiosity phase, there is the ‘Formalist Perspective: ethnographic Specimens As Fine Art’. It’s the aesthetic or formalist perspective, looking at the material culture of primitive societies from an artistic point of view. Boas evoked the word ‘beauty’ when talking about tribal materials, and he insisted that aesthetic knowledge is among all peoples.

The formalist and contextualist doctrines are the most opposing ones, one judging the other, but each one of them often accept the presence of the other in the same museum.

Those four ways may help us to think about strange objects and to structure the way we look at them. All four approaches are comparative, they attempt to place things into wider contexts or analysis. They are all imperfect, each represent only a section of a larger reality. Even in combination they don’t represent the whole. All are outsiders views looking in the past of other people. Their displays are still ‘display of power’ (Burton Benedict, 1983). The fifth perspective is ‘The Insider’s Point Of View’.

It is a question of how insiders and outsiders might interact and build upon one another in the process of truth seeking and understanding. There is no ‘one’ insider point of view, views are in a continuous evolution and generations change, but museum should learn to hear them.

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KEY WORDS Main themes while talking about Museums of culture

In order to understand the theme better we need some specific issues to focus on, that will come back often as main aspects or fundamental tools during my entire work. To be able to choose the most appropriate ‘key concepts’ or ‘themes’ I decided to list the ones that recurs more often among the RIME’s mission.

Rime is the Reseau International de Musees d’Ethnographie, a european network of ethnography museums that is rethinking the place and role of ethnography museums. His partners are ten of Europe’s ethnography museums, among the most important globally, and they are pooling their expertise in a series of workshops on social issues focused around perceptions of ethnic groups from the other continents. These museums are: the Royal Museum for Central Africa (leading partner), the Musée du quai Branly, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Museum für Völkerkunde, the National Museum of World Culture, the National Museum of Ethnology, the Museo de America, the Naprstek Museum of Asian, the African and American Cultures, the National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography ‘L. Pigorini’ and the Linden-Museum of Stuttgart.

Being RIME one of the research projects which is most coherent with my specific subject, it’s clear how helpful will it be to follow their guidelines, which correspond strongly to some of the MeLa discourses through a direct speech that starts from the Museums themselves.

At a later stage I implemented those words with some other ones that I found more repetitively in the MeLa documents. In the end I built a cloud of key words by linking the ones that have the stronger relationships. Each of them can have direct relations with three or more other words and indirect links with many other ones. For each group of closer relationships there will be explanations or quotes by intellectuals telling why and how those three or more things or themes meet.

Hibridity Of forms, identities, physical expressions. Cultural hybridization. Hybridization of functions: any cultural building is now mixed together with other functions. Many museums are becoming hybrid institutions, and crossing the formerly separate domains of public education, shopping, tourism, and entertainment. The functional hybridization between libraries, museums, art galleries, kunsthallen, cultural centres, and theatres is already a matter of fact. It is also interesting to notice the progressive hybridization of media and

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No title, Sion Fullana, New York City

A Curious Boy, Sion Fullana, New York City, 2012

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Among RIME mission (Reseau International de Musees d’Ethnographie)

PROJECT In an increasingly global and multicultural world, the European project ‘Ethnography Museums and World Cultures’ is rethinking the pla independence these museums lost the role they had originally had, as repositories of exotic objects and – in some instances – showcases for political museum collections and their former colonisers in the West. The need for ethnography museums to reassess their role has been further dramatised by opportunity to use the accumulated wealth of their collections to provide the public with the keys to understanding other cultures as well as their o focused around perceptions of ethnic groups from the other continents. The workshops are organized around two main themes: ‘modernity’ and ‘firs encounters’ will be addressed through the development of a theatre piece. International colloquia, workshops and focused research throughout the from these museums are also working to create an international network of Ethnography Museums (réseau international des musées d’ethnographie capacity to support museums in economically disadvantaged countries. By bringing together European ethnography museums, research expertise a

dialogue between diverse cultures. GOALS To rethink the place and role of ethnography museums in a political environment which has undergone r promote a better understanding of cultures and to help foster the intercultural dialogue that is emerging as one of the greatest needs in the world to encourage the exchange of experience, best practice, and information between ethnography museum staff, and reinforce academic links between mu understanding. This will be done in collaboration with museums’ education departments. To reinforce and, where practical, to initiate new collabor communities living in the countries in which those museums are located.To shift the museum anthropologist’s role towards that of being a mediator information transfers, and staff exchanges by creating a European and international network of ethnography museums and ensuring its longterm vi objectives: the first interrogates the concept of ‘modernity’, the second considers ‘first encounters’ in time and space.These groups will proceed by po communities. It is crucial for ethnography museums to involve diaspora communities in museum activities, both because of the contribution they can in which we live. MODERNITY Most European ethnography museums were established in the early stages of colonization. In some instances, their r collections were instruments of propaganda for colonial expansion, setting the stage for the economic benefits that European countries could reap fr gone, these museums have had to reconsider their position in a society where the perception of remote peoples is still stereotyped. Some of the museu modernity is considered by some as having been overtaken by ideas of ‘postmodernity’, ‘hypermodernity’ or by multiple ‘local modernities’. We prop rary world than is generally thought. The processes of evangelization and colonization with which these museums were closely, or indirectly, linked ‘ethnography’ itself has suffered from this marginalization, to the point that some of these museums have ceased to use it in their names. Yet they al a world where ‘the field’ is less easily defined, is multiple, and close at hand, both physically and virtually. This research theme aims to criticize a p cal provenance might be. FIRST ENCOUNTER This component of the project approaches the theme of first encounters: both the earliest contacts in peoples who are today trying to make the same journey in reverse in search of a better life. Ethnography museums cannot overlook these migrations globalising world, cultural diversity remains a potential source of enrichment and openness. For some, diversity generates fear and insecurity, contri cultural and racial clichés, so that genuine ‘first encounters’ once again become possible. At one time what made ethnographic museums special wa distant destinations and the media hunt for ever more exotic ‘getaways’, this can no longer be a unique selling point for ethnographic museums. Mo ethnography museums project ought to be one in which the cultures in question are self-reflexively located firmly in the present. Historical, geograp exchanges of information and experience form both the conceptual and methodological basis of the project. They will orient the project and provide framework for doing this. Each institution will call on its research staff, setting up interdisciplinary teams who will take part in the working groups, modernity culminates in the travelling exhibition “Fetish Modernity” to be shown in six of the ten partner museums: the Royal Museum for Central A Leiden; and the Etnografiska Museet, Stockholm.The intention is to question the concept of “modernity”, using as a starting point a selection of artw exhibition will reflect the rationale of the whole project, which seeks to foster dialogue between various public and private participants while respec art and on everyday objects, the goal is to destabilise the popular understanding of the concept, and to spell out its different meanings and their im (réseau international des musées d’ethnographie), is rethinking the place and role of ethnography museums. This project is funded by the Directora Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium and supported by ten museums within the European Union. Having been established during ence, within society the function and purpose needs to be revised. Two study groups, ‘modernity’ and ‘first encounters’ have been created to meet th ‘hypermodernity’ or by multiple ‘local modernities’. As independence has led to something of an identity crisis, a new concept of modernity is applie thought. The theme of first encounters is developed by a theatre piece, combining both the earliest contacts in the age of exploration and those of m a rich dialogue. The RIME project also invites participating museums to establish study groups on a series of divers topics like “Diaspora Communit research, exchanges of information and experience forming the conceptual and methodological basis of the project. By leading the project, providin will call on its research staff, setting up interdisciplinary teams who will participate in the working groups. Handling the practical organization of v live art. Goal is to enhance knowledge about the collections by collaborating with partner museums and organizing joint exhibitions. RIME wishes t well as their own culture. The RIME network offers the initiative of new collaborations between museums and their exhibitions, researchers and kno up the challenge of bringing together European ethnography museums, research expertise and associations, the RIME project will position museums 38

ace and role of ethnography museums. Most such museums were established in the context of colonization. When the colonies were granted l propaganda. The end of colonisation fundamentally transformed the relationships between the peoples who produced the objects in ethnographic y the political upheavals in some former colonies, and by the major flows of migration to Europe. Ethnographic museums in the West now have the own. Ten of Europe’s ethnography museums, among the most important globally, are pooling their expertise in a series of workshops on social issues st encounters’. The investigation of ‘modernity’ as a theme will take the form of a collaborative touring exhibition, while the theme of ‘first life of the project will contribute to the analysis of these themes, with the potential for future publication. Teams of researchers and professionals e, or RIME) which will facilitate loaning of artefacts, and exchange of data and of staff. Particular attention will be given to the new network’s and associations to take up this challenge, the RIME project will position museums as key partners and special mediators in the drive to foster

radical change since the museums’ creation. Because of their research credentials and their collections, these museums are well positioned to oday. To enhance knowledge of the collections through exchanges between partner museums and through joint exhibitions. The project will useums, universities and research centres. To raise awareness and put on events that will increase public access to collections and enhance ration between research staff and academics from the ethnic groups for whose heritage museums care, and to foster dialogue with diaspora between cultures and communities. To place on a permanent footing initiatives such as collection enhancement, joint exhibition projects, iability by creating a legal structure and an appropriate means of funding. RESEARCH Two study groups have been created to meet these ooling the knowledge accumulated in museums and universities. They will work with representatives of the source populations and diaspora n make to the critical analysis of museums’ role and colonial heritage, and because their involvement reflects the diversity of the national societies role was overtly political, for they were designed as showcases for the colonial enterprise, which was presented as a civilizing mission. Their rom exploiting the colonized territories. Independence has led to something of an identity crisis in these museums in recent decades. Their purpose ums chosen as partners for this project have already begun this reassessment and have suggested ideas for activities and discussion. The concept of pose rethinking the concept of modernity as applied to ethnographic museums, as such museums are far more closely entangled with the contempohave trapped some in the past, side-lining them from contemporary intellectual currents, often accompanied by an uneasy sense of guilt. The term ll continue to study the societies whose artefacts are in their collections and archives. They are still gathering information today, doing fieldwork in particular use of modernity (implicitly denied to ‘non-Western’ societies), by showing how it has always been at work in art whatever its geographin the age of exploration and those of migration today. Europeans setting out to discover the world and its riches established contacts with remote s, which generate ‘first encounters’ of a new kind, offering the potential for rich dialogue whose neglect risks impoverishing museums. In a ibutes to racial stereotyping and falsely legitimises harsh immigration policies. Ethnography museums have a role to play in dismantling such as their capacity to give visitors a taste of the exotic, taking them on a journey to faraway places. Now that mass tourism allows trips to the most ore unfortunate is a widespread public assumption that a museum always deals with heritage that belongs to the past. The vision of culture which phical and political contexts should be incorporated, as much as voyeurism, cliché and exoticism must be avoided. ACTIVITIES Research, e the material for publication and awareness-building, directed to both professionals and to the general public. The RIME network will be the , handle the practical organization of various exchanges and prepare the relevant events. PRODUCTION The project’s work on the theme of Africa, Tervuren; the Museo de America, Madrid; the Nàprstek’s Muzeum, Prague; the Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna; the Museum Volkenkunde, works. The exhibition will have a shared component, to which each museum will contribute its knowledge and collections. In this way, the cting their differences. The intention is to examine “modernity” from the perspective of the “desire” it supposedly arouses. Drawing both on works of mplications.PRESS In a globalising and multicultural world, the European project ‘Ethnography Museums and World Cultures’ also known as RIME ate-General Education and Culture of the European Commission for a period of five years (2008-2013). A mutually supportive network, lead by the an early period of colonization, most ethnographic museums were instruments of propaganda for colonial expansion. With the rise of independhese objectives within time and space. The concept of modernity is considered by some as having been overtaken by ideas of ‘postmodernity’, ed and criticized to ethnographic museums, as such museums are far more closely entangled with the contemporary world than generally migration today. Ethnography museums cannot overlook these migrations, which generate ‘first encounters’ of a new kind, offering new potential for ties and Cultural Dialogue”, “Heritage, Collections and Visitors” as well as a “International Network”. The RIME network will be the framework for ng necessary material for publications and awareness-building, it is directed towards both professionals and the general public. Each institution various exchanges and preparing the relevant events like the workshops, international colloquia and productions like a travelling exhibition and to raise awareness, host events that increase public access to collections, and enhance the understanding of the public towards other cultures as owledge. Particular attention will be given to the new network’s capacity to support museums in economically disadvantaged countries. By taking s as key partners and special mediators in the drive to foster dialogue between diverse cultures.

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digital artefacts both within museums and libraries. Hybrid between local and international realities. The idea of pluralism, changeability and hybridity in and between individuals, communities, nations and continents. In this new, hybrid context the museum becomes a cultural centre and a site of storytelling, of indigenous history, and of on going tribal politics. Hybridity as the ‘third space’. The boundary is Janus-faced and the problem of inside/outside must always be itself a process of hybridity, incorporating new “people” in relation to the body politic, generating other sites of meaning.23 Museum The museum is the place where all the meetings and relations happens. The museum as deposit of memory, developer of social relationships and knowledge spreading.

Multiplicity Plural identities and citizenships. Multiplicity of voices, points of view, theories. With the postmodern and postcolonial age there is a shift from great national narratives to a multiplicity of stories, narratives. Multiple coexisting cultures. Many ideas, proposals. There isn’t a unique monolithic reality. Multiple roots and routes.

Culture The discipline of ethnography is involved in the difficult duty of rewriting the history of contact between Western and non-Western cultures. How do museums face the challenge of representing multiple cultures in contemporary society? Museums inevitably articulate relations between people, cultures and places.

Object creator One of the three main actors in the exhibition field. He knows his own culture, which is the culture from which the object comes from, better than any other. He may intervene in the curatorial process through a collaboration with the museum.

Identity Museums are devoted to conservation and transmission of identity. Ethnic, religious, political minorities, marginalized groups, immigrants, local communities, all these actors of our society claim representation in museums, for they perceive the museum as a powerful agent of identity construction. Visitors should be guided today in finding their own identity without impositions, in a world where identities are not clear anymore.

Place Place changes the meaning of a cultural institution but society is not bound to a place anymore. The physical place of the museum is fixed but the audience is not.

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Hybridity

Museum

Object creator

Culture

Multiplicity

Place

Identity

People

Diversity

Object

Archive

Dialogue

Space

Curator

Exhibition

Communication

Collection

Representation

Display

Memory

Heritage

Interpretation

Above Cloud of keywords Page 44 The Louvre and its visitors, AlĂŠcio de Andrade, Paris, 1969

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Diversity Leitmotiv of the contemporary era. It can be treated, silenced, domesticated or recognized to play a decisive role. Cultural diversity is, according to Unesco24, fundamental to humanity, a prime constituent of it. It is a richness, fruitful, necessary as biodiversity. The other has to be seen as co-present instead of different.

People People are represented in the museum, people are contemporarily objects and subjects of knowledge, visitors and/or portrayed in the visit.

Dialogue Concept of cultural and intercultural dialogue. As centres for culture, information hubs, learning and gathering, museums are natural service providers for culturally diverse communities, enabling intercultural dialogue and education while supporting and promoting diversity. Ethnographic museums in particular open with a postcolonial invitation to dialogue all over the world. Their dialogue is interdisciplinary, involving sociology, psychology and biology. Possible use of museums for contemporary dialogue on social issues.

Object The object is the most important channel among the three main actors in the museum: the maker, the visitor and the curator. The object exhibited, the item, is in the middle of this communicative circuit. Talking about ethnographic museums objects were mostly taken from people that were subjugated and are now part of the European community.

Space Also architectural and exhibition space have to be affected by the holistic change needed now for museums. Museums are concerned with objects, spaces and communication devices. The relationship between people, spaces and exhibits, implicates the ways which different visitors move and interact with exhibition displays and narratives.

Contemporary societies must be able to accept the invitation to reconsider their own position and repositioning in terms of space and time. Space as the global space of information and communication.

Archive It somehow represents the Foucault’s theme of heterotopia25 as an institution with the ‘idea of accumulating everything’. It’s necessary to make clear and classify objects in the archive. Anyway now the archive is not only a place of accumulation any more but there is a new interest in visiting the collection ‘behind scenes’. The archive thus becomes an important part of the exhibition itself. Recently they have been strongly digitized.

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Exhibition There must be a deep process of renovation in curatorial and exhibitory settings. Exhibition layout is an important aspect in any museum, responsible of the understanding of a message. Through the exhibition a narration is created by the curator and told to the visitor, that’s why it has a huge potential and relevance in the relation between these two actors. There is a need of continuous renewal of exhibitions, especially the temporary and traveling variety.

Curator The curator makes projects, strategies and installations. He takes authoritative and sometimes contested decision on what type of reality or value the object represents.

There is the risk that he tells stories in a way that is hard to be understood from visitors.

He has the role of mediating between the life of object in their natural context and the freezing that happen in museums. He cannot be neutral, even when he chooses an order (chronological/by artist/historic event/…). The narrative happens and it is constructed in the public. The curator can choose the timing, the intensity with which this will happen.

Collection The presence of a collection can characterize the term “cultural institution”. This collection is offered to users within the frame of a systematic, continuous, organised knowledge structure, and encompassed by scholarship, information and thought. Tangible collection is now accompanied by digital collections. The management of a collection is a consistent portion of the museum mission. Collections should be now reorganized with evolving narratives.

Communication Every museum needs to have a communication strategy. In this contemporary age of migrations museums urge transformations and reconsideration of its ways of communication. The development of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) can play an innovative and central role as a tool for this kind of representation in museums.

Memory Museum is the repository of memory. Museum assisted to a materialization of memory: the search for identification in artifacts and places whose historical configuration seems to guarantee some roots and past embodiment. The object is immediate, present and authentic. The place of memory is not the museum but mostly the visitor, and his experience of it.

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Display The main question today concerning with museum’s displays is: should we conserve or renovate? The physical relationship between the visitor and the artifact on display. Permanent or not permanent display. Concealing, revealing, making visible the invisible—all these acts entail the selection, organization and display of objects and narrations: these are never neutral acts. The relationship between people, spaces and exhibits, implicates the ways which different visitors move and interact with exhibition displays and narratives, and also with other visitors that participate in this collective experience. But, beyond the possibilities offered by digitized books and exhibitions, and by the Internet, the presence of real objects is still unavoidable in museum displays and temporary exhibitions.

Representation As economy, society and culture become globalized, the issues of representation and inclusion become all the more crucial. All the new actors of our society claim representation in museums, for they perceive the museum as a powerful agent of memory representation and identity construction. Theme of the self-representation. Museums create different representations with processes of hierarchic inclusion or exclusion for establishing their cultural and educational domain.

Heritage In Italian and French “heritage”—patrimonio, patrimoine—has the same etymological latin root—pater: father—of the words patria, patrie: homeland. Heritage is conserved and displayed inside museums, both in its tangible and intangible forms. Museums need to reconsider the heritage they are charged to conserve and transmit, and have to rewrite their narratives in a way that is inclusive, shared and appreciated by different visitors. Necessity to deeply reconsider the connection between heritage and museums, archives.

The role of heritage, evolving notion, is that uses the past as a cultural, political, and economic resource for the present and the future. Use and abuse of heritage in the contemporary mass consumption of culture. Growing interest in heritage sites.

Interpretation Every object is subject to mediation and interpretation. In the ethnographic museum an interpretation of other cultures and heritage arises. The interpretation suggested by the curators is never by chance. Museum should try today to present the multiple perspectives and the multiplicity of interpretations. But how to interpret, communicate, reveal?

There’s a need of new narratives to challenge the authoritarian and mono-centric interpretation.

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS Flowchart of questions that I need to answer during this project

Can museum claim political neutrality?

Start

How can an ethnographic museum be defined today?

Which are its characteristics and main challenges?

Yes

How can it play the role of mediator in cultural exchange?

No

Ethnographic museum can keep their colonialist exhibitions

Is its development linked to the contemporary context?

No need of new projects or exhibitions

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It is possible to recognize some recurrent narrations?

How should it exhibit the contemporary society?

Who decides it?

What audiences should they aim to address?

How can it contribute to the creation of new places’ and people’s identity?

Which meaning should be highlighted?

Is it possible to identify some specific exhibition tools and strategies?

Which is the role of the building and which is the one of the place?

Project

End

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HYPOTHESIS An early attempt to provide answers to the previous questions

We have already tried to define what is an ethnographic museum and which are its fields of interest, potentialities and criticalities.

When seeking to answer to the fundamental questions defined earlier, concerning with museums’ behaviour in the present I would say that it’s hard to imagine a museum that doesn’t answer to the contemporary change of society.

A museum is a cultural institution that is strongly linked to a precise temporal condition.

Its characteristics depend on the historical moment in which it’s collocated and in the physical location, together with the aspects of the society to which it belongs. Museums are expressions of a particular time and place, linked to changes in politic, culture and demography.

That’s why we start with the assumption that museums have to rethink their role, mission, exhibition, and communication strategies. And a way to do it could be to assume the role of mediator among the different communities and powers. But it may be utopian to imagine museum as public spaces of collaboration, shared control, complex translation and honest disagreement. Museum frictions are not easy to solve and it’s probably impossible to reach political neutrality even trying to decolonize the ethnographic exhibitions.

It’s also hard to imagine a right way to exhibit the culture of ‘the other’, a correct narration that can be universally shared, even by the represented culture. But there are today some recurrent aspects or tools that we can analyse to find out which are the essential features and behaviours that work well. For example a good practice could be to involve members from the exhibited culture in the collection management and curatorial practices, since it’s clear now that there’s a will of every small group or community to represent itself in museums, to have part in some specific debates when deciding about the exhibition about them. The participative strategy, both involving the ‘visitor’ or the ‘maker’, is an hypothetic mean to reach better results in the exhibition. Other ideas could be to address museums to make their intentions explicit and to openly communicate their mission, objectives or ethic principles, or to make labels that encourage discussions and reflections, or to explain better the choice of one piece of the collection instead of another. Curators have a huge responsibility in deciding which items deserve to be exhibited, and he should underline the subjectivity of this choice, together with an interest on someone else opinion.

Many tools could improve and change ethnographic museums as they are now, while giving space to new interpretations and narrations reflecting the multiplicity of voices.

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In the end I assume that the building itself, and the place where it’s located, have a particular importance in defining some characteristics of the museum and allowing certain dynamics. They reflect the values carried and communicated by the economical, political or cultural age in which the museum is built and it has a particular iconicity. In addiction architecture has always had a particular role in shaping museum experience: there can be an intensification of it through the aesthetic values of the rooms that host it, the interior spaces, the exhibition settings. The morphology of the museum has a complex role and it has changed during time, from the Period Room to the White box. The identity of the place is also very important: it should show the need to find a balance between the sensitivity of tradition and the necessity of innovation.

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METHODOLOGIES AND OBJECTIVES Which goals to reach and how

The first purpose of this study is going to be a definition of the ethnographic museums’ situation in Europe today. Through a quite deep research I’m going to develop a delineation of the more interesting behaviors of some of those institutions, to understand if and how they are changing, why, which of them are leading this change and through which statements. I’ll try to figure out if they are answering to the MeLa questions or if they are still far from changing the diffused colonial vision.

Then I will try to have an idea on how far we are in the progress and I will list some of the good practices relevated in museums of culture, to see if there could be a recipe that will address even the elder or the more consolidate ones to a more contemporary attitude, coherent with MeLa. Finally I will focus on the case of Oslo Kulturhistorisk Museum to find out how and if they’re facing the new evolution in progress, and in case they still don’t or they lack in some important aspects I will make a plan on how to reshape their curatorial program for the future.

This last experimental approach will conduce to a project involving architecture and exhibition design, to answer to the questions previously made through a design based discourse.

NOTES:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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Mela* Books, Museums in age of migrations. Questions, challenges, perspectives , edited by Luca Basso Peressut and Clelia Pozzi, Milano, March 2012, page 31.

M. Heidegger, Lettera sull’umanismo, 1947 http://www.mela-project.eu Mela* Books, Museums in age of migrations. Questions, challenges, perspectives , edited by Luca Basso Peressut and Clelia Pozzi, Milano, March 2012, page 10. http://www.mela-project.eu http://www.icom-italia.org (International council of museums) ‘Museumification’ of seemingly every phenomenon known to humanity (Newhouse 1988, 9).

Mela* Books, Museums in age of migrations. Questions, challenges, perspectives , edited by Luca Basso Peressut and Clelia Pozzi, Milano, March 2012, page 10

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9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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Claude Lévi-Strauss was a notorious, internationally recognized French anthropologist and ethnologist who has had a decisive influence on the humanities in the second half of the twentieth century. Tristes Tropiques was first published in French in 1955, which made him known and appreciated by a wide circle of readers.

M.M. Ames. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes. The Anthropology of Museums, Vancouver-Toronto : UBC Press, 1992.

Camilla Pagani ‘‘Du musee du Quai Branly au national museum of the american indian: genealogie de deux discours museaux’’ Master Recherche Diploma Herman Lebovics Mieke Bal, 1992 Tony Bennet, “The Exhibitionary Complex”, in: New Formation, 1967 (pp. 73-102) Eugenio Donato Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”, in: Profession, 1991 (pp. 33-40) T.Bennet ‘Exhibiting cultures. The poetics and Politics of Museum Display’ by Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine Baxandall, M.,’Exhibiting intention: some preconditions of the visual display of culturally purposeful objects’ in Exhibiting cultures. The poetics and Politics of Museum Display by Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine Baxandall, M.,’Exhibiting intention: some preconditions of the visual display of culturally purposeful objects’ in Exhibiting cultures. The poetics and Politics of Museum Display by Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”, in: Profession, 1991 M.M. Ames. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes. The Anthropology of Museums, Vancouver-Toronto : UBC Press, 1992.

Jonathan Rutherford, The Third Space. Interview with Homi Bhabha. In: Ders. (Hg): Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1990 Unesco, Cultural Diversity. Common heritage, plural identities , edited by United Nations, Paris, 2002 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces. Heterotopias”, in Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, 1967, first published in October 1984

CASE STUDIES

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New generation of museums

Musée du Quai Branly, Paris (FR) RIME 56

Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel (CH)

Musée des Confluences, Lyon (FR) La Maison des Civilisation et de L’Unitè Réunionnaise (FR) project

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Museo Nacional de Etnografía, en Teruel, Madrid (ES) (project) Museo delle culture del Mondo, Milano (I) in costruzione MuCEM Musèe des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée Marseille (FR) Museum Aan de Stroom , Anvers (BE) MA Museo del la Memoria de Andalucia, Granada (ES) Museums already changed

Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museums, Kulturen der Welt, Koln (DE)

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SMVK Varldskulturmuseet Gotheborg Museum of Word Culture (SE) RIME Museo delle Culture del Mondo, Castello D’Albertis, Genova (I) Museums ‘change in progress’

Museum für Wolkerkünde, Wien (A) RIME Museum der Weltkulturen Frankfurt (DE) 76

Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (UK) RIME

Horniman museum, London

Musée Royal d’Afrique central, Tervuren (Bruxelles) (BE) RIME LEADER

MEG Musèe d’Ethnographie de Genève (CH) 84

Museo Pigorini, Roma (I) RIME Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (UK) RIME Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde National Museum of Ethnology Leiden (NL) RIME Museo de America, Madrid (ES) RIME Naprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, Prague (CZ) RIME Linden-Museum Stuttgart (DE) RIME 54

Other museums

Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (UK)

National Museum of Scotland, Edibourgh (UK) Etnografiskamuseet Stockholm (SE) Tropenmuseum Amsterdam (NL) Museum Europaischer Kulturen, Berlin (DE) Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin (DE) Humboldt Forum box Berlin (DE) Musèe de l’Homme, Paris (FR) Museum Rietberg Zürich (CH) Slovene Ethnographic Museum, Ljubljana (SL) Pastwowe Muzeum Etnograficzne, Warszawie (PL) Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden (Ethnographical Museum Dresden) (D) Grassi Museum Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig (D) Museum of History and Ethnography Institute of Jamaica, Hannover (D) Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (D) Museum of cultures Basel (CH)

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Under Main front, MusĂŠe du quai Branly, Paris, France

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Musée du Quai Branly, Paris (FR)

Museum name

Museum of Quai Branly

Place

Paris, France

Year

2006

Contact

http://www.quaibranly.fr

Director

Mr. Stéphane Martin

Museum type

Museum of indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas

Origins and evolution

French President Jacques Chirac was a very influential proponent of the project. The idea born during a meeting with Jacques Kerchache, an art collector with the lifelong ambition of displaying African sculpture.

Collection

3 800 objects are exhibited on 300 000 total, most of them coming from the Musée de l’Homme (250,000 items from the ethnology laboratory) and the Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (25,000 items).

Building

new building

Restoration

no

Architect Jean Nouvel

Target 1 496 438 visitors in 2009 (http://www.museologie.uqam.ca/Page/Document/frequentation_musees_monde.pdf) members/entirely adult public/teachers/families with kids/groups/youths-students/professionals and associations/foreign visitors/disabled visitors)

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Above Exhibitions and interiors, MusĂŠe du quai Branly Paris, France 58

Tasks and values

Short description The museum of Quai Branly it’s thought as a place of meeting and research rather than exhibition and discovery. The function of giving a shelter to the collection is fundamental. The building tries to correspond to the intellectual project of the museum.

The mission Its ambition is universalist, laic and pluralist and it coexists with scientific and pedagogic tasks.

The museum’s will is to act strongly in favour of autochthonous people and primitive arts. It tries to formulate questions instead of making affirmations.

Relevant exhibitions

The museum add to the permanent collection some temporary exhibitions on the mezzanines and in the galerie jardin to allow a rotation of the objects. This is a relevant policy of the museum. Those exhibitions last 3 or 6 months. By analyzing those exhibitions one can try to understand the message and the philosophy of a hybrid and challenging museum.

Curatorial program

Intercultural dialogue? (how,where,which instruments?)

The absence of contemporary objects tends to deny the inventive and creative abilities of their cultures. An exotic exhibition prevail, more emotional that instructive.The recognition gained by these cutures through the exposure of their art to the wider public is symbolic rather than real and practical. (not concrete dialogue with other cultures). The museum lacks of non-western representatives on staff.

Multiple Voices or single narration?

There is a traditional approach of art and others, an approach in line with ‘the denial of voice and values from which the objects are taken from’. France looks like conversing with its former colonies.

Plural identities or single identity?

Quai Branly museum may contribute towards creating a boundary between western and non-western ideas and perception of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

The state of being different is probably the most common characteristic that can be found in the museum. The ‘other’ is well define, and so the ‘us’. All the non-western countries are on a same level.

Local-National-European narration?

The museum is defined with a western point of view.

Parallel lectures? (how,where, which instruments?)

By the way the museum joined in 2010 the RIME project, which lists among its goals a dialogue between different cultures.

Museum’s activities

lecture* room, recitals*, festivals*, presence in social networks and sharing platforms,workshops* and masterclasses*, performances*, concerts*, scientific events* (lectures, seminars), teaching and prizes for university students 59

Exhibition tools

smartphone applications*, ‘the river’ tactile area, 3d images, movies and documentaries, archive consultation in the mediatheque, multimedia information system*, narration through storytellers*, interactive program, thematic explorations, artist’s portraits*

Main critics

The museum has been largely criticized by scholars and anthropologists for its permanent collection. The main critics regards the lack of historical perspective, the ethnocentric and primitivis approach and the erasure of ethnology as a central discipline.

Key issues

Even being one of the most recent and big phenomena in the field of new ethnographic museum the Quai Branly failed in representing contemporary society and the critics it received are the consequence of it. To dedicate so many economical sources to a brand new architecture and institution without bringing any

Bibliography

Camilla Pagani “The Quai Branly Museum Temporary Exhibitions Policy: un unpredictable and diversified strategy”, April 2012 Armelle Lavalou and Jean-Paul Robert, Le musée du Quai Branly, edited by Le Moniteur, Paris, September 2006 Sally Price, Paris Primitive, Jacques Chirac’s museum on the Quai Branly, edited

by Chicago & London: The University of Chiacago Press, 2007.

Alexandra Martin, ‘‘Quai Branly Museum and the Aesthetic of Otherness’’, 2011 Thomas, D. “The Quai Branly Museum. Political Transition, Memory and Globalisation in Contemporary France”, French Cultural Studies, vol 19, n° 2, p. 3, June 2008.

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Exhibit at the MusĂŠe du quai Branly, Paris, France, 2008

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Under Project visualization of the exhibition, X-Tu architects 2012

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La Maison des Civilisation et de L’Unitè Réunionnaise (FR)

Museum name

Museum of the present, MCUR

Place

Island of Réunion

Year

it should have been opened in 2010

Contact

-

Director

-

Museum type

Museum and cultural centre

In 1999 the Regional Council launched the MCUR project. An international architectural contest was launched in 2006 and won by X-TU, in August 2007, by international jury vote. In March 2010, the newly elected conservative majority at Reunion Island Regional Council voted to withdraw its investment in the MCUR project and to stop all actions of the MCUR team.

Origins and evolution

Building

In 2006 a campaign was launched to collect donated objects that would testify to the lives and worlds of Réunionese: 600 objects were donated. They would have been shown in a gallery of the MCUR as the only collection of “authentic” objects.

new building

Restoration

no

Collection

Architect X-TU

Target mostly the inhabitants of Réunion Tasks and values

Short description The island is a contact zone, its population is made entirely by ‘foreigners’. People were brought or arrived there in different ages as slaves or workers. They have different 63

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Page 64 General planimetry, Architectural maquette, Detailed plan Above Front view Pages 66-67 View from far 65

languages and costumes but they gathered in a new common culture. The museum wanted to create a place for exchange and encounter based on an ethic of solidarity and openness.

The mission MCUR wished to encourage exchanges and encounters, to provoke curiosity about interculturality and to foster the desire to invent alternatives to any form of hegemony.

The object of the MCUR would have been an encounter with the Other. This concerns everyone and includes all kinds of encounters: conflicting, friendly, curious, indifferent, amorous, interested, commercial.

Relevant exhibitions

The permanent exhibition was supposed to be called ‘Six worlds, la rĂŠunion’ (Chinese, French/European, Malagasy, African, Hindu, Muslim) and to be organized around 3 autonomous clusters to allow flexibility and renewal.

Curatorial program

Intercultural dialogue? (how,where,which instruments?)

The project started from below, from the island people (participative approach) and planned to involve them even during and after the construction of the museum.

Multiple Voices or single narration?

The museum aimed to give equal treatment to the civilizations from which the Reunionnese come from, to valorise vernacular practices.

Plural identities or single identity?

The identities in the narration had to be plural and to represent all the different ethnies on the island.

Local-National-European narration?

It offers a space for thinking social transformation through the intersection of local, regional and global issues.

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Parallel lectures? (how,where, which instruments?)

The museum wanted to provide the experience of confronting memories, opinions and interpretations. Hence the necessity, also within the exhibition space, of offering rooms for debates, discussions and for listening to testimonies or other oral contributions.

Museum’s activities

-

Exhibition tools

a different kind of cartography* (not a north-south mapping of the world but one in which Europe is only one province among others), temporary exhibitions* as scripts for the visitors, testimonies of oral contributions*, sounds, images, plays and narratives* to evoke the moment, web net for the people outside RĂŠunion*.

Main critics

-

Key issues

Innovating, creative, and opening new grounds for the postcolonial museum. Unfortunately the institution of power stopped its development.

Bibliography

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0708/martinzturekverges/en http://www.regionreunion.com/fr/spip/IMG/pdf/MCUR_PROJECT_FOR_A_MUSEUM-1.pdf

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Under: ‘Museum room, the world in a showcase’ Domus, 2010

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Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museums, Kulturen der Welt, Koln (DE)

Museum name

Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum

Place

Cologne, Germany

Year

1901 (foundation)-2010 (new building)

Contact

http://www.museenkoeln.de/rautenstrauch-joest-museum/

Director

Prof. Dr. Klaus Schneider

Museum type

ethnological museum

Origins and evolution

The museum was born from the need to give a shelter to the private collection of the world traveller Wilhelm Joest, dead in 1897. The old building from 19th century was seriously injured by bombings during the second world war and flooding in the 60’s.

Those are the reasons that led to the planning and implementation of a new building at the Cecilia Street in the heart of the city.

Collection

65 000 objects, 100 000 historic photographs, 40 000 volumes (library)

Building

new building

Restoration

no

Architect Schneider & Sendelbach, Atelier BrĂźckner (exhibition)

Target Tasks and values

Short description The museum reopened in 2010 in a new building and with a new permanent exhibition.

The mission The RJM museum has a diversified exhibition and events program mediating aspects of non-European history, culture and art. It addresses visitors to current issues and 69

problems of living in a multicultural society. Its principle is that only the knowledge of other cultures and lifestyles promotes mutual understanding, appreciation and tolerance between people.

Relevant exhibitions

“People in Their Worlds” is the title of the theme-based visitor routing through the exhibition, which reveals and displays itself in differentiated spatial narratives covering an area of 3 600 square metres. Around 2 000 exhibits are placed in 9 theme-based spaces that have been allocated their own individual staged settings. A prologue and an epilogue frame the pathway through the museum in the form of multimedia spatial installations.

Curatorial program

Intercultural dialogue? (how,where,which instruments?)

There is a will to represent encounter and crossing boundaries.

Multiple Voices or single narration?

To show objects by themes, such as death, ways of living, clothes and jewellery, faith, rituals, help to create a sense of ‘common’ which is shared by all the populations.

Plural identities or single identity?

The inclusion of our own culture in the comparative approach among cultures goes some way towards relativizing our viewpoint.

Local-National-European narration?

The innovative exhibition concept takes up themes which move people all over the world, but which they address differently depending on regional and cultural influences.

Parallel lectures? (how,where, which instruments?)

The comparative cultural approach emphasises the equality and validity of all cultures and provides impulses for thought and stimulating dialogue. Even the cliché and the prejudice is exhibited in a ‘container’ to show how they influence us in defining the ‘stranger’ into our own world view and in dissociating ourself from the ‘other’.

Techniques such as dismantling an object in its individual parts and suspending it from the ceiling, act as deconstruction and reconstruction of contexts of meaning, using preserved fragments of cultures.

Museum’s activities

guided tours, concerts*, storytelling*, festivals*, courses*, theme days*, lectures*

Exhibition tools

A visit for children to the homes of five young protagonists provides an insight into everyday life in other parts of the world and awakens interest in festivities and rituals marking the transition from girl to woman and from boy to man*; Java orchestra instruments and music*; electronic book of different cultural encounters*; digital bookshelves*; a button to illuminate the panel behind the object let you decide if you want to enjoy the pure beauty and aesthetics of the object or if you want to know its story*; a huge interactive table on which a world map is shown with ani-

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Rice storage in the foyer Michael Jungblut, e-architect.co.uk, 2010

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From above Digital book, Mask room, intermediary worlds, rituals, Prologue, Domus, 2010 72

From above Death and Afterlife, Room: The Staged Farewell, Doors, Room: Transition, European Parlour, Room: Living Spaces - Ways of Living, Domus, 2010 73

Under Exhibition room: Between worlds, rituals Michael Jungblut, e-architect.co.uk, 2010 Page 75 The obstructed view: stereotypes and prejudice

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mated projections to visualize the global networks (for example the human migration paths)*; mirrors with touch screens* Main critics

-

Key issues

The new fascinating and interesting exhibition system in Cologne shows which could be one of the best outcomes of the new stream of the postcolonial ethnographic museums today.

Bibliography

http://www.atelier-brueckner.com/en/projects/museums/rautenstrauch-joest-museumcologne.html http://www.museenkoeln.de/rautenstrauch-joest-museum/ problems of living in a multicultural society. Its principle is that only the knowledge of other cultures and lifestyles promotes mutual understanding, appreciation and tolerance between people.

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Under The nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga in the cultural laboratory, http://www.frankfurt.de, 2011

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Museum der Weltkulturen Frankfurt (DE)

Museum name

Weltkulturen museum

Place

Frankfurt, Germany

Year

1904

Contact

http://www.weltkulturenmuseum.de/

Director

Dr. ClĂŠmentine Deliss, since 2010

Museum type

Oceania, Africa, Southeast Asia, North, Central and Southern America museum

Origins and evolution

The Weltkulturen Museum was founded in 1904 by Frankfurt citizens.

67,000 ethnographic artefacts from Oceania, Africa, South East Asia as well as from North, South and Central America; a picture archive of some 120,000 historical and contemporary ethnographic photos and films

Collection

Building

three villas built at the turn of the 20th century, situated on Frankfurt’s Museum Embankment (Museumsufer); project for an extension in 2010, competition won in 2011

Restoration

no

Architect Kuehn Malvezzi won the competition for the extension

Target Tasks and values

Short description The museum has been reopened in 2012 after a renovation of the exhibitions. The project of extension is now stopped for economic reasons and because it would cause some interventions on the park (tree cutting). The Image Archive has been recently re-organised.

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The mission Recognised for its world class collection and leading scientific inquiry, the Museum aims to communicate greater understanding and respect for people and cultures around the world. Key to this process is the fertile relationship between anthropology, art and literature that features as the Museum’s unique selling proposition. To this purpose, it provides a platform for innovative research and knowledge production on world cultures.

Relevant exhibitions

OBJECT ATLAS – Fieldwork in the Museum: this temporary exhibition presents objects from the Museum’s collections plus new works produced by seven international artists who undertook fieldwork in the Museum during 2011. For this reason the museum is considered the first ethnographic institution in the German-speaking world to develop a new research lab on the borderline between advanced art practice and anthropology.

Curatorial program

Intercultural dialogue? (how,where,which instruments?)

‘Object Atlas’ marks the beginning of a conversation about reconnecting with artefacts from a more contemporary, globalized perspective; through its limitations, it revealed the necessity of this continued dialogue.

Multiple Voices or single narration?

Seven international artists were invited to assume the role of anthropologists in situ over a period of weeks.

Plural identities or single identity? ‘‘With the collection at the forefront, issues of globalisation, aesthetic practice, and the changing nature of citizenship and intercultural identity are explored through a pioneering fieldwork process that takes place in the Museum itself.’’

Local-National-European narration?

Parallel lectures? (how,where, which instruments?)

The artistic and aesthetic point of view is read together with the ethnological point of view.

Museum’s activities

project weeks, project days, workshops on identity/beliefs/world views*, explorations outside the museum, conversations*, lectures*, performances*, laboratories* (visiting artists, scientists and academics are invited to undertake research in the laboratory, formulating new interpretations and creating original artworks based on the collection), study visits of the archive* (can be arranged in advance)

Exhibition tools

-

Main critics

‘‘Marred as the collection inevitably is by the allusion to bygone colonial or ‘civilizing’

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Above ‘Object atlas, fieldwork in the museum’ curated by Clementine Deliss http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.it, Frankfurt, Feb 2012 79

missions, the language of ethnography and anthropology still pepper this exhibition via interpretive texts and wall panels. Terms like ‘treasure’ and ‘discover’ hark back to these unsettling themes, in the museum’s otherwise contemporary programme of exhibitions and events that engage with debates and criticism about the possible role of a museum collection today. Language here, as with artefacts, is sought for the purposes of re-appropriation, in an effort to reclaim and reorient historical narratives that have been gathering dust in archives and stores.’’

Key issues

The museum shows an active interest in changing the collection reading through the help of external artists. It also shows to asks for an architectural intervention that concretize its movement toward a more contemporary situation. The economical and urban obstacles are the real limits that the project meet, but the approach is clearly positive.

Bibliography

http://www.frieze.com/shows/review/object-atlas-fieldwork-in-the-museum/ http://www.artandeducation.net/announcement/the-museum-der-weltkulturen-frankfurt-isseeking-to-employ-a-research-curator-for-africa/

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Under Project visualization of the exhibition, Kuehn Malvezzi-Architects, 2012

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Above Plan of the museum, Kuehn Malvezzi-Architects, 2012 82

Maquette, Kuehn Malvezzi-Architects, 2012

Planimetry, Kuehn Malvezzi-Architects, 2012

View, Kuehn Malvezzi-Architects, 2012

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Under Main front view, Graber Pulver Architekten Page 87 Perspective section maquettes

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MEG Musèe d’Ethnographie de Genève (CH)

Museum name

MEG Museum of ethnography of Genève

Place

Genève, Switzerland

Year

1901, project for an extension in 2010, opening should be in 2014

Contact

http://www.ville-ge.ch/meg/index.php

Director

Boris Wastiau

Museum type

ethnographic museum

Origins and evolution

The Ethnographic Museum of the City of Geneva, inaugurated on 25 September 1901, was created at the initiative of Professor Eugene Pittard. Pittard could meet in the new institution public and private collections: mainly ethnographic collections of the Archaeological Museum and Ariana Museum, the Museum of the Society of Evangelical Missions and Weapons Historical Museum in Geneva, the collection was completed during the years through donations and new acquisitions.

Collection

80 000 objects and over 300 000 papers witnesses

Building

Villa Lombard, building in 65-67 boulevard Carl-Vogt, future new building

Restoration

enlargement in 1949

Architect new project by Graber Pulver Architekten AG / Hager Landschaftsarchitekten AG

Target 40,000 visitors per year, the public is considered to be as varied as the population of Geneva itself Tasks and values

Short description The Ethnography Museum of Geneva (MEG) is presently undergoing extensive remodelling, both in its structure and infrastructure. These changes will transform the MEG 85

into a modern institution for exhibition, research and teaching. It will reopen to the public in 2014. The new MEG will be a dynamic living space with new facilities for the museum: a big multi-purpose room, two conference rooms for 50 people, an atelier for groups and children, a library for study and research, a bookshop and a café with terrace, a landscaped public garden. 2000 mq of the new building will be dedicated to exhibitions: large temporary exhibitions and a permanent exhibition of the treasures marked by MEG, chosen from the collections dedicated to Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania.

The mission The new structure will allow the museum institution to reach the optimal conditions to conserve, research and diffuse the ethnographic patrimony. The new spaces will allow the organization of public events such as movie festivals and projections, shows, concerts and manifestations; the study rooms will help cultural and scientific meditation.

Relevant exhibitions

It will be the first museum of its kind to house a gallery in the permanent collection that will present anthropology to visitors: the history of the science of anthropology, of the collection and of the institution. The museum will aim to strike a balance between the past and contemporary issues.

Curatorial program

Intercultural dialogue? (how,where,which instruments?) ‘‘We are not just a conservatory, but a place for social intercourse, where we explore our relationship to the world through our collections, showcased and articulated in our exhibitions.’’

Multiple Voices or single narration?

As an ethnographic museum, the MEG is dedicated to being a place for reflection on human societies, a place of questioning and research on the most important issues and concerns of our time. It is conceived by the curators as an observatory of the world of today and as a laboratory of museology. We intend our questioning to promote freedom of thought, to provoke astonishment, and to stimulate reflection.

Plural identities or single identity?

Its collection originates from the five continents – including Europe – which is unusual for museums of this type.

Local-National-European narration?

Some European museums feel the obligation to comply with some highly debatable concepts promoted by various global actors, beginning with the definition of “museum” and the various concepts of “culture”. Of current importance are notions of “cultural diversity” spuriously equated with “genetic diversity” “heritage” “intangible heritage” “conservation of living traditions,” etc. The MEG will consider these notions as critically as any other cultural product and debate them in the public space.

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87

Library, http://graberpulver.ch

New building faรงade and landscape garden, http://graberpulver.ch

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Parallel lectures? (how,where, which instruments?)

In addition to its core values of studying its collections and making them available to the largest public through exhibitions, cultural mediation and scientific activities, the MEG has recently created the Centre for Anthropological Research (CRA). The Centre aims at putting more emphasis on field research, scientific dissemination (publications, colloquiums), fellowship programs, and teaching. The project of the MEG is resolutely anthropological in nature. It aims at bringing the discipline back to its core activities and values. In addition, the MEG intends to take an active role, in conjunction with other partners, in the programming of performances and the promotion of works by contemporary artists. There is no permanent collection but they organise three to four temporary exhibitions per year.

Museum’s activities

workshops*, family workshops*, guided tours in english, walks in the city, RSS news

Exhibition tools

-

Main critics

The MEG proposed a model opposed to the Pavillion des Sessiones aesthetic one, giving museal dignity to objects from the everyday life of the other cultures, and not only to the best pieces of art. This vision, shared by many other museums, risks to bring to a museum that host even valueless old items that doesn’t deserve to be in a showed in a museum case.

Key issues

The Museum of Ethnography in Geneva is one of those currently in the process of redeveloping its exhibition spaces, rethinking its museography and its role in society.

Bibliography http://www.unspecial.org/UNS698/t22.html

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Page 89 Foyer, http://graberpulver.ch Under Construction site

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Oslo Kulturhistorisk Museum In deep analysis of the selected case

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Under Kulturhistorisk museum main front on Frederiks Gate

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KULTURHISTORISK MUSEUM, OSLO state of art

The Museum of Cultural History (Kulturhistorisk museum, or KHM) is an organisation at the University of Oslo, Norway. It has the responsibility to take care of items, do research and exhibit the Norwegian history before the reformation. The KHM was established in its current form in 1999 by a merge of the Museum of National Antiquities, Coins and Medals, and Ethnographic Museum. In 2004 the name was changed to Kulturhistorisk museum.

The Museum of Cultural History is one of Norway’s largest cultural history museums. It holds the country’s largest prehistoric and medieval archaeological collections, including the Viking ships at Bygdøy, a substantial collection of medieval church objects, and a rune archive. The museum also has a comprehensive ethnographic collection that includes objects from every continent, as well as Norway’s largest collection of historical coins.

The activities of the Museum of Cultural History are currently localized in four main buildings in Oslo city centre, the Historical Museum at Frederiks gate 2 and Frederiks gate 3, the laboratory sheds at Frederiks gate 3 and St. Olavs gate 29, as well as the Viking Ship Museum on the Bygdøy peninsula.

The museum’s oldest dates recur back to 1811. The museum had his own house in 1902 with the building of the Historical museum Tullinløkka. Georg Andreas Bull was the architect of this main building.

When the Oseberg ship was dug up in 1904 as the last of the three Viking ships, it was decided to establish a museum of Viking ships. Architect Arnstein Arneberg won the architectural competition in 1914 for a new museum building at Bygdøy. The first phase was completed in 1926, the last stage in 1957. Cultural Museum has the largest collections of antiquities, coins and ethnographic material in Norway, with about 1.5 million items. This collection has never been assembled in one place, but has been spread among the Historical Museum and the Viking Ship Museum.

In the Historical Museum, the findings from the Viking era are on display along with other archaeological finds from prehistoric times in Norway (Oldsaksamlingen), Antique Collection, Coin Cabinet and the Ethnographic Collections. In the Viking Ship Museum three Viking ships and artifacts from four graves from the Oslofjord area (Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune and Borre) are exhibited.

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Some museum’s spaces grown out of the original areas since the two museum buildings were completed, such as storage, spaces for meetings, office space, laboratories, showrooms and public facilities. The museum’s operations are currently hosted in ten different locations in Oslo.

The Viking Ship Museum is Norway’s most frequently visited museum with around 430 000 visitors a year. The Historical Museum has around 65 000 visitors a year.

The new director since September 2011 is Rane Willerslev, a Danish anthropologist who is Professor at the Institute for Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics at the University of Aarhus, in the city of Aarhus, Denmark. He was also the director of the Ethnographic Collections at Moesgård Museum, Denmark.

About 231 staff members work in the museum, and they go from administration field to conservation, from exhibition planning, to documentation, photography, archaeology, anthropology, etc...

The main subunits in which they are organized are these ones: Administration, Business Affairs, Department of Archaeology, Department of Conservation, Department of Documentation, Department of Ethnography, Department of Heritage Management, Exhibitions, Education and Public Services.

Among the activities of the museum we can list web exhibitions, guided tours and lectures, things that are regularly conduced in almost every museum today. But is going to be important for my work to do a field research and go deeper into the specific behaviours of this institution, mostly regarding the ethnographic collection and the MeLa topics.

Concerning with the exhibition devices the museum doesn’t seem to be far from the typical old museum: glass cases, labels, a certain path to follow and some temporary exhibitions.

It’s clear at a first sight that the museum need to be refashioned in its outfit: the cases are narrow and a bit ugly, their content unclearly disposed and badly lightened, the labels consist in huge Norwegian text with very small double language explanations, glued on the main panel.

The ethnographic exhibition is probably the less stimulating one, comparing to the archaeological one for instance.

There are some context reproductions with fake characters and some booklets for deeper studies on specific themes are available for the visitors. But all the supports clearly show to belong to an exhibition that is by now too old, who will hardly be com-

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America exhibition room, Ann Christine Eek, © Kulturhistorisk museum

Artic exhibition room, Ann Christine Eek, © Kulturhistorisk museum

East Asia exhibition room, Ann Christine Eek, © Kulturhistorisk museum

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Above Exhibition ‘Pilegrimsspor’ Tri Nguyen Dinh, 2010 98

municative for people and that doesn’t involve any kind of ITC. Anyway there have been quite a lot interesting exhibitions about different themes involving the ethnographic collections, using them to tell some interesting stories. I will list some of them below, concerning with the country of Africa: Made in Africa (2002) Markets in West Africa make some of the dreams of the consumer and the good life possible. West African markets provide local answers to global influenced dreams.

Adornment - Outside and In (2011) Jewellery creates and maintains relationships and boundaries between people. Aesthetically force can redefine relationships and moving boundaries. Representations of the beauty are not value-neutral.

Congo Track (2007) In the early nineteenth century had Norden close ties to the Congo. For decades symbolized the Congo throughout Africa for people in the region. Our society and our history is still being woven together. There are tracks everywhere. Both here and there.

A relatively peaceful tropeliv (2007) In June 1907 came the boy Kristiania Find Kjelstrup to the port of Boma in Kongo. This was the beginning of three years of service under colonial master King Leopold II. Fifty years afterwards described Kjelstrup stay as “a relatively quiet and peaceful tropeliv”.

The mummy lives! (2001) Mummification was a painstaking and costly process that was performed on all deceased Egyptian citizens that the body would be preserved for all time.

In conclusion it will be important to analyse better in situ which are the lacks and which are the good aspects of the current exhibition settings of the ethnographic collection to improve them or keep them. Another central point of my research will be to understand which are the future intentions of the group ‘New museum’ that is now appointed to create a new outfit for the KHM, how many of the MeLa topics will be involved and improved in the museum and how.

In the end I will give my contribution to create a well-defined curatorial and architectural plan to let Kulturhistorisk Museum go toward the new development stream of museums in the XXI century.

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Under Numismatics collection, 2012

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Collection analysis

The Ethnographic Collection of Kulturhistorisk museum is not huge compared to international standards (about 60.000 objects), but it is the most important ethnographic collection in Norway and quite an early one. The Ethnographic Collection of the Museum of Cultural History was founded as part of the University of Oslo in 1854 at a time when Norway was rediscovering and inventing its national identity after centuries under Danish rule. The first objects thus included “ethnographic leftovers” from Danish museums and items representing Norwegian peasant culture and northern Sami culture. With time most of the Norwegian and Sami objects were transferred to the Folk Museum (Norsk folkemuseum), and the Egyptian and European antiquities became an independent collection within KHM (then called Historic Museum). Today the strength of the Ethnographic Collection are the collections from Artic regions, East-Africa, Japan, Tibet, Melanesia and Polynesia. Another section which is considered very useful is the little collection from Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

Since the University’s ethnographic museum was established in 1857, explorers, diplomats, seamen, missionaries, anthropologists and others have added objects from all corners of the world to the collection. Among the contributors are renowned figures such as Roald Amundsen and Carl Lumholtz.

The collection has grown through gifts, purchases and exchanges, and now comprises objects ranging from the merely odd, through the everyday, to the extremely valuable. In addition to telling their stories about far-off peoples and other continents, these objects say a great deal about the people who collected them and about those who received them and included them in the collection.

Ethnographic collection provenience (number of pieces)

18.602

12.746

7.175

3.637

1.950

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Object provenience distribution

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103

3051

405

Asian items

580

3152

(% on the total of the ethnographic collection)

AMERICA

6535

31%

SOUTH ASIA

5962

India 4912 Unknown 1118

NORTH EUROPE Buthan 230

Sri Lanka 213 Burma/Myanmar 1453 108

Pakistan 93

EUROPE

ASIA

2519

342

35%

2%

CENTRAL ASIA

501

Mongolia 353 Kirgisistan 87

SOUTH EUROPE Afghanistan 47

4%

NORTH ASIA

746

Russia 746

UNKNOWN

Turkmeninstan 6 Usbekistan 454 3

Kasakhstan 1

8%

MID EAST

EAST ASIA

1501

6318

Syria 1035 Unknown 235 Palestina 124 Iran 109

79

Turkey 54 Iraq 33

Nepal 15

Israel 14

Bangladesh 1

Palestine 12 South Arabia 5 Yemen 4 Jordan 4 Libanon 4 Arab Emirates 3

104

MALINESIA

1434

33%

EAST ASIA

6318

1%

UNKNOWN

148

East Asia 6318 China 3360

MALINESIA

21%

SOUTH EAST ASIA

3960

Thailand 514

AUSTRALIA

Malaysia 413

MICRONESIA

Japan 2278

Filippine 231

Unknown 127

Laos 88

1434 Corea

677

526Indonesia

66

-

Japan/China 13

Unknown 83

Taiwan 9

Indonesia/East Timor 58

South Corea 5

Vietnam 22

POLINESIA

787

Cambogia 5 Burma/Myanmar 3 East Timor 1 Brunei 1 Singapore 1

105

African items (% on the total of the ethnographic collection)

24%

42%

CENTRAL AFRICA

10%

NORTH AFRICA

5744

1294

Congo 4331

Egitto 1013

Unknown 1488

NORTH AMERICA

Algeria 71

CENTRAL AMERICA

Gabon 18

Unknown 48

Central Africa Republic -

Marocco 14

3051

405 Tunisia 13

13%

INDIAN OCEAN

1171

Madagascar 1169 Mauritius 1

CARIBBEAN Unknown 1

13%

EAST AFRICA

WEST AFRICA

1764

1787

Etiopia 822 Unknown 329

SOUTH AMERICA Tanzania 223 Uganda 189

580

3152 Kenya 91

Libia 8

Sudan 64

Egitto 7

Sudan/Uganda 38 Somalia 29

AMERICA

EUROPE

ASIA

Egypt/Sudan 5 Tanzania 1

106

6535

2519

342

SOUTH ASIA

CENTRAL ASIA

NORTH ASIA

Malawi/Mozambico/Tanzania 1

MID EAST

EAST ASIA

A

ICA

13%

WEST AFRICA

1787

3%

UNKNOWN

352

6%

SOUTH AFRICA

886

Mali 523

South Africa 218

Niger 278

Namibia 215

Tsjad 182

Unknown 166

Togo 153

Zambia 156

Kamerun 137

Botswana 63

Senegal 130

Angola 55

Unknown 111

Zimbabwe 13

Benin 76

Mozambico 3

Ivory coast 53 Nigeria 45 Ghana 33 Liberia 28 Burkina Faso 7

EAST ASIA

UNKNOWN

SOUTH EAST ASIA

107

American items (% on the total of the ethnographic collection)

13% CENTRAL AFRICA

NORTH AFRICA

INDIAN OCEAN

EAST AFRICA

WEST AFRICA

5744

1294

1171

1764

1787

42%

NORTH AMERICA

3051

6%

CENTRAL AMERICA

8%

CARIBBEAN

405

580

44%

SOUTH AMERICA

3152

USA 1063

Guatemala 232

Cuba 530

Mexico 1496

El Salvador 139

Unknown 26

Peru 581

Canada 374

Belize 19

Barbados 11

Unknown 488

Unknown 255

Costa Rica 8

U.S. Virgin Islands 6

Argentina 290

Usa/Mexico 6535 7

Nicaragua 2519 3

Frankrike 342 3

Bolivia 153

Canada/USA 2

Panama 3

Haiti 3

Ecuador 136

Jamaica 3

Venezuela 120

Saint Vincent 2

Paraguay 72

NORTH Saint LuciaASIA 1

MID EAST Surinam 24

AMERICA

SOUTH ASIA

EUROPE

CENTRAL ASIA

Brasil 888

ASIA

EAST ASIA

Uruguay 7

5962

501

746

Guyana 4 1501

6318

Brasil/Colombia 2 Trinidad og Tobago 1

108

NORTH EUROPE

SOUTH EUROPE

UNKNOWN

MALINESIA

A

5744

1294

Artic items

1171

1764

CARIBBEAN

SOUTH AMERICA

580

3152

(% on the total of the ethnographic collection)

17%SOUTH CENTRAL AMERICA AFRICA

NORTH AMERICA UNKNOWN

3523051

69%

AMERICA

6535

Canada 1113 Groenland 4502

SOUTH ASIA USA 918

Unknown 6

5962

886 405

27%

EUROPE

4%

ASIA

2519

342

Unknown 147

Russia 342

Finland 53

CENTRAL ASIA

Norway/Finland 2

Asia/America 1

NORTH ASIA

MID EAST

746

1501

EA

Norway 2164 Norway/Sweden 501 1 Russia 139 Sweden 62

NORTH EUROPE UNKNOWN

1481453

AUSTRALIA

SOUTH EUROPE SOUTH EAST ASIA

UNKNOWN

3960454

79

MICRONESIA

POLINESIA

MAL

14

109

Oceania items (% on the total of the ethnographic collection)

7% EAST ASIA

UNKNOWN

SOUTH EAST ASIA

6318

148

3960

42%

MALINESIA

20%

AUSTRALIA

15%

MICRONESIA

23%

POLINESIA

1434

677

526

787

Papua Nuova Guinea 530

Australia 677

Micronesia Federation 418

Samoa 263

Unknown 386

Kribati 78

Fiji 158

Indonesia 202

Marshalloyene 12

New Zeland 123

Salomon Islands 200

Palau 5

Tonga 80

Vanuatu 128

Nauru 2

Cook Island 60

Nuova Caledonia 53

USA 31 French Polinesia 28 Easter Island/Rapanui 26 Unknown 19 Niue 6 Tuvallu 6 French Polinesia/ Cook Island 1 Pitcairn 1

110

6535

2519

European items

342

(% on the total of the ethnographic collection)

4% SOUTH ASIA

CENTRAL ASIA

NORTH ASIA

MID EAST

5962

501

746

1501

73%

23%

NORTH EUROPE

SOUTH EUROPE

1453

454

Norway 737

Italy 253

Germany 447

Greece 75

Finland 84

Turkey 51

Denmark 70

Cyprus 21

Sweden 64

Spain 14

Russia 35

Albania 12

France 19

Portugal 8

Britain 17

Croatia 6

Island 12

Unknown 6

Irland 12

Serbia/Montenegro 5

Scottland 5

Italy/Greece 3

4%

UNKNOWN

79

EAST A

631

MALINES

1434

Unknown 79

Netherlands 4 Ucraina 3

111

Collection by theme (number of items)

3

8

orientations indeterminate material 112

12

31

45

folklore

human different ages

reproduclaw tion, sexuality and childbirth

100

113

138

276

child care individual family and training and human relatives education biology and personality

389

639

768

military and War

death and burial

exchange of society, social life goods and local comservices munities, government and social issues, health and disease

937

1 253

1 704

1 755

1 984

2 316

2 362

3 654

capital and labor, goods and services

population history and culture

natural conditions

transport

communication and documentation

building spiritual crafts beliefs and houses and religion settlement

3 978

4 613

8 140

10 207 10 675 11 790 16 321 26 191

science and manufacture mainteclothes, and resources daily leisure perforof leather nance of life, body jewelry and ramate- arts entermances and fiber food, drink rialer tainment

energy technology industrial machinery 113

Theme cross Countries Asia Africa America Oceania Europa Artico

3

8

orientations indeterminate material 114

12

31

45

folklore

human different ages

reproduclaw tion, sexuality and childbirth

100

113

138

276

child care individual family and training and human relatives education biology and personality

389

639

768

military and War

death and burial

exchange of society, social life goods and local comservices munities, government and social issues, health and disease

937

1 253

1 704

1 755

1 984

2 316

2 362

3 654

capital and labor, goods and services

population history and culture

natural conditions

transport

communication and documentation

building spiritual crafts beliefs and houses and religion settlement

3 978

4 613

8 140

10 207 10 675 11 790 16 321 26 191

science and manufacture mainteclothes, and resources daily leisure perforof leather nance of life, body jewelry and ramate- arts entermances and fiber food, drink rialer tainment

energy technology industrial machinery 115

The external storage in Økern

Due to some lacks of commodities in the elder buildings the KHM established in 2008 an external storage in the outskirts of Oslo. The main problems of an old building are typically: a bad area efficiency, long transport roads, problem with pests, leaks in the building, installations to other areas through the storage, water installations in the storage.

The new space consists in 3 000 sqm of place for storing, 3 000 sqm of working area for registration, conservation, photo and research, 1 000 sqm of offices and meeting facilities. The basement of the building hosts large archaeological objects, large ethnographical objects, extra fragile objects. The first floorhosts three storages with compact shelves and cool storage (12° C) for the particular pest exposed material. Concerning with the content of the storage there are 45.000 ethnographical objects, part of the archaeological collection (large objects, Viking ship objects and middel age objects), antiquities and copies. A particular attention were put to some aspect that are necessary to the right conservation of cultural material: climate control (15-25°C depending on the material) , fire safety, security, pests (IPM - Integrated pest management), wather or flood control, humidity (45-55%), dust protections.

There are some roles for the staff to respect, in order to avoid certain problems: they need to wear clean shoes and clothes, they cannot bring in bags or food. Every object comes through an entrance and then is cleaned before going into the whole process, that’s why some rooms are classified as ‘dirty’ and some as ‘clean’.

The building has taken over two years and costs close to 20 million, but it is also a high-tech museum magazine that is clearly the most advanced in the Nordic countries and ranks among the best in Europe.

45.000 Storage

116

15.000 Display

60.000 items

(ethnographic collection)

Under Professor Haakon Glørstad in the storage forskerforum.no

117

Appendix on immigration evolution in Norway through time

To realize in which measure Norwegian culture is changing and its population is mixing we need to take stock of the demographic situation and immigrant fluxes.

According to http://www.ssb.no, a statistic Norwegian website, there are 547 000 immigrants and 108 000 Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents living in Norway. Together these two groups represent 13.1 per cent of Norway’s population.

Immigrants are represented in all Norwegian municipalities. Oslo has the largest proportion with 23 per cent, or 139 000 people.

44% of all the immigrants come from Asia, Africa or South- and Central-America.

2 in 10 immigrants have lived in Norway for more than 20 years, and 4 in 10 have lived here for 4 years or less.

53% of all Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents have parents with an Asian background. 18% are 20 years or older.

The reasons for such large numbers seem to be Norway’s booming, natural resource-driven economy and large demand for labour.

These information might be already sufficient to have an idea of the fact that Norway today, and Oslo in particular, is subject exactly as other countries, maybe even more, to a melting pot that is going to transform the social panorama completely in a few decades. This fact strengthen the conviction that a change in museum is required to face the new and future reality, and that ethnographic museums in particular should know who are they addressing to.

80 000 70 000 60 000 50 000 40 000

30 000

20 000 10 000 0 -10 000 118

1951

1961

1971

1981

1991

2001

2010

Immigration in Norway

13,1%

547 000 immigrants 108 000 Norwegian-born with immigrant parents

44%

of all the immigrants come from Asia, Africa or South- and Central-America

2/10

immigrants have lived in Norway for more than 20 years

4/10

have lived here for 4 years or less

53%

of all Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents have parents with an Asian background

18%

are 20 years or older

Immigration in Oslo

23% 139 000 people

119

Foreign population in Norway by continent (% on the total of foreigners)

60,4%

23,3%

7,9%

7,7%

0,4%

Turists presence (non-resident guest nights in Norway by nationality, 2010)

1 800 1 600 1 400 000 1 200 000 1 000 000 800 000 600 000 400 000 200 000 0 Germany

120

Sweden

Denmark Netherlands

UK

France

USA

Spain

Poland

Hadia Tajik, the 29 years old Minister of Culture of Norway letteradonna.it

121

Bigger groups of foreign populations in Norway by country (1/01/2012) (number)

Norwegian born to immigrant parents Immigrants

122

Poland

Sweden

Pakistan

Somalia

Iraq

Germany

Lithuania

Vietnam

Denmark

Iran

Russia

Turkey

Philippines

Bosnia

Thailand

0.000

10.000

20.000

30.000

40.000

50.000

60.000

70.000 123

Objects related to the bigger groups of foreign populations in Norway (number)

124

Poland

Sweden

Pakistan

Somalia

Iraq

Germany

Lithuania

Vietnam

Denmark

Iran

Russia

Turkey

Philippines

Bosnia

Thailand

0

200

400

800

1000

1200

1400

1600 125

Multiculturalism, an Oslo school class walking up the stairs of KHM, General view of the monumental staircase (R.Albini, 2013) 126

From above Muslim girls taking pictures with their cell phones, A museum guide shows to the foreign students one of the ethnographic sections Exhibition on third floor (R.Albini, 2013) 127

128

129

A boy from Trinidad and Tobago, now living in Oslo and studying Norwegian language in a school for foreigners, shows me his country of origin African section of the ethnographic exhibition (R.Albini, 2013)

Pages 128-129 The boy with his foreign class mates View on the staircase (R.Albini, 2013) 130

The same boy shows me some typical costumes from his country of origin African section of the ethnographic exhibition (R.Albini, 2013)

131

Evaluation grid of the case studies in terms of answers to the MeLa* questions

Quai Branly

Relevancy of particular exhibitions

Intercultural dialogue

Multiple voices

Plural identities

Parallel lectures

Mela related activities* Mela related tools*

132

MCUR Present

Cologne

Frankfurt

KHM Oslo

Geneve

Strong «

» Absent 133

NEED OF A NEW SOLUTION FOR THE KHM requirements and choice of the building site

The future of the museum A new Museum of Cultural History is being planned in Oslo. The University estimates a total need of approximately 40 000 mq including new exhibition spaces, space for staff, storage and conservation. The site which was more discussed is the one in Bjørvika, but uncertainty about whether it is possible to move the Vikingships from Bygdøy, has opened up the discussion on the future of the museum.

Debate and reasons The idea to establish a new Museum of Cultural History in Bjørvika was initiated by the Museums former director Egil Mikkelsen. The architecture of the buildings at Tullinløkka and Bygdøy was seen upon as out-dated and unsuited for the needs of a modern museum. The space was scarce, and the working conditions for researchers and curators were not good. The biggest challenge has been to convince the public and the politicians to move the Viking ships. In 2006 the University Board made an official decision to move the ships. Since then several groups have made risk analysis and security assessments on whether it is possible to move the ships. The results are varying, but a few concludes that it is little or no risk involved in moving the ships, however, the treasures from the ships cannot be moved at all. This debate has been mainly focused on the technical aspects of moving the ships. But there are also strong emotions involved when it comes to moving the strongest symbols of Norwegian history. The public has also grown to love the building by Arneberg. The relationship between the space and the ships themselves has formed a strong image in people’s minds. In November 2011 the University Board repealed the 2006 decision, and open up for alternate solutions to a museum in Bjørvika.

It was now time to open up the discussion. When Rane Willerslev, a Danish anthropologist, was hired as the new director for the Museum of Cultural History he has been eager to look at different solutions to Bjørvika, as it became increasingly clear that moving of the ships was unlikely. He observed that the museum has suffered creatively and hasn’t developed much, because it has been so fixated on moving the ships, and on Bjørvika.

Which site for the KHM? Willerslev is now developing a new scenario for the Museum of Cultural History, probably located on two sites. It involves keeping the ships at Bygdøy, and making an extension

134

Under Map of the main three locations on debate Pages 136-137 Articles collage on the debate by a norwegian student at AHO

Bjørvika Bygdøy Tullinløkka

Bjørvika Bygdøy

Bjørvika

Tullinløkka

Bygdøy

Bjørvika

Tullinløkka

Bygdøy Tullinløkka

135 0

1500

on both the sites. According to , one of the main architects in charge to develop a new solution for Bjørvika, in the last few months seems that the only realistic option is a divided solution between Bygdøy (for the Vikings and middle age collection) and Tullinløkka (for the ethnographic collection).

136

137

Bjørvika

In 2006, the board of The University of Oslo made a decision to plan for and move the Vikingships from Bygdøy to Bjørvika, and create a new Museum of Cultural History there. The preliminary work for a new Museum was already underway, but the Vikingships is the main attraction and would make the process for funding and political eagerness easier. Located in proximity to Middle Age Oslo, and in the centre of a new waterfront development, this was seen as an ideal location of a new museum, both contextually and centrality-wise. Bjørvika is being transformed from industrial harbor and transportation hub, to a new part of Oslo with commercial, residential and cultural programmes. The Opera House (2008) is the primary cultural attraction of the new development, and a new Museum of Cultural History would further increase the cultural and experience value of Bjørvika. A strong argument for the location in Bjørvika is the Middle Age context. The Museum is planned in relation to the existing Middle Age park, where Oslo first began to take form 1000 years ago. The park consists of the ruins of Maria Kirken (ca 1100) and a pond representing the shoreline from the Middle Age. The closeness to the water is also presented as an argument for bringing the Vikingships to Bjørvika although the Middle Age Park is not directly connected to the sea.

138

Proposals for Proposals Bjørvika urbanfor Bjørvika urban developpement developpement Proposals for Bjørvika urban developpement

Proposals for Bjørvika urban developpement

Urban Analysis - BJORVIKA Urban Analysis - BJORVIKA Complex Building KHM Museum - V12ULS2 Complex KHM Museum - V12ULS2 AHO -Building FALL 2012 AHO - FALL 2012

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Site Bjørvika

GENERAL

ALBINI - AVELLANA - BABATASI - BOSI - CAPUTO - MONRAD ANDERSEN - TALIB ALBINI - AVELLANA - BABATASI - BOSI - CAPUTO - MONRAD ANDERSEN - TALIB 10/02/12 10/02/12 Urban Analysis - BJORVIKA Complex Building KHM Museum - V12ULS2 AHO - FALL 2012

1 Operahuset 2-3 Bird view on the new development area 4 View of the new buildings

5 Barcode, MVRDV masterplan 6 Project for the KHM and Middle age park by LPO 7 One of the new residential buildings 8 View of the masterplan with the Opera

Urban Analysis - BJORVIKA Complex Building KHM Museum - V12ULS2 AHO - FALL 2012

9 Deichman Library by Lund Hagem 10 New Munch Museum project 11 Bishop palace 12 Middle age ruins

ALBINI - AVELLANA - BABATASI - BOSI - CAPUTO - MONRAD ANDERSEN - TALIB 10/02/12

Pro

Against

-relationship with the Middle Age site

-the building would be hidden by the new constructions

-relationship with a new area of city development -relationship with the water -big area, free -close to other important cultural institutions (Operahuset, Deichman library, Munch Museum) -could be easily reached by tourists, close to the central station -reflect the new trend to build on the water

-the ships have to be moved (with all their fragile related objects and bones) -too close to other important totem of the city (Opera; Barcode); overcrowding of symbols and activities -weak link between the catholic middle age area and the viking period -the area will be strongly occupied by office buildings (15.000 workers) -roads and railways split the site

PARTICULAR

-it’s probably going to be a posh area with not much about cultural mix -norwegian middle age is not really linked to the ethnographic collection -the area is not well connected on foot yet -it’s hard to imagine a new building for people in an area that is not developed yet (no context)

139

Bygdøy

Bygdøy is a peninsula to the west of the city center. It contains a few museums, including the Maritime Museum, the Fram, the Kon-Tiki, Folkemuseet and The Viking ship Museum. Otherwise the area is a wealthy residential neighborhood, has some farmland and woods, and is a popular recreational destination during the summer. The Viking ship Museum lies in the middle of the peninsula, not directly in contact with the fjord, beside the Folkemuseum, which contains historical buildings from rural Norway. The museum is the most visited of all the Norwegian museums, with approximately 430 000 visitors a year. The arguments for moving the ships from Bygdøy, has mainly been about the poor condition of the museum building itself. It lacks space to handle the big numbers of tourists during the summer.

Also, it has no climate control, it gets warm during the summer and cold in the winter. There is no way of evacuating the ships in case of fire. The architecture of The Viking ship Museum has also been criticized for being too Christian to house the heathen symbols of the Viking Age. The RiksAntikvar, however, has motioned for having the building listed along with its contents. For many Norwegians the building evokes strong emotions, and the debate about moving the ships has therefore been so long and difficult. To find space for the needed 40 000 m2 at Bygdøy, with its context of low wooden houses and woodland could also be as risky as to move the ships.

140

1

2

5 7

3

4

6 8

9

10

Site Bygdøy

GENERAL

1-2-3-4 Viking ship museum, interior 5 Bird view on the Bygdoy peninsula 6 Viking ship museum, interior

9 Kon-Tiki Museet, outside 10 Huk beach

7 Kon-Tiki Museet, interior 8 Norsk Folkemuseum

Pro

Against

-no need to move the ships too far

-too small area

-museum peninsula (Folkemuseum; Fram Museum; Kon-Tiki Museum; Holocaust Center; Norwegian Maritime Museum)

-unsolved necessities (like parchings)

-the totems of the city would be scattered on different places

-outside the center and city life -hard to imagine an extention of the cross shaped building By Arneberg

-new possibilities for the tourist and new points of view to admire the city -the architectural mark by Arnstein Arneberg can be preserved and still visited -easy to reach from the cruises

PARTICULAR

-the character of the site doesn’t represent the social mix and the contemporary multicultural reality -hard to imagine an extension for the ethnographic collection -far from the communities -mainly linked to vikings and folkmuseum (norwegian culture and not other cultures)

141

Tullinløkka

Tullinløkka is in the heart of Oslo, in close proximity to the Royal Palace, the University and the Parliament. It is also the location of the National Gallery. Tullinløkka usually refers to the open space in between the museums. It has been the location for multiple architectural competitions and many debates. These have never resulted in any project, and it has been a parking lot for years. In 2011 a temporary park was established here. The Museum of Cultural History was built in 1904 and is has its main entrance towards Fredriksgate, away from Tullinløkka. The National Gallery is being moved to a new museum at Vestbanen, and will be empty in short time. No plans have been made for its after use. Discussions are being made about moving the Munch museum here, but it could also be part of an extension of the Museum of Cultural History. The museum buildings itself are being criticized for being too old to house a modern exhibition. Also, as the two buildings are both facing away from Tullinløkka, they have never benefited from the potential of the open space.

142

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Site Tullinløkka

GENERAL

1-2 Historisk museum elevation 3 Tullinlokka area 4 Project on Tullinlokka by Kjark

5 Nationalgalleriet, Munch room 6 Nationalgalleriet elevation 7 Nationalgalleriet, elevation 8 MAD project on the University

9 Karl Johans gate and the Royal palace 10 The old University of Oslo 11 National Theatre 12 MAD project on the University

Pro

Against

-location inside the city center

-more difficult to reach for big groups or cruises

-historical identity of the site -relationship with the university campus

-absent relationship with water

-close to important institutional buildings (Royal Palace, Parliament, Nationaltheatret)

-the spaces of the old building are unsuited for

-easily accessible and well connected

-existing buildings have no universal access

-already established as a cultural area

-all attempts at building at Tullinlokka have failed

-possibility to solve the question of the urban void

-all the cultural building are moving to the coast

the modern requirements of a museum

-close to green and pedestrian areas -close to the main ethnic neighborhood of Oslo

PARTICULAR

-balance between the sensitivity of tradition and the necessity of innovation: the museum is still representative old institution but it’s rethought

-retrò choice, still embody power and representativity

-importance and symbolic value of a place -point of conjunction between the national culture and the other cultures -important to rethink an old collection with new outfitting: it can be emblematic for other museums

143

144

145

Tullinløkka potentialities and area’s value ‘Tullinløkka is a core area of the capital, Christiania, as the new city was formed on the basis of Linstows and 19th century urban design ideals. The Karl Johans gate was the backbone, with monumental buildings for the most important social functions. Cross Streets ranks right after the street hierarchy, and also along these lies detached monumental construction of important public functions. St.Olavs gate has a special role as an oblique axis from the castle of St. Olav’s Church, and the pendant to the axis of the Palace of the older buildings in Pipervika the towers at Akershus Fortress.

The Historical Museum and the National Gallery are the main historical monuments. They are also important elements of 1800s urban environment. Both museums are therefore under protection. The building’s value is linked to their exteriors, interiors and their structural and communication structure. The buildings are thought of as standalone monumental building, with exposed, deliberately shaped and lavish facades on all sides. They are symmetrical about a central axis. Axial relationships with University Hall and the University of Copenhagen is less significant. The buildings on Kristian August Gates opposing side has a general character without reference to the museums.

Frederiks gate 3 and the National Art Academy have no legal protection, but they are known as administratively protected. It is a system of reserved buildings in state ownership and means that the buildings are managed as if they were protected. The two main buildings are located to each street, but with large, free greenery around. Atelier building is simultaneous with the main building and is free in Geographic Surveying. There’s an open garden of great environmental value around the two buildings.’* The National Gallery and the Historical Museum were built for museum purposes and have always been operated in relation to it. The buildings’ use gave them such a great identity in the Oslo panorama that there is no reason to change them. The buildings are ideal for museum purposes based on the dimensions of rooms, room sequence and public circulation. For both buildings, however, extensive work is required to meet modern museum standards. These are primarily related to the climate and ventilation, and general availability. Both buildings, especially the Historical Museum, have distinctive interiors of high conservation value.

The National Gallery and Historical Museum have a great potential in relation to the future use of Tullinløkka. A possibility could be to build under floors, which have large transformation opportunities in relation to such mutual utilization.

The buildings an the square are part of a quarter that for almost 200 years has been the subject of ideas, plans and regulatory proposals that would establish and develop the area into a national context. Besides discussing what the site can be used, the new initiatives focused on creating connections between quarters, build parks, and suggest different degrees of new buildings.

146

Above The urban void of Tullinløkka 147

Contacts with the museum staff (R.Albini, Feb 2013)

148

Museum organization and staff subunits

Administration 21

Business affairs 24

Department of Archaeology 33

Department of Conservation 19

Museum of Cultural History Total people 228

Department of Documentation 12

Department of Ethnography 13

Department of Heritage management 81

Exhibitions, education and public services 13

149

Rane Willerslev Museum Director

1- Which are the guidelines that KHM Museum will follow in the future?

We are a University museum and we see research as a mayor role. For us the main task is to transform research into exhibition making and make the interplay between those two more playful and more productive. The boundary between the two should be collapsed so that the exhibition space itself will be seen as an experimentation and research space itself. Another thing is that interdisciplinarity is the keyword for future museums. A museum like our today is an interdisciplinary site. We share buildings and offices, research and exhibition making should go hand in hand in a new dynamic, the various fields of the museum should have more interdisciplinary aspects being linked to the exhibition field.

2- What audience will the Museum address?

The previous statements give challenges relating to the audience because that kind of thinking is very intellectual, is very elitist. This museum has been mostly directed to children and it has been highly controlled by pedagogues while the exhibition has suffered from it. I want to destroy and change that kind of thinking.

3- Will it be possible to identify some specific new exhibition tools or strategies or narrative?

The challenge is to ask the basic questions and explore them, questions about the nature of humanity seen through the diversity of cultures in time and space. But how you do it? Can you create an exhibition like that? It’s a comparative and thematic project explore themes across time and space. The wrong message could be: ‘Look how wonderful! We have a diversity of cultures in the world’. And that’s interesting enough to be in a Museum but as a University Museum we try to research about major themes like what is sacrifice, what is war. Just presenting the diversity of things today is not enough somehow. This reflected the 1990’s agenda of anthropology when relativism dominated society, when every culture was different and couldn’t be compared with the others. Now it’s probably time to transcend this relativism and try to go back to universalism again. Questioning the truth of relativism. If you have a research stuff that works to have quality in knowledge then that quality should be brought back into the exhibition. It’s a huge challenge.

4- Should the Museum retain the evidence of an entanglement with the colonial past or prioritize the contemporary in its collections/exhibitions?

The museum has to be postcolonial. We cannot have a colonial project but we can have a knowledge project, a monument on knowledge, on questionable knowledge. I think this is the code of science: you have to make questions about what the world is about. This can be done about existential themes like what is time, what is death, …

Then you use the diversity as a way of thinking through a theme. Every exhibition has to be very neutral and not authoritative. But more daring, driven by the curiosity to find some universal in the diversity and to make claims on 150

the universal values, with the risk that we will have a debate. Anyway this is not a colonial project, Norway never had colonies, they were colony of Denmark so this Museum was build as part of nation building to reinforce Norwegian identity.

5- How are you working to follow that direction?

A staff group for new exhibitions has been arranged, it is working on themes and on having mobile exhibitions and spaces for temporary exhibitions. There will be no permanent exhibitions, every element can be changed, added, brought to the exhibition. Thus you have a constant flow of changes in the exhibitions that you can use as a strength.

We have a lot of exhibition projects now. Freedom, Indian fashion, Jewellery, Death. Then we will take the best elements from those and we will put it into a more permanent outfit.

6- How will you deal with the different sites and buildings?

We will rebuild the Bygdøy museum as a Viking museum and we will rebuild then Tullinløkka hopefully taking the National Gallery building that is going to be moved. We want to make modern exhibition spaces under the ground. As long as we are waiting for it we will try to make the best in what we have. To re-establish the building in all its original format, with the old decorations, etc… and we will put the contemporary exhibition in this classic frame.

In this way you don’t hide testimonies of the history of the museum during the past. I think there is a very important charm in taking this old building and then reshaping it, instead of making a brand new Museum.

7- Which role will the museum play in society?

The aura of a museum is not really created by an exhibition but through a mythology of the place: if you get the mythology that here people are open minded, very creative, like to play with one another, even the society will start perceive an exhibition like that. This is more important than a beautiful exhibition that will look old in ten years. That’s why the space has always to be dynamic.

8- How can museum engage the people belonging to the exhibited culture in a participative narrative?

I’m very critical about natives defining an exhibition. The new ways to think about cultures cannot be reduced to the native point of view because it wouldn’t be anthropological. And who is this native? Who is supposed to be the one who represent the exhibited culture? But on the other hand you cannot have an authoritarian view of a culture because the natives do read, they do speak and they speak back. You have to have that think about that and integrate it in your project.

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Professor - Department of Ethnography

1- How is the museum organized and which are the responsibilities of the Department you direct?

This is how the museum hierarchy works: there is the director and then the different Departments, the Archaeology Research, the Archaeology excavating, the Ethnography, the Exhibition, the Conservation, the Documentation and the Administration. The specific responsibilities of the ethnographic department are to take care of the collection and to make ethno-anthropological research. The oldest ethnographic institution of the museum was established in 1850’s and the main part of the collection was collected before the 1st world war.

Now collection and museums are here. We have the responsibility of taking care of some items, no matter how they ended up here. I don’t say that this collection came here in the best way, some of the items have been stolen, some have been bought for less than how they should have been paid. But no matter what, they are here! And we have this responsibility. We spent millions and millions to build new magazines to store those objects.

We also have the responsibility to make knowledge about the collection available in the more possible way both from the people who once owned them and to the people who come to see them.

2- What is the role of anthropology today?

I am an educated anthropologist and we all know that both the discipline of anthropology and ethnographic museums have their roots in a world that looked in a different way 150 years ago. I mean, to some extent that the problems pertaining to the ethnographic museum is shared by the discipline of anthropology. What I tent to believe is that anthropology still has something to provide in terms of knowledge to the academic world but also to the public.

3- How will the ethnographic museum evolve in the XXI century?

The only solution or scenario for the ethnographic museum is to try to include this multi-sighed perspective into the museum in the same way that the discipline of anthropology is trying to do. It’s a work in progress for an academic discipline to accomplish the task to look at different perspectives. Today no exhibit designer would try to portrait a culture in a totalizing way.

We could do mainly two things: to be careful, humble in how we present knowledge, and what it seems best today is to organize the exhibitions thematically (groups related to themes, aspects, dimensions) in a comparative way.

In addiction we could reflect on the history of anthropology and research. Their role through the years together with the cultural history of the museum itself should be a part of the exhibitions (how the collection came here, who were the collectors,...) incorporating our own Norwegian history. Basically moving from totalizing exhibitions to comparative/thematic ones without packing items all together by regions and presenting them like ‘this is a group’.

3- Who has the role to think about an exhibition subject in the museum?

The idea for an exhibition often comes from the researchers and together with the exhibition designers. A work152

ing group will be established with different professionals and they will establish how to plan the exhibition. Now I am responsible for presenting a new way to produce exhibitions, a new model.

4- What’s your opinion about the KHM current permanent exhibitions?

I’ve been very unhappy with our exhibitions. I think all the exhibitions should be signed by someone because every of them belong to a particular view. The current setting is very old, the ages of the different outfits are different. The America one was made around 4-5 years ago, the Africa one in the 90’s and we will take it down soon hopefully to make a temporary exhibition about Indian clothes. People and museologists write critics on us and they can have all the reasons to do it. The problem for us is that the museum observers outside sometimes seems to believe that we agree with the current exhibition but is not like that. To make an exhibition is very very expensive, especially in this old building. You have to change, paint the walls,…And it’s also a matter of politics. The last director was an archaeologist and he was not interested in the ethnographic section. Museums are very complex organizations and it’s a constant fight between different interests. Sometimes fights can go ahead for years before you can change an exhibition.

5- How can museum engage the people belonging to the exhibited culture in a participative narrative?

We’d like to involve other people more but sometimes it’s a matter of economy, sometimes it’s an interesting question, since our collections are so old, to understand to what extent contemporary communities know their past. I am a bit hesitant about the development in the UK where minority groups have large influence on an exhibition planning.

We only know a part of the reality. There is no reason to believe that Sri Lanka population, lived and grown in Norway have some knowledge on their originating culture 3 generations ago. In line with the principle of academic freedom I think the final responsibility of putting together an exhibition should be the museum itself.

We repatriated some items to Maori in New Zeeland National Museum and we will do the same for a small village of northern Canada for a new Heritage Centre.

6- Which is the evolution of the KHM exhibition setting?

After the director arrived one and a half years ago they are in a project of rethinking everything: organization, exhibition.This museum has been to a large extent focusing on young children. This is one of my complaining on how it works today (pedagogic exhibition style). So there should be a change of the exhibition; we should activate a larger part of the building in a constant change of the exhibition and move away from the idea of permanent exhibition: good exhibitions should have shorter life. Some exhibitions could be more particularly focused on something and some generally addressed, some should be more provocative, some more mainstream.

Instead of single exhibitions the museum should be seen as a whole with a variety of exhibitions in it.

The basic idea is to move the archaeology to Bygdoy and feel free to develop the ethnographic section better.

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Idunn Kvalø Project Manager - New Museum

1- How did you start working with the group for the new exhibitions?

I: The new project has been initiated by the director to see how to change the exhibition. We started about one year ago. First we tried to decipher what the director really wanted because it wasn’t very clear then. So we decided to start working on that basis: he wanted exhibitions that were thematic, not based on region or chronology, he wanted to work with social anthropologists and archaeologists and our project was trying to engage as many people working at the museum as possible. Quite a lot of people has been enthusiastic but not some of the core people.

This is a very big organization and we don’t know if something will really happen, so some people doesn’t want to waste many energy in some things they don’t know if will ever be realized. And then there is the lack of money. There are a lot of interconnected issues.

T: The up and downs probably make people reluctant.

I: The moment you get the founding then they are all there, but we are not at that point yet, so that people are still reluctant.

2- How do you imagine the new exhibitions?

I: We wants to have temporary exhibitions that change a lot of times, the permanent exhibition needs lots of money and then it would stay a lot of time because so much money was needed for it. So we are thinking now to make more temporary exhibitions that are less expensive and more interchangeable. This requires from the institution different focuses on where people should work.

T: People, time and external founds are the things that are needed. Basing the program of the exhibition in current research in the museum. Research is a sort of motivator for choosing exhibition processes. A lot of museums work in the opposite way ‘we want this exhibition so we research on this’ but here ‘this is the research, how can we turn that into exhibition for the future?’

3- Which is the public to which you are addressing?

I: The ethnographic museums in Geneve and in Koln have a big focus on the public, and on its needs, but at the moment we don’t. Our director says that the public doesn’t know what it needs and it doesn’t know what we, as a Museum, are able to give. But at the same time we need people coming here to see the exhibition because we are a museum in the middle of Oslo which now doesn’t have enough visitors to be placed here. So there should be a balance between using the exhibition as experimental form for scientists and to generate new questions for the scientists to develop further, but also make the same exhibition attracting to the public. It would be very nice to have them together but also very hard. But if we succeed it’s going to be a huge success.

I: in order to reach all the public, several segments of it. Digital solutions are the only ones that allow to reach everybody and give the possibility to stratify information. Then every single visitor will have his own interpretation, even two 154

Tone Wang Section Manager - Exhibitions, Education and Public Services Tags: Exhibitions

Iranians will see the same object with different eyes.

4- How will the museum relate with the colonialist heritage and with the present post-colonial era?

T: We truly believe research is by now postcolonial, so this is no longer an issue. If you use it as a point of departure for the exhibition, then the exhibition also will be post-colonial as well. Any exhibition takes time and money, and it’s not going to be up to date any more in a few years.

I: We already told we want to organize exhibitions by theme instead of by regions. On basis of what is going on in the museum we identified 5 basic themes that we want to develop further: Religion, Aesthetics, Mobility (Colonization), Technology and Death. Since we don’t know when we will have the money and the possibility to rehabilitate this building, this would be a sort of pre-project scheme to be developed further in the future. Maybe things in the future will be changed, in that case we will make some changes on it. After we took this decision I waited for months for the archaeologist to react and then they did. But what really concerns them is chronology, because that is how they explain everything. If you make thematic permanent exhibition how do you incorporate chronology? For anthropologist that wasn’t a problem at all. There will probably be technical solutions to do it but still it is one of the burning issues at the moment. The museum is also responsible for some archaeological excavations in Norway, we also need a chronology for that and a reference on places, which is also important.

T: What really makes it interesting is the cooperation among different fields, and the research.

5- Can you already imagine how to physically realise these projects?

T: We haven’t really though about that yet but I find exciting the theme of how to realize all those projects in this building at the moment. The building has a lot to say and it’s very present. We need to either try to hide it away ore use it to communicate. We have already used the stairs to make the building talk while we used the exhibition halls to hide the building away and make a black box. But maybe now we should forget the black box and use the building and the way it speaks as strength, as a contribution to the exhibition. But how to do that? That building has been built to be a museum, it was a Jugendstil building, it had electricity, and the way it was put together architecturally with its symbols is an attempt to put Norwegian history and prehistory with the world cultures themes. To unpack the windows and the decoration is our first idea.

I: That’s also a current thought for museums in general now. They are taking down what cover the windows to make lights come in again. We are part of trends even when we don’t know it! We need to have solutions for lights, visualaudio,… and for exhibition cases that should be very flexible and movable.

T: We want it to be possible to take down parts and to change them.

I: Regardless the future plans what we have now is this building. The National Gallery maybe will be available in the future but that will be another monumental, big building with narrow corridors so it’s sort of the same problems again.

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To have an experimental site in Tullinløkka maybe will be far in the future. If one part of the museum will be prioritized now that part will be Bygdøy. The Viking and probably the Medieval Collection are going to be moved there.

This possibility depends on politics. Our focus is to make this building as usable as possible. We have already experienced two or three architectural competition here and nothing ever happened. It’s going to take time for the Tullinløkka.

6- Which is the value of the material object in an ethnographic museum?

T: We usually work together with researchers to choose which are the objects that we want to exhibit. The question is: will the new exhibitions really be about objects again? The objects maybe will be the props for the science activity, but is this the only way you use an object? Researchers don’t really focus on the specific objects. Is that a problem or not?

I: The only one who really has the objects is the museum. The real object is there, physically. The way we use digital information today is already different now from some years ago, maybe less fascinating. And we shouldn’t forget the story of the specific object. What we do about any item is to tell a story that doesn’t necessary have to be the story of a population or a region. And to see the object directly is different from just seeing 500 items on a web catalogue.

Sometimes those are objects with which people can relate to.

T: It is not digital, not flashy, not interactive, but you need to go to the museum to experience it. You cannot find it anywhere else. If we loose this aspect, I think we loose ourselves.

7- How will you organize permanent and temporary exhibitions from the time and space points of view?

I: Semi-permanent exhibitions will last for example 5 years. But the hope is that within those 5 years it will be possible to take a subtheme or a sub-corner and change it. Maybe the whole theme could be removed. If we have flexible technical solutions in the rooms we’ll be able to tidy up a room to have 600 mq for a temporary travelling exhibition. Because at the present we haven’t got rooms for that. An entire store for purely temporary stuff could be nice. We have a list of different types of space that we want to have, there will be room for temporary exhibitions up to 1 years, rooms for real experiments, an objectarium to look through the databases from Økern with information on them. Besides when the archaeologists make excavations we have to show their projects and what they do.

8- Which are the reasons why research is so important for the Museum?

T: To convince the University to give us more founding we need to involve them. For instance one of the projects being made at the moment is called ‘Freedom’. We ask researchers to come from the whole University and contribute.

Then it might be nice if the researchers working would be visible for the public, working and researching behind the scenes.

I: The founding influences everything. The only way to find external founding for this museum is to ask for research founding because in Norway we don’t use private founding.

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Kjersti Larsen Professor - Department of Ethnography Tags: Social Anthropology, Ethnography, Indian Ocean, Northern Sudan, Islam, Rituals and Cosmology, Religion, Mobility and Migration, Gender, Identity, Performativity

1- Do you agree with the fact that ethnographic museums have to rethink themselves?

I think one should be careful to enter into such a project with the presupposition that since the 1880’s until now there wasn’t any change in the way we exhibit in ethnographic museum. On the contrary it’s a continuous change or process. People working in museums are constantly influenced by other kinds of discourses on society, on relationships between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and on who are the ‘others’. The interactions that we have with other people within our own society, the categories that we make, but also the engagements across cultures obviously affect any museum.

To say that now things are going to change is quite arrogant in a way. Because if you look at the history there has been different ways of exhibiting that have been tried out, different ways to see what we are trying to convey in the exhibition. Of course now we would like to exhibit in a different way from 30 years ago, it’s also obvious. The presence of different people working in the museum will change the exhibition. It seems like ethnographic museum situation has been stagnating, but there has been a discussion. This is the a common sense on ethnographic museums with which I disagree. Over a long period of time you might be able to see a lot of changes. Museums are not isolated from the societies in which they are.

2- Which is the value of the material object in an ethnographic museum?

Not all the museums can be the same, ethnographic museums are here because of the collections. You could have museums for cultures, cultural houses, cultural centres…But ethnographic museums have the collections which are historical objects. Since today museums wouldn’t acquire the same amount of objects as they did in the past, now that we have this material culture we have to show it and through it the history that pertain to certain populations.

But there are no true stories on a same object. Different objects are seen differently by the different strata of the society, a fisherman or a farmer,... This is what is typical of museum of cultures: that there is no real story. We could have in these exhibition engaging differences, different perspectives, different stories.

3- Which is the role of minorities in society?

To understand society from below as from women movement or indigenous movements, to look at the marginalized people to see how society works have been used theories. Of course present members of those populations are present in our nations: museums will have to make the best possible presentation and engagement of these visitors, to see what they understand.

4- What’s your opinion toward museums with only one approach toward ethnography?

Quai Branly was a lot criticised because the all project was a plan of the French president and of a single collector to exhibit primitive art. Curators and researchers presented the various objects as if they were art. This model was very much prominent ten years ago: the idea was that these fantastic items were no less than western objects.

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This approach can be criticised but it was the mainstream some years ago. Anyway in order to create a debate and cross-culture encounters they have now continuous changing temporary exhibitions on specific topics, on which they combine different objects together.

5- Do you agree with the swift from provenience based exhibitions to new ones?

We can criticize that exhibitions are made by place or region but the fact is that the world consist in different cultures, and it would be silly to say that the world is one place. It would be a neo-liberalist idea. Is not true that there are no cultural differences, we perceive it every day. I find that this trend against regional differences is a bit desperate.

The fact that there are differences doesn’t mean that there aren’t commonalities or exchange; it doesn’t prevent the idea that there can be encounter.

6- Which is the plan for the future of the museum?

In this museum there are a lot of ideas and initiatives to improve the exhibition. One big question is: there should still be permanent exhibitions or only temporary ones? If it’s better that they are temporary then there will be a big need of resources and employees, with different skills and competences. If we will have the resources and the possibilities I think it could be very good. Anyway the exhibitions should be more attractive and call more people in the museum.

7- What’s your point of view on this future situation?

I would hope for this museum that we don’t change once for all but that we are able to continue progressing and change as the knowledge does, understanding human relations, cultural similarities and differences and trying to disseminate this knowledge in the best possible way. I think an exhibition should ideally make knowledge production and dissemination possible at the forefront. I saw many ethnographic museums are not really able to do this because it’s really difficult to find the resources. There are some museums which are very much engaged in changes in society and intellectual debate but how to find the resources and the way to implement the exhibition? The focus on museums is good but money never comes fro free. It always have to be a negotiation.

8- How do you think architecture could play its role to help the change?

I am a professor engaged and interested in the exhibition. When it comes to design I think an ethnographic exhibition should be careful of the ideas we have today, because the current opinion could after three years be absolutely left out. I think rooms and spaces has to be designed to be very flexible. The problem of Quai Branly is that for example if they want to make a different exhibition in the African space in a few years, to fit it into that space could be very difficult. Its spaces are really designed to show objects of art. Those, who are today discussing to find the perfect way to exhibit, would think that their model will last forever. While we need a space where you will even guest in the future an exhibition that you were not even able to think before. And that must be the challenge for an architect, you need spaces that are not yet fashionables.

9- Are there some particular spaces needed for the new museum?

We hosted some exhibitions on Somalia and we tried to understand how to exhibit their objects in order to invite Somalian to the museum to let them appreciate their past through those objects. We’d like people to attend the museum, learning from each other, we want to make the museum a sort of assimilation centre. That’s why we should make film-festivals, concerts, aesthetic performances, and make an awareness of the museum existing, a museum where you can contribute, where you can learn, and there would be a feedback with the population. That’s what Quai Branly as well is doing through the other departments. But now there is no space for this: facilities and rooms where 158

you can have seminars, discussions, film festivals. If we want also to present other aspects of a culture, and not only the material culture, like the music, the dance, or we want to have debates, of course we will need the spaces.

In the end it is important to make spaces where you can go and rest, seats, cafè.

9- Do you think researchers should have their place in the exhibition building?

Exhibition is a very good way to disseminate knowledge and research. This cooperation and closeness is fundamental. But weather the researchers should be here or in another place is not important because if there is a good collaboration they will find their colleagues wherever they sit. The important is to have good spaces for meeting and for bringing new objects and make trials of the exhibition where we can really see how the exhibition work with some materials and some objects.

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Tone Cecilie Karlgård Lecturer - Exhibitions, Education and Public Services Tags: Exhibitions, Museum Pedagogy, Project management

1- What’s your point of view on multiculturalism and ethnographic museums?

I’ve been working here since 1984 in the exhibition department. Mainly I’ve been working in making exhibition sand public programs, activities for children and the general public. Since I am a social anthropologist I’ve been interested in this multicultural aspect and I’m working on how to reach these objectives. Non European visitors may feel that they have relation with some objects and even if the museum is a European invention they have some expectations from it .They know or have some experiences from visiting museums before, it is now a familiar area. To speak in general terms museum is a place of encounter between real people and real objects and about how people materialized cultures through material objects.

2- How did you proceed when preparing an exhibition?

The way we organized exhibition over the years is regional and they may seem to disseminate kind of a static expression of objects from special regions. But I think this is how permanent exhibition works, it’s about people who work there to make them always come to life. I was involved in the Africa exhibition and with the curator we were very inexperienced in making exhibitions and we had many limits in space. With different ideas we made an exhibition, and then so many critics came from everywhere…

3- What do you think of the new project for the future museum?

The process of an exhibition is very static because when you put down things that are fragile, many experts and conservation people will decide for them or explain you what to do. It’s a matter of compromises. Now we have the new director who wants to change everything but I begin to appreciate what’s already here, I think is not a good idea to change everything at once. Changing the museum step by step would be better.

I think today we have to appreciate the static nature of an exhibition, which is always criticised, in a world where everything change so quickly, films, fashion,... I think that museum shouldn’t necessary change often. Maybe people wants to find the same objects that their parents have seen when they were children and that are still here.

4- Walking through the exhibition where do you find an entanglement with the colonial past?

There are some good examples about the colonial period in some exhibitions here. For instance there was an exhibition made a few years ago about King Leopold in Congo. One of the largest portions of collection that we have is the one from Congo, not because we had colonies there but because Norwegian people went to work in Congo for the Belgian King during the 1870’s. There are many sad stories about the items brought from there: the person who was carrying this mask was stroked down and killed, shot by who took the mask, in a very brutal way. The name of the exhibition was ‘Traces of Congo’. We involved people from Congo, we made interviews, at the opening we established relationships, … Now every year for the Independence day of Congo we organize an event with them.

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5- Are there other occasions to work in contact with the minority groups?

Yes. We also organize a day for the Rom people and these events are open to everyone. A woman from Mexico, Telma, helped me to make an exhibition case about the Day of the Death in Mexico. She has been pursuing all those items in Mexico-City. After that collaboration we keep meeting to organize events or exhibitions together.

6- Which are the exhibition tools or strategies you used before and which ones will you use in the future?

Now people can sit down and read the English texts or use the Wi-Fi. For the future every change seems easy but is not. There are a lot of parallel project and ideas and it’s hard to imagine all of them completed. We want to try to incorporate contemporary objects together with the old ones. Another thing we can do is to add some layers of knowledge on top of the object that were collected in different ways and now are in the museum. Our aim is to write down texts that catch interest a 12 year old. But the museum should be compared to a library where you can find good quality knowledge on the objects.

I hope in the future the museum will be more open and inclusive and outreaching. The democratic role of the museum is important, it should be a place of meeting.

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Arne Aleksej Perminow Associate Professor - Department of Ethnography Tags: Social anthropology, Ethnography, Museology, Oceania, Polynesia, Tonga, Nature and Society, Material culture, Rituals and Cosmology, Mobility and Migration

1- What’s your point of view on anthropology and ethnographic museums?

In the past museum has been developed as a space for exhibiting and telling stories. That was a different world from the one that we have today, a world in which things were very new for people, that were not familiar with them, they didn’t have first experience of them. The public has extremely more experience today: they have been in the places because the world is much more closer and there is a lot of information about everything on the television, so the story we want to tell has to be something different from what you experience as a tourist and what you get from the news. Since we are a University Museum we have to focus on things that produce a knowledge that is not present in other spaces, in the media, or by being a tourist. I feel anthropology gives you the possibility to discover things that are not obvious, to see them also from different perspectives. We can’t just expect people to be interested by the fact that we have things coming from all over the world, but we have to make people reflect, through these things, on the relationship between our lives and their lives. Visitors have to think about what people do and in which surroundings, how their life is like. They have to go deeper than the information overflow that is generated in the media and in the popular representation of cultural differences.

2- How could the KHM act on society and its beliefs?

The most important thing would be to give different insights then the ones that are around, to be more critical with the taken from granted notions, among which the Norwegian culture, to give some fuel for thinking. In Norway for instance a lot of the thinking about cultural differences is quite chauvinistic, we have this idea that Norwegian culture is better, more civilized than other cultures. One of our task should be to make people questioning the cultural arrogance that is related to patriotism. Norway has a prime minister who said that is typically Norwegian to be good, to be good at something, to have qualities (in relation to the Lillehammer Olympic games) We think that we are very up in a hierarchy because we score really well in charts on how people are living,…this raises arrogance. An important . We can do that in many different ways. One of these ways is to use the museum as an exhibition space for exhibiting all the impressive forms of creativity that flourish all over the world. Cultural creativity is very widely distributed.

3- What’s the relation between Norway and colonialism?

The Norwegian case is a precise case. In many countries they have issues with their colonial past while Norway was seen as a colony itself and that’s why we are more patriotic. Many Norwegian things, that are thought to be Norwegian, were actually imported and influenced by other cultures. People, ideas and objects have always circulated and they get in contact with each other.

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4- Which is the plan for the future of the museum?

We are thinking about renewing our exhibitions and I am involved in this change. We are a multi-disciplinary museum of archaeologist, historians and anthropologists. We thought that instead of dividing by period or geographical place we could divide by themes. One of the themes chosen for instance is Colonization and Expansion and we are working together to see how people moved in history, how a unique culture spread and expanded. We use examples of all times and from all the world to represent the mechanism of movement, what happen when people moves…

Beautification is another theme. We are recruiting social examples for the different themes. We are also working with the theme of notion of Religion in everyday life. Categorization has to be avoided. We need to question ourselves if the object is authentic because it belongs to a category or not.

Another point is to make the exhibition more flexible. When part of an exhibition works well we can let it stay more, we can keep or change some parts of it. I’m sure there are some practical obstacles but we have the ability to do it because we have researchers. Researchers are spread in this building and in the other building across the street and in St. Olavs gate. In addiction we want the exhibition to be thematic, dynamic, not representative and not based on the idea that the researchers know everything when they exhibit, but with the idea that the exhibition itself is a place of experimentation or study. We will try to bring different perspectives.

4- Who is working at this plan?

In the team a group is responsible for the content, the other one for the form. The first are scientist or researchers (who choose the items) and the second are the designers (who can decide if they want or not the chosen items). But it’s impossible to divide the two things, we work together. Our development of new exhibitions is in process, renewing the basic exhibition. The group work since 8 months.

5- How can museum engage minorities?

The thing that distinguishes this museum from the other ones is that we don’t focus on the immigrant minorities that live in Oslo. We don’t feel very committed to the idea of making a multiculturalist museum. At least not particularly concerning with the Norwegian scene and minorities in Norway. We should instead change people’s opinion on minorities wherever they are. What kind of interactions are moving on around the world. Now there are lots of ideas but we haven’t seen anything materialized. We, differently from other museums, have less exhibition capacity but more research capacity, so what we should do is to improve the way exhibition represent research. We are a multidisciplinary museum, archaeologist are basically focused on people who lived in this territory and anthropologists with ethnography. In the Ethnographic Museum in Koln they have different themes around which they organizing the exhibition but they only do it with the help of ethnographers, we have the capacity of addressing themes by the use of different disciplines. We should start to use our multidisciplinarity as an asset. A museum of global cultural diversity is ok.

163

Martin Hager-Saltnes Lecturer - Exhibitions, Education and Public Services

1- What are the main challenges of ethnographic museums in the 21st century?

What should be the identity of the museum? We are thinking about the future of the museum and we have an emphasis here on researching and engaging. I would like people to come here and to be engaged and to make the museum. I work with groups, we have a public program. We take initiatives like showing new pieces (Thailand porcelain exhibition). The question is how we exhibit them? Do we make art out of them? Do we tell the history about Thailand with them? Do we make it exotic? Do we make it familiar? What’s the opinion of the Thai people who have travelled to Norway? How do we link them with Norwegians? How can this project also be a museum for those people? They are interested in it.

2- Is it possible to identify some specific exhibition tools or strategies or narrative in relation to the contemporary society?

We are thinking of making monks reading texts to record them in order to make it listen to the visitors. Also auditive experience. What to do with religious objects? Do we bring them to the museum? We can think of this place as a place to practice a religion also, where Buddhists can come. I think sometimes ‘natives’ know the objects and how they were used better and they can help to focus on the right themes. We will have Thai people to correct the western view of our publication about this exhibition for instance.

3- What audience should the museum aim to address?

We have good ideas but we risk to be elitist.

4- What’s your suggestions for an exhibition outfit?

How can we do this without exotifing Thailand? There are hybrid objects also with a long history, beginning in China, with Persian language, and not purely Thai. The challenge is not to put much scenography that would take attention away from the objects. We also want to avoid to talk too much about Thailand. But if the visitor wants to stay more he will find more information.

164

Ralf Znotis Senior Executive Officer - Department of Ethnography Tags: Social Anthropology, Databases, Cataloguing, Classification

1- Which kinds of implementations could the museum have from an architectural point of view?

I think the museum in Tullinløkka needs a better reception for objects that come to the museum, an area where they can come in, be lifted up and have a first treatment like cleaning or small reparations. Then it needs better rooms for the people of conservation and exhibition to work on those objects and make trials of some pieces of exhibition. The old building now has just a small elevator and it’s quite impossible to bring very big objects on the different floors. I would also add some studios and research labs as we have here at Økern. We are satisfied with this new storage. Of course the architects could think about some functions more and now we have some small problem. But it’s fine and we work much better here than before. The KHM needs more rooms for discussion and meetings among the staff and a better distribution. I would also make visible for the public some of the storages or some of the conservation labs because it’s important that visitors realize that people are working behind the scenes.

2- You have been working in the catalogue of the ethnographic collection. How did you proceed in grouping them?

We are making this huge database in order to make accessible to everyone, and for all the staff with more details, which are the objects of our collection. We divided them in groups by theme, provenience, material and folk. A same object can belong to more categories and if you go deeper you could find pictures or other information. We are still working on it.

3- Which is the value of the material object in an ethnographic museum?

I think the object is very important in itself. Every single object tells a very specific story and one of the problems that we have is that anthropologists often choose a theme for an exhibition and then they search for objects as generic props to talk about that theme. So they don’t really study a specific item, with all the testimony that it can bring.

While people would be much more attracted by a very precise story, that make the object live and help them to get more in contact with the history behind it.

165

Conclusions to organize exhibitions by theme instead of by regions

interdisciplinarity as a keyword for the future

to transform research into exhibition making

questions about the nature of humanity

need of a better vertical distribution

to improve the object reception and the labs

max. 5 years semipermanent exhibition

166

The museum has to be postcolonial

to include contemporary objects in the exhibition

some storages and conservation visible for the public

more space for short term temporary exhibitions

to make and to provide knowledge

to question people’s beliefs

information stratification to reach all the publics

building an extention under the ground

we organize events with some minority groups

to include multisighted perspectives

visitors can look through a digital database

to make spaces where you can go and rest

to have rooms for crosscultural activities, debate

New Museum Manifesto RESEARCH

INTERDISCIPLINARITY

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION

THEMATIC EXHIBITIONS

UNIVERSAL

POSTCOLONIAL

PROVOCATIVE

MULTI-SIGHTED

*

!?

DISTRIBUTION

CONTEMPORARY

LAYERS OF INFORMATION

OBJECTARIUM

RECEPTION OF THE OBJECTS

VISIBLE STORAGES AND LABS

NEW EXH. SPACE UNDERGROUND

SPACE FOR REST

SEMI-PERMANENT EXH.

TEMPORARY EXH.

MEETINGS WITH MINORITIES

CROSS CULT. ACTIVITIES

167

Museum Program - needed (roomprogram for a new building for Kulturhistorisk museum, including Vikingship and storages independent location)

PUBLIC

1.600

EXHIBITION

7.000

EDUCATION

1.220

ADMINISTRATION

4.010

CONSERVATION

2.815

STORAGES

6.960

MAINTAINANCE

500

Total netto

24.105 +20% technical +25% communication +15% construction

TOTAL BRUTTO

38.705 / 40.000

o

KHM, Oslo

Nowaday situation

MUSEUM

KHM total program

KHM MUSEUM

40.000

TOTAL BRUTTO AREA

Historical museum Vikingskipene Tullinløkka på Bygdøy

65.000 430.000 visitors visitorsaayear year

168

Historical museum Tullinløkka

65.000 visitors a year

KHM total program

40.000

24.105

24.105

TOTAL NETTO AREA TOTAL BRUTTO AREA

TOTAL NETTO AREA

+

+

5.000

TECHICAL

6.000

COMUNICATION

3.600

CONSTRUCTION

1

2 3 4 5

1

2

3

4

5

St. Olavs gate 29 offices and admin to be abandoned

Frederiks gate 3 conservation, canteen FUA 1 200 - brutto 3 400 mq to be abandoned

KHM building museum, offices FUA 5 300 - brutto 8 100 mq to be kept

Tullinløkka to be aquired

Nationalgalleriet building FUA 5 500 - brutto 9 300 to be aquired

Places to be kept

Splitting the program Viking ships Museum:

+

5.000

TECHICAL

The old building by Arnstein Arneberg is a symbol of the city and a main touristic attraction. it’s internal beautiful spaces and it’s architectural and historical value make it unlikely to move the ships somewhere else. The Viking collection should be moved there.

6.000

COMUNICATION

3.600

New storage building:

CONSTRUCTION Established in 2008 the building

hosts today storages, working areas, offices and meeting facilities. A lot of money has been invested in the new storage, which already fulfils to all the special climatic, technoglogic and hygiene requirements.

Viking museum

Cultural history museum

Storage

Bygdøy

Tullinløkka

Økern

FUA 1.700

+FUA 10 800 - brutto 17 400 mq

FUA 4 110

169

Museum Program - modifications to change the KHM into a MeLa* Museum

tot 1 600

tot 7 000

tot 1 220

PUBLIC

EXHIBITION

EDUCATION

LOBBY

ARCHAEOLOGY AND MIDDLE AGE

MULTICULTURAL WORKSHOP

Lobby 300

Stoneage, bronzage, ironage 600

300*

Information-Ticketsale 50

Vinkingships 1 700

Shop-Vikingshop-Office 320

Vikings 500

ACTIV EDUCATION

Shop storage 100

Middle age 650

250*

Wardrobe 60

Archaeology Lab 200

830*

Norwegian history of the last 500 years 160

AUDITORIUM-STAGE

3 810

420*

Restaurant 200 seats-Outdoor

COINS

EDUCATION

possibilities 240

Coin history 120

Group room 20+30

Eating room, schoolchildren 60

Goldcoins 120

Class room 50

Canteen 100 seats 120

Medals 100

Storage 30

Kitchen-Storage 130

340

130

ANTIQUE PERIOD - EGYPT

TOILET

300*

Toilet 70

RESTAURANT

550 INFOTEC

Wardrobe-schoolchildren 40

100* ETHNOGRAPHY

Cleaning 10

TOILET

Europe 100

120

Toilets 100

Artiks 300

Cleaning 20

America 200

120

Africa 300 Oceania 200 Asia-Middle East 350 1 450* TEMPORARY 1 150*

1 500 Royal Collection

LEGEND * = to be implemented by the 30%

- = could be reduced by the 30% text = to be located at Bygdoy 170

tot 4 010 -

tot 6 960 -

ADMINISTRATION

CONSERVATION

OFFICES

DELIVERY

Electrolysis 20

Office cells 182x10

Washing room field equipment 15

Fumace and heating cabinet 30

Working spaces shared 50x6

Fieldequipment 30

Freeze.drying 50

2 120*

Storage fieldequipment 100

Impregnation 40

Storage technical equipment (zone 4) 20

Casting (epoxy) / copy of objects 15

OFFICE LIBRARY 4x10

Deliveryroom 50

Lab. Wet chemistry 10

40

Washingspace 2x25

Textile glastable 30

Deliverystorage 200

Gobelin/colourbath 25

WORKINGSPACE MASTERSTUDENTS 18x4

Laboratory sample processing 50

Paper conservation 30

70*

Cataloging 200

Fernizzering 15

Meetings- and studyrooms 2x15

Cleaning 30

745*

315

Unformal meeting space 240x0,5

PHOTO

FREEZING AND DISINFECTION

260*

Large studio 80

Caranteene 30

Small studio 40

Freezin and climatization 30

ADDITIONAL SPACES (print)

Preparations/scanning 60

Heat treatment 30

Print, copy, supplies

Printing room 30

90

Post and package

Storage prints 30

IT-workshop

Storage negatives 40

WORKSHOPS AND EXHIBITION PRO-

160

Storage equipment 20

DUCTION

300

Common workshop, wood, iron etc. 220

MEETING Meeting rooms 7x20

LIBRARY

Woodcarving 40 CONSERVATION - ANALYSIS

Material storage 100

Conservation labs 410

Exhibition storage 80

ARCHIVE

Research lab 65

Assembly hall 100

240

Electron microscopy 25

Storage dissemination 160

Microscopy 20

700*

900

TOILETTES

Instrumental analysis / GC 20

220

x-ray 30 Weight 10 Washroom equipment 15

1 000 already at Okern a small part will go to Bygdoy

3 000 already at Okern

Special waste 10 Storage equipment and chemicals 60 665 CONSERVATION – SPECIAL ROOM Sandblasting 20

171

tot 6 960 -

tot 500

STORAGES

MAINTANANCE

ARCHEOLOGICAL STORAGE

SECURITY

2 600

Monitoring 20 Offices 20

ETHNOGRAPHICAL STORAGE

Breaks guards 20

1 750*

Wardrobe, shower, toilets guards/security personell 20

STORAGE LARGE OBJECTS

80

2 150 BUILDING MAINTENANCE SERVICE SPACE CONNECTED TO STORAGE Offices 20 Packing/unpacking 100

Workshop and storages 50

Observation room exhibitions/lending 100

Wardrobe, shower, toilets 20

Studyroom 120

90

Storage transport boxes 80 Storage packaging 60

CLEANING

460

Offices 20 Cleaning center 30 Storage cleaning 20

1 500 Royal Collection 3 000 already at Okern

Wardrobe, shower, toilets 20 90 DELIVERY / ECONOMYENTRANCE Delivery and waste 200 Storage consumption 40 240

172

More intentions - details

Research

Interdisciplinarity

Knowledge production

Thematic Exhibitions

more laboratories more offices and masterstudents studio rooms

...

‘Experimentarium: room for creativity, a place where we can invite external partners to play, student exhibitions, research on exhibition as a research/ scientific media, instant exhibitions, fast up/fast down, lifespan from a few weeks-six months.’

‘space for permanent exhibitions: thematic, multi-scientific, research based, very flexible in their construction, parts or the whole exhibition can be changed quite easily. For how long these exhibitions will be on display depends on the currency of the themes, which other suggestions that come forth.’

Universal

Postcolonial

Provocative

Multi-sighted

...

...

...

...

Distribution

Contemporary objects

Layers of information

Objectarium

‘The long term plan is to move nearly all offices out for the museums building’ better lifts

...

...

‘where the public can search the collections online, see selected, small collections displayed, information on archaeological digs the museum is involved in, just a few cases, often changes in the displays’

Reception of the objects

Visible storages and labs

New exh. space underground

Space for rest

...

....

...

‘There are plans for a cafe - which is a good thing - which also requires space.’

Semi-permanent exh.

Temporary exh.

Meetings with minorities

Cross culture activities

...

‘temporary exhibitions: loan exhibitions/traveling exhibitions and self produced ones, lifespan more than 6 months.’

...

conference rooms free space / room for celebrations

*

!?

‘Stairwell exhibitions (ex. on the repos of the main stairs): small exhibitions with a life span of max. six months’ special exhibitions for recurrent events

173

Final program for KHM at Tullinløkka (roomprogram for a new museum at Tullinløkka, including the Nationalgalleriet building)

PUBLIC

1.770

EXHIBITION

7.220

EDUCATION

1.510

ADMINISTRATION

3.910

CONSERVATION

2.405

STORAGES

6.447

MAINTAINANCE

500

Total netto

23.762 +20% technical (4752,4) +25% communication (5940) +15% construction (3564,3)

TOTAL BRUTTO 38.028,7 / 40.000

KHM total program

19.866

TOTAL NETTO AREA

174

lobby

9% restaurant infotec

36%

permanent exh.

temporary exh.

8%

auditorium

offices

18% library

delivery

12% exh. production

15%

ethnography

2%

175

Rooms connections diagram

SERVICE

F. DELIVERY

ARCHEOLOGICAL

ETHNOGRAPHICAL

SPECIAL R.

MANT. CLEAN.

ANALYSIS

LARGE OBJECTS

DELIVERY

PERMANENT EXHIBITION

EXH. PRODUCTION PHOTO TEMPORARY EXHIBITION

OFFICES ADD. MEETING

ARCHIVE WC

INFO LOBBY SECURITY

LIBRARY

ED.

MASTER

176

ACTIVE EDUCATION

WC

WORKSHOP

AUDITORIUM

WC RESTAURANT

MANTAINANCE STORAGE

PUBLIC

EXHIBITION

STORAGE

STORAGE

EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

STORAGE

EXHIBITION PRODUCTION

TEMPORARY EXHIBITION

EDUCATION

CONSERVATION

LIBRARY

ADMINISTRATION ADMINISTRATION

177

Under View on the square and on one of the courts (R. Albini)

178

ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT from the concept to the building

The architectural project consists of a two floors (plus a mezzanine) underground extension, linking the building of the current Kulturhistorisk Museum to the one of the exNasjonalgalleriet.

This extension is designed together with the square above it, a public space covering the whole area of Tullinløkka and consisting in a triangulated surface, levelling the site in its different ground heights and giving access to the two basements of the original buildings, which used to be partially under the ground level and are now brought to light where facing the square.

The main concept for the square design is that its surface folds up and down in order to create lower courtyards and emerging volumes in a fluent continuity: the courts, reached through stairs or ramps, gently lead people underground into the more public functions of the museum extension, located in the mezzanine; while the emerging volumes offer occasions to enter the building and create some meeting points on top of them. Their roofs, indeed, consist in slopes with stairs, which might work as outdoor recreational seating with different points of view on the square and on the old buildings. These slope-volumes create a series of physical and visual relationships among each other, being similar to small diffuse amphitheatres and belonging to the ‘mineral surface’ of the square, which is homogeneously covered in stone (bright granite). The courts, instead, represent protected gardens similar to ‘savage’ oasis, with a special design for vegetation, shaped to be aesthetically enjoyable when looked from the windows of the old buildings or from the top of the slopes.

Besides creating dynamism on the square, these variations in levels allow natural light to reach underground rooms through the glass surfaces around the patios.

Different accesses start from the square and bring visitors in diverse areas of the mezzanine: the main lobby, the restaurant/cafe, and the ‘proactive space’. The other two entrances arranged in the basement of the two existent buildings, instead, guide the public to the main connections that cross the constructions vertically, from the underground extension to the upper floors.

This plurality of possible entrances is emblematic of a usability of the museum, a place that is open to the community and in which every single visitor can move freely from a place to the other, following a personal and not preset path, directing himself to the museum area he is more interested in, or naturally ending up in one of the most open and

179

1. extension in the square

180

2. excavation

3. activation of the square

4. museum roof/square shaping

Above Concept 181

182

183

public areas.

The position of the entrances is a direct consequence of some thoughts on the paths that are most frequently followed by people when coming from the most popular areas of the city such as the Sentralstasjon, Karl Johans Gate and the Slottsparken.

The structural solution to hold the square consists in concentrating the loads on some structural light wells: complex glass prisms, less than 3 meters wide, crossing vertically the whole building extension and emerging on the square in order to catch the sunlight and create a continuity between the inside and the outside. This solution leaves a very free and open space in the underground exhibition, more suitable for flexible expository configurations. The prisms, in fact, have a double function: providing enlightment and structural support, and they behave as 3d reticular beams.

Some neon strip lightings inside them will compensate the lack of sunlight of Norway, and be turned on by night, generating an active artificial landscape that attract people even during the evening. Possibly, some sides of the prisms could be screens or interactive walls, transforming the square level into an extension of the museum that is open for whoever passes-by, inviting people to explore the wider collection underneath.

MAIN PROJECT CHOICES WHEN DEALING WITH THE OLD BUILDINGS The project keeps the exhibitory function in most of the old museums floors. This choice is motivated by the fact that both constructions were built and have always been used to host exhibitions. In addiction, the buildings are ideal for museum purposes because of the dimensions of their galleries, the sequence of rooms and public circulation paths.

Both the buildings, however, require an extensive refurbishment to meet modern museum standards of air-conditioning, energy demand, ventilation,..

A demolition of all the later additions will help to put back on the original room’s dimensions and public circulation while in both buildings, especially the Historical Museum, the distinctive interiors of high conservation value from art nouveau, will be conserved and restored. The overall project intention is to preserve the identity of the edifices.

The general rearrangement of floor functions and flows includes new vertical links for objects, received in the KHM basement on Frederiks Gate, diffused facilities in both buildings and conversions in function when some rooms appear to be unsatisfactory for the present use.

DISTRIBUTION AND NEW DESIGN Once entered the old basement people are free to pause in some portions of these floors dedicated to public functions. Here they can play with interactive devices, taking an active part in the processes of research, giving ideas for future initiatives and laying the groundwork for further studies that the Museum institution and the University of Oslo could undertake. At the same time they can find information about the different activities organ-

184

ized by the museum and suggest some new ones to which they would like to participate.

Afterwards, taking advantage of diffuse info-points, the visitor can decide to go upstairs to the permanent exhibitions ̶ regarding respectively prehistory, archaeology, the Middle Ages and coins ̶ in the KHM building, or Norwegian history of the last 150 years and the Royal collection in the ex Nasjonalgalleriet. The first floor of the KHM, instead, is entirely dedicated to temporary exhibitions and it is also accessible from Frederiks Gate, thus being potentially autonomous from the rest of the exhibitions.

The lateral volumes of the KHM building and the upper floor are devoted to internal managerial functions and host offices and staff spaces, because of their lack of proper accesses and areas for large crowd flows. This arrangement let the staff reach easily every exhibition floor and offers proximity with service stairs or lift. In the ex Nasjonalgalleriet, instead, with the exception of some spaces in the basement, mainly the last floor is dedicated to offices and maintenance, because it would be too complex to organize exhibition floors on the galleries around the skylights.

In the new underground addition, the first level that a person coming from the square approaches is the mezzanine, which is used as a gallery (ballatoio) of public functions surrounding the exhibition double height and creating numerous visual connections with it. This floor works in a close relationship with the lower rooms surrounding the exhibition floor, forming three-dimensional boxes linked vertically, and contains all the additional activities related to the new thematic exhibition and the new role that the museum should acquire. I call these boxes ‘activity boxes’.

In this way the visitor, after being welcomed in a main lobby, a restaurant with outdoors possibility in the court, part of the ‘objectarium’ (digital storage, online catalogue) and a ‘proactive space’ with a particular curved wall, that act like a people gatherer, is free again to choose where to go. He can either take the gallery to the auditorium, a 300 seats room for multiple uses (projections, concerts, performances, conferences…), or reach the stairs that bring him to the permanent and temporary exhibitions in the old buildings, or take a staircase to go down. Once downstairs, he can continue with the activities or move to the semi-permanent exhibition.

The lowest floor, finally, is the storage and conservation level, including an archive and spaces for staff dealing with a part of the collection that is moved here, in order to create an easy rotation of items and a constant exhibition refurbishment. The bigger detached storage in Okern, is kept and continue to house the wider portion of the collection, but having a storage also in Tullinløkka, means less transportation problems and more space for the new acquired items, including the Royal Collection. The storage might be possibly visited by people.

185

1

2 3

186

1. museum and administration

2. semi-permanent exhibition, MeLa* activities and storage

* !?

3. museum and administration

187

188

1. Underground surface

2. site levelling

5. lower courtyards

6

link between the two buildings

3. light shafts

4. multiple entrance volumes

7. service ring for staff

8. new exhibition and public facilities

189

MASTERPLAN

0

190

10

191

MUSEUM MAP

192

ADMINISTRATION

5

administration

ADMINISTRATION MAINTAINANCE

administration maintainance

MIDDLE AGE EXHIBITION

middle age exhibition coins admin

4 3

COINS ADMIN ROYAL COLLECTION

royal collection

PRIMITIVE AND ARCHEOLOGY

2

ADMIN

primitive and archeology admin

NORWEGIAN HISTORY LAST 150Y

norwegian history last 150y

TEMPORARY EXHIBITION ADMIN

1

temporary exhibition admin

NORWEGIAN HISTORY LAST 150Y

norwegian history last 150y

MAINTAINANCE

0

maintainance PUBLIC RESEARCH ACTIVITY DELIVERY WASHING ADMINISTRATION

public research activity delivery washing administration

RESTAURANT OUTDOOR RESTAURANT

-1

MAIN LOBBY

restaurant outdoor restaurant main lobby CELEBRATIONS MINORITIES half objectarium PHOTOSAMPLE MULTICULTURAL WORKSHOP celebrations minorities AUDITORIUM LOBBY multicultural workshop HALF OBJECTARIUM

AUDITORIUM

EXPERIMENTARIUM

-2

photosample reading/rest ACTIV EDUCATION auditorium lobby half objectarium HALF BOOKSHOP auditorium meeting with minori experimentariumREADING/REST ties activ education HALF OBJECTARIUMclass room half bookshop MEETING WITH MINORITIES group roomx2 Assembly hall

-3

ticket point / mediatheque laboratory sample/ temporary storage catalogue

CLASS ROOM

assembly hall WORKSHOPS AND EXHIBITION PRODUCTION

GROUP ROOMX2 large objects storage workshops and exhibition conservation - analysis TICKET POINT / MEDIATHEQUE production conservation – special room LABORATORY SAMPLE/STUDY ON RECEIVED OBJ ARCHIVE ethnographical storage service space connected to TEMPORARY STORAGE ARCHEOLOGICAL STORAGE archive storage CATALOGUE LARGE OBJECTS STORAGE archeological storage ETHNOGRAPHICAL STORAGE

CONSERVATION - ANALYSIS CONSERVATION – SPECIAL ROOM SERVICE SPACE CONNECTED TO STORAGE

193

BASEMENT PLAN

1. stair/lift 2. office 3. distribution 4. wc 5. service 6. lorries exit 7. pedestrian ramp 8. delivery and waste 9. public research activities 10. new museum entrance 11. 13. stairs 12. distribution 14. employees entrance 15. delivery 16. stock 17. washing room and equipment 18. public research activities 19. stock 20. lorries entrance 21. 23. wc 22. service 24. corridor 25. 26. office 27. object lift 28. stairs for staff

4 5

2

1

6 3

7

9

8

11

12

10

14 13

1. north ramp 2. workers dining room 3. direction office 4. library 5. meeting room 6. stairs and temporary installation 7. elevator 8. light wells 9. 11. office 10. 25. introductory interactive table 12. 20. reception / guard 13. wc 14. 21. distribution

16

17

20

21

24

22

25

23

0 194

18

15

5

19

26

27

28

1

2

3

4

5

7

6

8

9

10

12

13

14

11

15

16

18

17

20

21

19

22

23

25

24

26

27 28

29

31

30

32

33

34

35

36

First level underground195 scale 1:500

RAISED GROUND FLOOR PLAN

1. stair/lift 2. office 3. 4. wc 5. 6. temporary exhibition 7. entrance lobby 8. stairs to old KHM 9. stairs 10. relax area 11. 12. temporary exhibition 13. 15. wc 14. corridor 16. 17. office 18. lift

3 1

2

4

1. north ramp 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. exhibition - norwegian history (last 150 years) 8. relax area 9. wc 10. 12. stairs down 11. stairs up 13. entrance lobby 14. 15. 16. 17. 19. 20. exhibition - norwegian history (last 150 years) 18. south ramp

5

8 7

13

0

5

9

10

11

12

14

16 15

196

6

17

18

2

1

3

4

5

6

7

10

9

11

13

12

8

14

15

18

16

17

19

20

197

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

1. stair/lift 2. office 3. 4. 5. wc 6. 7. primitive and archeology exhibition 8. space for rest 9. passage 10. 11. primitive and archeology exhibition 13. stairs 12. 13. distribution 14. corridor 15. 16. office 17. lift

3 1 4 2

5

7

6

8

9

10

12

14

15 13

0 198

5

11

16

17

First level scale 1:500

199

THIRD FLOOR PLAN

1. stair/lift 2. lecture room 3. Sverre Fehn exhibition on middle age 4. exhibition - middle age and coins 5. stairs and installations 6. passage 7. stairs to offices 8. passage 9. 10. exhibition - middle age and coins 11. corridor 12. 13. office 14. lift

2

1. north ramp 2. 3. 4. 5. exhibition - royal collection 6. relax 7. stairs 8. installations 9. 10. 11. 12. 14. exhibition 13. south ramp

1

3

4

5

6

8

7

9

10

11

12

0 200

5

13

14

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

13

11

12

14

Second level scale 1:500

201

FOURTH FLOOR PLAN

1. stair/lift 2. office 3. 4. service and wc 5. 6. office 7. 8. rest space for employees 9. 10 office 11. rest space for employees yees 12. stairs 13. 15. library 14. books compact storage 16. librarian office 17. corridor ees 18. stock 19. 20. office 21. lift

1

3 2 4

5

6

ge 1. north ramp 2. 5. 6. downlights 3. 4. office 7. 9. office and rest 8. downlight 10. 11. downlight 12. 13. office and meeting 14. south ramp 15. downlight 16. office

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16 17 18

0 202

5

19

20

21

3

1 2

4

5

6

8 7 9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Third level scale 1:500

203

section toward old KHM 0 204

5

205

section toward old Nasjonalgalleriet 0 206

5

207

transversal section on the exhibition 0 208

5

209

transversal section on the mezzanines 0 210

5

211

UNDERGROUND FLOOR PLAN 16

1. stair/lift (mainly for staff) 2. storage/maintainance 3. 4. photo studios 5. passage 6. 7. stairs 8. passage to/from underground exhibition level 9. 10. cataloguing 11. circulation 12. office 13. lift objects 14. internal stairs for staff 15. laboratory sample process and study on received objects 16. 21. maintainance 17. 19. 20. individual study space 18. 22. wc 23. auditorium foyer and reception 24*. auditorium 25*. 26*. experimentarium for new exhibitions in collaboration 27. stairs to lobby 28. part of the bookshop 29. bookshop office 30*. active education 31. space for reading 32. space for rest 33. 35. ramp to old nationalgalleriet 34*. objectarium 36. smaller conference room 37. maintainance 38. 39. individual study and small storage 40. wc 41. tickets and info 42. group rooms 43. class rooms 44. 46. 50. 52. 53. ‘the wall’ with openings 45. 47. 48. 49. 51. ‘the wall’ for exhibitions 54*. thematic exhibition on mobility 55*. thematic exhibition on aesthetic 56*. thematic exhibition on religion 57*. thematic exhibition on death 58*. thematic exhibition on technology

212

2

1

17

18

23

24*

19

20

3

53*

4

6 8

5 7

9

54*

10

55*

44*

15

11

12

13

14

45*

41*

40

21

22

27

28

29

26*

31

32

30*

25*

52*

51* 33

56*

50*

57*

34*

58* 49*

35

48

46*

42*

43* 47*

36*

39

38

37

0

10 213

MEZZANINE FLOOR PLAN 2

1. stair/lift for staff 2. storage/maintainance 3. photo studios 4. 10. wc 5*. auditorium 6. 8. restaurant kitchen 7. restaurant desk 9. restaurant 11. stairs to new exhibition 12. part of the bookshop 13. reception 14. entrance to the main lobby 15. 17. stairs to ex National Gallery 16*. part of the objectarium 18*. celebrations room 19. maintainance 20. alternative entrance 21. 22. individual study and small storage 23. wc 24*. 25*. multicultural workshop-PROACTIVE SPACE 26. service corridor 27. objects lift

3

4

6

7

5*

1

24

26

25*

24*

27

23

214

8

10

9

11

12

13

14

15

16*

17

20

18*

22

21

19

0

10 215

216

Above stopmotion from the square to the museum under it 217

218

THE EXHIBITION DESIGN preliminary conclusions and findings

Among the approaches and the topics treated to envision European museum for the XXI century we already identified some key concepts: museum study and museology, museum networking, ITC and communication, architecture and museography, exhibition design and curatorial practices. These aspects cross in many ways some of the main themes that interest society today: migration, mobilities, identity, citizenship, history, memory and representation. But going deeper into the exhibition field we should start making some reflections about the ways in which it influences the general understanding of any collection. In particular we will focus on the ethnocentric encounter that produces special reflections and cultural critiques.

Museums in general, and ethnographic museums in particular, are cultural centres and sites of storytelling where the curator chooses what to show to the visitors, categorizing items on the base of a culture, a place of provenience, an historical moment or a museum intention. It’s always true that in this process architecture and set-up can create different rituals of civil belonging. Besides whenever the curator chooses to put certain objects together he will create causal or cultural implicit relations among those objects which can be called ‘Elective affinities’: each item will influence the others in a net of links.

New arrangements of old exhibitions are often made today in ethnographic museums in order to give new readings to the same collection. But not all the museums can be deconstructed and refurbished: it would be blameworthy, indeed, to destroy some beautiful places because they are themselves, often for their architecture, territories of memory. It’s important in those cases to find a good balance between the old and the new.

So how can an exhibition act on a visitor, and which reactions can it provoke?

‘Wonder’ and ‘Resonance’ are according to Stephen Greenblatt the main two reactions that an exhibition can provoke. The first one is closer to the immediate experience of the visitor when he is in front of the object, the second one consists in some implicit or explicit links with contexts that are often inter-related, and that can shift from the exhibition itself to the narration. The ‘Resonance’ may detract the observer from a celebration of single isolated objects to relationships and problems which are more implicit or scarcely visible.

And which could be the best behaviour when offering knowledge and information to the

219

visitors? Does the public need to be informed about everything or it should be free to enjoy the pure vision of the objects? There are different opinions about it: some people think that information may obstacle the perception in a museum, some others think that you can never really discover anything without the mediation of an expert or without being alone, some think that there should be a mix between aesthetic and erudition.

Anyway every visitor is a single case and he will dictate the time and the interpretation of an exhibition. He will thus produce the museum himself.

Either offering or not the right amount of information, it’s clear how the museum effect transforms every object into an aesthetically interesting piece. The item may not have an autonomy or a value in itself but the way it’s presented will generate a precise lecture of it, that is usually dictated by the museum’s staff.

This staff should remember to take into account the different needs of any visitor, which Robert Kelly sum up in three categories: the intellectual one (to know, to understand), the sacral one (luogo di pellegrinaggio, meeting with an ancestral past) and the social one (meeting place). In addiction they should consider the types of visitors, that according to George Mac Donald can be listed in: the streakers, the strollers and the readers, each of them having different expectations. The museum should address its exhibitions to all of them through a stratification of the information that can be read by every one in the way they prefer and that answers to their needs.

The complex relationship between the museum and its public can be summarized in two main aspects: the representation and the reception. Some factors mediate this relationship and the one between exhibition and items: for example the pre-existent knowledges of the visitor, its semantic systems and interpretative pictures, etc.

Anyway there are different models in the processes of reception: the active learning, the market, the rhetorical, the aesthetical one. They can be reached through different communicative artifices, rethorics and tecniques to stimulate, guide and inform.

An important function of the exhibition is the pedagogic one: the museum is a place of free choice, for a learning that is not cumulative and progressive as the scholastic one, but more personal and variable. Its degrees can change from the instant impression, to the basic learning, to the ‘Ah!’ phenomenon, to the long term integration.

In the end an important aspect is that exhibition technologies should follow the progress of the rest of the museum’s activities such as research and conservation.

A dialect model that can give shape to a narrative exhibition is the Aristotele’s Poetic. According to this conception the drammatic structure is made by six elements: a narration, some characters, a thought, a language, a music and a the sight. They have to be in this exact order to allow comprehension.

220

Cliché: what we should avoid to repeat • Portrait of primitive people in civilized places • Unified community visions • Prejudice of the visitor who is not familiar with the objects • Evolutionist theories in ethnographic display • Museum as a place for consolidation, conservation and transmission of a dominant identity that doesn’t change • Curator attracted by the object that strengthens the traditional view • Museum as instrument of exclusion

221

Good practices relevated in other museums, emblematic pictures

Relevancy of particular exhibitions

Intercultural dialogue

Multiple voices

Plural identities

Parallel lectures

Mela related activities*

Mela related tools*

222

223

Good practices relevated in other museums, captions

Relevancy of particular exhibitions

Quai Branly Les Séduction du Palais, 2012

The Dolhuys Museum in Haarlem exhibition ‘The Van Gogh Dossier : Mad or Genius’

Quai Branly regular rotation of artefacts in the permanent collections area and during temporary exhibitions

Intercultural dialogue

Conference on the future of museum mediation in a digital world, Leuven 2012

Ningura Napurrula, Aboriginal artists, her work displayed at Quai Branly

Exhibition ‘L’invention du sauvage’ by Lilian Thuram foundation 2012

Multiple voices

Types of Pipes, by Magritte, 1993

“Beyond China” at the Hyde Park Art Center, by Matthew Harris

‘Flexibility: Design in a fast-changing Society’, Torino

Plural identities

Visitors at the exhibition “A World Apart Next Door: Glimpses into the life of Hasidic Jews” in Jerusalem, 2012

Harvard University, 20% international students

Interactive challenging game about the people traits: visitors reconsider the ways in which they categorize them (Minnesota)

Parallel lectures

‘The World Stage:Israel’ at Jewish Museum of NY, Ogunnaike-Wiley discussion

Picture of xenophobic violence in South Africa

ITU museum, ICT Discovery for the doughters of the employees

Mela related activities*

Introduction to Slovene Ethnographic Museum

Haka at the Quai Branly, exhibition ‘Maori, leurs trésors ont une âme’ 2012

Traditional costumes, Humno Ethnographic museum, Kosice

Mela related tools*

‘Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects’ Exhibition 2012

San Diego Natural History museum, provocative labels

Grammy museum, LA

224

Our Londinium, Museum of London 2012

Art/Artifact-African Art in anthropology collection 1990

x

x

International Festival Showcases Rich Cultural Mix at UT Dallas

Globalization Kobe fieldtrip

Mediatheque, Casa del cinema, Gorizia 2010

x

x

x

x

x

The curator of the exhibition, Lilian Thuram, speaking to reporters about ‘L’invention du sauvage’ 2012

x

Vietnamese ethnic minorance

Contemporary craftspeople in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

The happy show illustration, by Verena Michelitsch

Anne Pontégnie at Wiels contemporary art center, Brussels 2008

Artist Jivya Soma Mashe makes a painting at the Quai Branly, 2010

Conran Foundation Colection-from the Design Museum’s archive,2004

The wall, Copenhagen 2012

Russian Pavillion, Venice Biennale 2012

Chicago children museum, 2010

x

x

x

Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map, 1981

x

225

Good practices relevated in other museums, typology

Relevancy of particular exhibitions

Thematic exhibitions

Dossier exhibitions

3/6 months exhibitions/ rotation of the items

Intercultural dialogue

Museum play the role of mediator

Comments/ judgment/ participation by the community who is displayed

Selection of items by the community who is displayed

Multiple voices

To show multiple stories, points of view, perspectives contemporarily

Overlapping of discrepant histories

Ideological flexibility instead of permanence and solidity

Plural identities

To create different sense of belonging

To represent all the different new nomads

To recognize the subjectivity and relativity of cathegories

Parallel lectures

To host many ideas, disputes, proposals

To host delicate thematics (controversy)

To introduce new critical views for visitors with mobile devices

Mela related activities*

Lecture room/master classes

Recitals/ festivals/performances/ concerts

Theme days

Mela related tools*

Information material accessible only if wanted/ stratification of it

Different uses of the label

Different forms of learning

226

Semipermanent exhibitions (re-reading of the collection)

Exhibition on the museum experience itself

Temporary exhibition as a script for the visitors (work in progress)

To import new objects

Creation/acceptance of cross cultural communities

To underline the role of globalization

To provide services for culturally diverse communities

To underline the role of tourism in the intercultural dialogue

The museum can publicly declare his mission/ objectives/ ethic/responsibility

To generate different interpretations in the visitor

To show different theories on the same issue

To honestly show museum’s frictions

to represent all the different minorances that are present

Tangible and intangible heritage

Importance of cultural diversity

to represent a common heritage for plural identities (Unesco)

To map other people in different ways

The curators can discuss their choices at the exhibition

Stratification of narrations and informations for different users

To present a cultural fact to the visitor without explicit interpretations

Workshops/ family workshops/artist workshops

Study visits to the archive

Laboratories with intellectuals formulating new interpretations

conversations/oral witnesses

Interactive devices where visitors can put his thoughts/ knowledge

Physical, digital and acoustic devices

Different kind of cartography

Every object is chosen by an identified source

227

Potential good practices for KHM, Oslo

Relevancy of particular exhibitions

1

2

3

Intercultural dialogue

8

9

10

Multiple voices

15*

16*

17*

Plural identities

22*

23

24

Parallel lectures

29

30

31

Mela related activities*

36

37

38

Mela related tools*

43

44*

45

228

*

present in the design sample

4

5

6

7

11

12

13

14

18.

19*

20

21

25

26

27

28

32

33

34*

35

39

40

41

42

46

47

48

49

229

Sketch from ‘A New Nature’ Anders Abraham, 2011

230

PROJECT STRATEGIES spatial consequences of MeLa on the Oslo KHM

The first idea is to propose a new interpretation to the collection already owned. Regardless of how those objects ended up in that museum - sometimes acquired through colonial practices - they are now there and the museum has the responsibility to take care of them and convey them. So it’s important to re-read those collections in order to avoid mono-centric views. Multiple perspectives, multiple points of view are the key guidelines.

Besides the project aims at exhibiting the culture of ‘the other’ through a correct narration, using tools that could be successful, such as a participative strategy, either involving the ‘viewer’ (the visitor) or the ‘maker’ (the one who represents the culture from which the object comes) in the exhibition process.

Other possibilities could be to address museums to make their intentions explicit and to openly communicate their mission, objectives or ethic principles, underlining the subjectivity of their choices, or to write labels that encourage discussions and reflections. In addiction many physical tools, specifically designed for the KHM and its collection could improve and change the museum while giving space to new interpretations and narrations reflecting the multiplicity of voices.

In the end it is also assumed that the building itself, and the place where it could keep being located – hence the choice to work in the area of Tullinløkka - has a particular importance in defining some characteristics of the institution and allowing certain dynamics. The existing building reflects the values of the economical, political or cultural age in which the museum was built and it has a particular iconicity; the project should show the need to find a balance between the sensitivity of tradition and the necessity of innovation.

The first point is that the Museum should probably abandon the geographical approach that now groups exhibited items by provenience, which risks to give too strong definitions to the different ethnic groups, and to adopt instead a universalistic approach which tries to answer to some general thematic areas through a comparative analysis of the different populations of the world.

This is why in the rearrangement project, ethnographic items will be grouped into five subjects: Aesthetic, Death, Mobility, Religion, and Technology. The challenge is to ask the basic questions about the nature of humanity and explore them through these topics with the various points of view of the diverse cultures. The Museum will thus be a monument on knowledge in itself where the diversity will be used as a way of thinking through

231

a theme.

I find this first solution, reached with the help of the staff, appropriated and in line with the topics on which the MeLa project is focused. The thematic approach is probably one of the most efficient ways through which the ethnographic museum might distance itself from the colonial heritage and move toward a reconfiguration. Only in this way it wouldn’t focus anymore on the differences among cultures in themselves, but in the disparate ways various cultures approach common themes. In this way ‘ethnography’ and ‘ethnos’ won’t be the central topic anymore, since cultural mix and the simultaneous presence of ethnic groups today make the dissimilarities among them quite banal to be exhibited in a Museum, in a world where the Internet and globalization reduced distances and everybody has the possibility to travel or experience, directly or virtually, other lifestyles.

The museum has to be postcolonial, neutral and not authoritative and this belief would certainly lead to a new way of exhibiting. This is a principle the ex director shares with this research.

First of all, there would be no more permanent exhibitions but just flexible semi-permanent ones (to be changed every five years) or shorter-term ones (lasting up to one year). This flexibility might help to avoid the stagnation on some statements, allowing the Museum to follow the new updates of research and the changes of society, and to be able to substitute some parts of the exhibition singularly, from time to time. Moreover, the exhibitions need to be improved in terms of physical and emotional involvement of the visitor, becoming more empathic. The ‘viewer’, indeed, has to interact actively with the space, the tools and the contents of the exhibition, in order to experience some aspects of a culture or to interpret the collection as he prefers. Every visitor is a single case and dictates the time and the interest given to each piece of an exhibition. He thus ‘produce’ the museum himself, meaning that he gleans something particular from it, which is different from what any other person glean.

The use of digital technology and the stratification of the information it may allow, for instance by superimposing different notions on an item through mobile devices, might be good steps toward that a personalization of the exhibition.

It was already mentioned that the concept of this exhibition derived from the idea that the museum has to provide multiple perspectives. Hence the occasion for various paths, different sights, possibilities and points of view.

The generative element that creates this space is ‘the cell’. Plural cells, similar to independent and flexible museum rooms of slightly different dimensions, stands in the empty exhibition space without a hierarchy and interrupt it. Thus they create an interconnected web without beginning or end.

The aggregation of several cells creates an ‘archipelago’, where each corresponds to one of the 5 themes for now chosen: Aesthetic, Death, Mobility, Religion, and Technology.

232

The archipelagos are recognizable in the space as distinct for their mutual distance and position, but they keep being connected for the many inter-relations between a theme and the other. Each visitor is free to start where he prefers and continue how he wants, but being unconsciously guided by the disposition of the objects and by the sides of the cells’ exterior skin chosen to contain information.

The 5 themes ‘de-flow’ in a de-centred expanding space, banked only by the volumes of the activity boxes.

The free space around the cells - their negative - is the regular exhibition space, furnished with special tables that hang on the external surface of the cells, expositive podiums and cases. Here the collection is physically displayed with the new criteria, suggesting a series of links and comparisons.

The interior of each cell, instead, shows an alternative reading on particular themes, using different tools. Each cell is an episode, an in-depth analysis with a different statement.

Different paths intersect and visitors perceive the relativity of themes but also the leitmotiv linking more cultures in the common themes and sub-themes, marked with different colours.

The cells are designed to be easily dismounted and re-mounted in different arrangements, to give form to different themes. They are made of modules that present some repeated angles and structural wood panels; their double skin contains glass cases on steel supports and digital screens for the exhibition. Both their internal and external façades are exhibitive surfaces playing different roles in the exhibition system: the outside is used mainly to display and the inside is used to create interaction. ITC and technologic devices are used inside the cells to give opportunity for a stratification of information and provocations.

The curator can easily substitute, implement, change or add a part of the material on display, maintaining it in a constant evolution.

The other element of the exhibition interacting with the cells is ‘the wall’. With ‘the wall’ we refer to the external surface of the perimetral activity boxes. This thick surface gives the opportunity to those who experiment, play or work in the museum backstage to present the processes, the progresses or the results of their work in two different ways: through some cases or screens where they can exhibit their products, works, videos and interviews; or through windows that create a direct visual contact with visitors walking around the exhibition. People can have a look through the windows and see what’s happening behind the scenes.

In addiction, since this is a University Museum, it came out that research has to be a mayor issue. The exhibition space might become a place of experimentation and research itself. The new designated director claims that the museum should be a knowledge-inthe-making, with the audience making new questions and becoming co-investigator in

233

the research process. Four are the ways in which this phenomenon would occur: ‘root exhibitions’ (cross disciplinary exhibitions generating questions that transgress individual cases), an ‘objectarium’ (digital storage where visitors browse through the collection catalogue and reflect upon which questions these objects may generate), ‘the attic’ (or ‘experimentarium’, a place for exploring new ways of exhibit in collaboration with external people) and ‘special exhibitions’ (to focus on some particular cases, for instance ‘signed exhibitions’). The entire exhibition space would be a space where ideas roam and move from one of these platforms to another in a very dynamic play.

It’s clear how this transformation project will result in the creation of brand new spaces, different from the ones normally present in museums, and thought to host some very specific functions, or on the contrary so flexible to have potential to host a lot of different activities.

As mentioned in the general strategies proposal for instance, space for collaboration and participation will be essential to make the museum a place of encounter and debate.

Among those kinds of spaces we can mention all the educational areas (auditoria, spaces for active education, where visitors learn by getting in contact with items, multicultural workshops, rooms for conferences or reserved to special events involving minorities, group rooms for research or study and classrooms) and the so called ‘proactive space’ (very flexible and adaptable spaces, with a peculiar formal character, designed to host new practices that the museum should undertake more often, such as performances, talks and particular participative programs).

The audience involved should be multicultural and should help investigating on new themes. ‘Inter-disciplinary’ and ‘debate’ will be the key words for those new rooms and programs.

Since the absence of contemporary objects tends to deny the innovative and creative abilities of other cultures, another main choice is to include in the ethnographic exhibition recent objects, works of contemporary artists or currently used items never exhibited before. This curatorial decision aims to develop the collection and to increase the contents of the museum. New documents and personal belongings, together with audio/video ‘mementos’, might better represent the multicultural society of today.

In the end, a very symbolic role will be assumed by the square, the public space that is going to be part of the project.

The Cultural History Museum will be a symbol of a museum where you can step on, a museum that put itself to use in the people, an institution that is not any more hegemonic and powerful but usable and free.

The square will have almost the same importance of the museum. It will bring people underground into the museum with plural entrances and shape spaces suitable for meet-

234

ings and talks, spaces that could be used as spots where different ethnos show off, stay, rest, drink or eat. In this way the square is analogue to an exhibition of the social and cultural reality of Oslo, where the entire spectrum of Oslo inhabitants will become visible, with all its mixes and minority groups.

54 388 TECHNOLOGY

5 446 MOBILITY

26 996 AESTHETICS

639 DEATH 3 978 RELIGION

235

THEMATIC EXHIBITION 16

1. mobility 2. aesthetic 3. religion 4. technology 5. death

2

1

17

18

23

24*

19

20

3

53*

4

6 8

5 7

1 9

54*

10

2

55*

44*

15

11

12

13

14

45*

41*

40

236

21

22

27

28

29

26*

31

32

30*

25*

52*

51* 33

3

56*

5 50*

57*

34*

58*

4 49*

35

48

46*

42*

43* 47*

36*

39

38

37

237

Energy - Technology - Industry - Machinery 26 191

Resources - Raw materials 11 790

TECHNOLOGY 54 388

Manifacture - Leather - Fiber 8 140

Science performances 4 613

Building crafts 3 654

238

work instruments (knive, broom, spatula,...) manifacture products (vase, fan, plate, basket,...) weapons (arch, sward,...) lamps

pottery and glass

metallurgic products

clothes and shoes

objects (baskets,...)

flasks, bowls, little statues, clocks

interior furnitures (carpets, tables, blankets, vases,...)

house models

pictures

239

Arts - Entertainment 16 321

AESTHETICS 26 996

Clothes - Jewellery 10 675

Communication 2 362

MOBILITY

Transport 2316

5 446

Exchange good and services 768

240

art pieces (painting, sculpture,...) music (instruments) theatre and dance (masks,...) feasts and carnival

clothes

jewellery

letters, books, papers

coins

boats, sleds, bags, travel objects, shoes

fabrics, bottles, belts, amulets,...

241

RELIGION

Religion and spiritual beliefs

3 978

DEATH 639

242

Death and burial

little statues, ritual objects

crosses

boards

amulets, necklaces

statues, grave goods

bones

mummification items

urns, coffins, inscriptions

243

1. the fluid connective space around hosts the semipermanent thematic exhibition

244

2. the interior of each cell shows an alternative lecture on particular themes, through different tools

245

exhibition space around the cells, the podiums

exhibition space around the cells, the tables

246

exhibition space inside the cell

247

AESTHETIC ARCHIPELAGO

248

1 view 1 8*.

view 2

7*.

1.

6.

B

2. 3.

A’

theatre - feasts

19.

2

20.

23*.

22*.

art pieces

A

1. masks and drama 2. entertainment (parads, carnival) 3. leisure activities (holidays, festivals, games) 4. music - musical instruments 5*. comparative way (same instruments/different music from different cultures) 6. masks (rituals and drama) 7*. ‘wearing masks, wearing identities’ 8*. provocative label corner (to encourage discussion and reflection) 9. the sciaman dress 10. body (mutilation and tattoo) 11. clothings 12. accessories and crafts 13. standards of living and routine 14. dance 15*. ‘choose what’ (different layers of information can be selected by a mobile device) 16*. prejudice and stereotype (to see beyond stereotyped truths) 17*. ‘the mirror’ (touch screen interactive mirror that create links among different fashion styles from different cultures and epochs) 18*. story of a piece of clothing (how the sciaman was convinced to sell the dress) 19. congolese mask 20. visual arts (painting, scultpure, decoration) 21*. ‘beauty versus meaning’ (aesthetic value versus history of the object) 22*. ‘true or false?’ (trying to guess which one is true, you end up knowing they both are, but they are different versions) 23*. signed exhibition (an art exhibition where the curators explain why they picked those objects) 24*. congolese mask, the truth about it (belgian colonization of Congo)

view 5

B’

5*.

music - dance

3 4.

14.

15*.

13.

18*.

view 6

16*.

view 4

9.

12.

17*.

21*.

10.

11.

view 3

clothes - jewellery

0

1

5 249

exhibition section 0 250

1

251

Exterior, cell 1 Cell 1, External skin

2. Entertainment

1. Masks and drama

(parads, carnival)

-

Exterior, cell 2

Cell 2, External skin

(mutilation and tattoo)

-

9. The sciaman

10. Body (muti-

dress

lation and tattoo)

12. Accessories and craft

11. Clothing

10. Body

9. The sciaman dress

11. Clothings

-

-

12. Accessories and crafts

13. Standards of living and routine

Cell 3, External skin

19. Congolese mask -

252 Exterior, cell 3

20. Visual arts

(painting, sculpture, decoration)

4. Music

3. Leisure activities

-

(holidays, festival, games)

13. Standards of living

4. Music

(musical instruments)

14. Dance

(routine)

-

14. Dance

253

Interior, cell 1

Cell 1, Internal skin

5*. Comparative way

(same instruments/ different music from different cultures)

5*. Comparative

Interior, cell 2

way (same instruments/different music from different cultures)

Cell 2, Internal skin

15*. Choose what

(different layers of information can be selected by a mobile device)

Interior, cell 3

Cell 3, Internal skin

254

15*. ‘Choose what’ (different layers of information can be selected by a mobile device)

21.* Beauty versus meaning

(aesthetic value vs history of the objects )

21*. ‘Beauty

versus meaning’ (aesthetic value versus history of

22*. True or

false? (trying to guess which one is true, you end

?

6. Masks

(rituals and drama)

6. Masks (rituals

?

?

?

?

8*. Provocative label corner

7*. Wearing masks, wearing identities

(to encourage discussion and reflection)

7*

8*. Provoca-

Wearing masks, wearing identities

and drama)

?

tive label corner (to encourage discussion and reflection)

.

16*. Prejudice and stereotype (to see beyond stereotyped truths)

16*. Prejudice

17*. The mirror

(touch screen interactive mirror that create links among different fashion styles from different cultures and epochs)

17*. The mirror

and stereotype (to see beyond stereotyped truths)

(touch screen interactive mirror that create links among different fashion styles from different cultures and epochs)

22*. True or false?

(trying to guess which one is true, you end up knowing they both are, but they are different versions) 23*. Signed ex-

hibition (an art exhibition where the curators explain

23*. Signed exhibition

(an art exhibition where the curators explain why they picked those objects) 24*. Congolese mask, the truth about it (belgian colonization of

17*. Story of a piece of clothing (how the sciaman was convinced to sell the dress)

18*. Story of a piece of clothing (how the sciaman was convinced to sell the dress)

24*. Congolese mask, the truth about it (belgian colonization of Congo)

255

View 1, outside the cells

256

View 2, inside the cell 1

257

View 3, outside the cells

258

View 4, inside the cell 2

259

Cell 5, outside the cells

260

View 6, inside the cell 3

261

Conclusions

Catalogue of the spatial conseguences of MeLa*

262

Tabel 1

Root exhibition

Special exhibitions

The ever changing exhibit

Empathetic exhibition settings

cross disciplinary exhibitions geneerating questions that transgress individual cases

focused on a particular case or ‘signed exhibition’

semi-permanent exhibition (to be changed maximum every 5 years); flexibility to avoid the stagnation on some statements; the Museum follow the new updates of research and the changes of society; possibility to substitute some parts of the exhibition singularly the ‘viewer’ participate actively with the space, the tools and the contents of the exhibition; chance to put someone else’s shoes; every visitor is a single case and dictates the time and the interpretation of an exhibition

New objects recent objects, works of contemporary artists, or objects belonging to the present of a culture, together with audio/video witnesses, might better represent the multicultural society of today

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Tabel 2

Objectarium digital storage where visitors browse into the collection catalogue and reflect upon which questions may these objects generate

Experimentarium

a place for exploring new ways of exhibit or exhibition devices, in collaboration with external people or communities

Auditorium a 300 seats theatre for multiple uses (projections, concerts, performances, conferences…)

Active education room

Workshop room

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room for active learning organized by the museum staff and involving both people and adults in order to discover different cultures through the museum objects

space for workshops, mostly multicultural, involving members from different groups or communities or ethnies together, collaborating to get to know each other better through their cultures

αβγδε

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Tabel 3

Space for conferences and speeches

Room for celebrations

Proactive space

Square and courtyards

Role of the existent buildings

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a 50 seats conference room for conferences, speeches, lectures, book presentations, mainly given by someone representing an ethnic group or community or minority

a place for events, where minorities or communities can celebrate their national feasts, religious rituals and traditional parties

a very flexible and adaptable space, with a peculiar formal character, designed to host brand new practices that the museums should undertake, such as performances, speeches and special participative programs

the square and the couryards help creating meeting and dialogue, spots where different ethnie show off, stay, rest, drink or eat

importance of the place and historicalcultural value of the old buildings in giving identity to the new museum institution

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Bibliography

General museography Luca Basso Peressut, Il museo moderno, Architettura e museografia da Perret a Kahn, edited by Lybra immagine, Milano, 2005 Tony Bennet, The birth of the museum, London and New York: Routledge, 1995

Museum and multi-cultural society Joachim Baur, “La rappresentazione della migrazione”, in: Nuova Museologia, number 22, October, 2010 (pp. 27-34) James Clifford, “Museum as contact zones”, in: Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, edited by James Clifford, Harvard University press, Harvard, 1967 (pp. 188-219) Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces. Heterotopias”, in Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, 1967, first published in October 1984 Fondazione Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia ‘Leonardo da Vinci’, Musei, saperi e culture, Milano, 1999 Unesco, Cultural Diversity. Common heritage, plural identities , edited by United Nations, Paris, 2002 Ivan Karp and Steven D.Lavine, Exhibiting cultures. The poetics and Politics of Museum Display, edited by Smithsonian Institution, Washington and London, 1991 Armelle Lavalou and Jean-Paul Robert, Le musée du Quai Branly, edited by Le Moniteur, Paris, September 2006 Darko Pandakovic, Identità culturali, dieci musei per l’America Latina, edited by Marsilio, Venezia, 2010 Camilla Pagani “The Quai Branly Museum Temporary Exhibitions Policy: un unpredictable and diversified strategy”, April 2012

Franca Di Valerio, Contesto e identità. Gli oggetti dentro e fuori i musei, CLUEB, Bologna, 1999.

B. De L’Estoile “The past as it lives now: an anthropology of colonial legacies”, Social Anthropology / Anthropologie sociale, vol. 16, n° 3, pp. 267-279, 2008.

S. R. Butler “The politics of exhibiting culture: legacies and possibilities”, Museum Anthropology, 23 (3), pp. 74-92, 2000.

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M.M. Ames. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes. The Anthropology of Museums, Vancouver-Toronto : UBC Press, 1992.

J. Rutherford, The Third Space. Interview with Homi Bhabha. In: Ders. (Hg): Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 207-221, 1990.

Camilla Pagani ‘‘Du musee du Quai Branly au national museum of the american indian: genealogie de deux discours museaux’’ Master Recherche Diploma Antonio Aimi, Dove vanno i musei dell’’altro’? Dieci anni dopo il Pavillon des Sessions, in Others modernities, Università degli studi di Milano, Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia, March 2011 Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG), Abstract from Multiple Dialogues: interpreting ethnographic collection in the 21st century, April 2012 RIME (Réseau International de Musées d’Ethnographie), Abstract from Beyond Modernity: Do Ethnography Museums Need Ethnography?, Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini, April 2012 Sensible objects, Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture, edited by Elizabeth Ewards, Chris Gosden, Ruth B. Philips, 2006 James Cuno, Who owns antiquity? Museums and the battle over our ancient heritage, edited by Princeton University Press, 2008 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, Ethics in a world of strangers, edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah, 2006 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at large, Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, edited by the Regents University of Minnesota, 1996

MeLa* research project Mela* Books, Museums in age of migrations. Questions, challenges, perspectives , edited by Luca Basso Peressut and Clelia Pozzi, Milano, March 2012 Mela* Books, Cultural Memory, migrating modernities and museum practices , edited by Beatrice Ferrara, Milano, August 2012 Mela* Books, European crossroads , edited by Perla Innocenti, Milano, August 2012 269

Mela* Books, Representing museum technologies , edited by Jamie Allen and Eleonora Lupo, Milano, August 2012 Margherita Parati, Gennaro Postiglione and Clelia Pozzi, “Vibrations and ordre compliqué. Due strategie per immaginare il museo post-coloniale” , 2012 Mariella Brenna and Camilla Pagani “Ethnographic museums in the 21st Century: a turning point? ” Mela, Dossier. Envisioning 21st century museums: research meeting 02, Copenhagen, May 2012 Mela* Books, European museum in the 21st century: setting the frameworks (Volumes 1, 2, 3) , edited by Luca Basso Peressut, Francesca Lanz and Gennaro Postiglione, Milano, February 2013 Critical Archive - RF06 Cluster, Theories, Practices and Models for 21st century museography, November 2013

Oslo Kulturhistorisk Museum Jostein Bergstøl, Arne Aleksej Perminow, Ann Christine Eek, edited by Universitet i Oslo, 2004 Stasbygg and LPO arkitektur and design as, Egnethetsanalyse For Museumsbruk, June 2004 Stasbygg and LPO arkitektur and design as, Studie: Statlige eiendommer ved og på Tullinløkka, April 2011 Kulturhistorisk museum, Universitet i Oslo, Vikingskipene, Bygdøy eller Bjørvika? Konsekvensanalyse, Flytting av vikingskipene

Websites http://www.archiportale.com/news/2009/04/eventi/le-grand-paris-de-l-agglomeration-parisienne_14925_32.html http://www.dezeen.com/2011/03/02/va-exhibition-road-project-shortlist/ http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/211176-Extension-of-the-St-del-Museum http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/186641-Museo-Interactivo-de-la-Historia-de-Lugo http://www.byfabrikken.no/2012/11/apen-idekonkurranse-om-historieparken-i-bjorvika/ http://www.lifeinnorway.net/2011/07/exploring-gronland http://www.ethno-museum.ac.at/en/exhibitions/coming-exhibitions/fetish-modernity/ http://issuu.com/cca.uct/docs/politics_of_exhibiting_cultures http://www.unimus.no/etnografi/khm/#/mapView?

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http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.it/2012/02/object-atlas-fieldwork-in-museum.html http://www.horniman.ac.uk/ http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ http://www.rimenet.eu/index.php?id=16 http://asemus.museum/museum/museum-fur-volkerkunde-wien-the-museum-of-ethnology/ http://www.museedesconfluences.fr/musee/ http://www.africamuseum.be/home http://www.museidigenova.it/spip.php?rubrique25 http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/varldskulturmuseet/om-museet/in-english/ http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tanks-tate-modern/eventseries/tanks-art-action http://www.khm.uio.no/tema/utstillingsarkiv/fredelig-tropeliv/english.html http://www.pigorini.beniculturali.it/archivio-mostre.html http://www.themovingmuseum.com/index.php/about http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/london-wall/ http://www.orfware.com/category/projects/installations/ http://www.atelier-brueckner.com

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND DEDICATIONS*

I wish to personally thank the following people for the contributions and support given during this project.

First and foremost, I would like to thank my Professor Gennaro Postiglione. The way he dedicates himself with passion to the teaching profession is rare and appreciable; he allowed me to challenge myself with higher goals and filled me with lots of interesting imputs.

I also thank the Kulturhistorisk Museum of Oslo. Their helpfulness during my stay in the Museum was very remarkable, without their help this work would have been lacking of much of its value. Special thanks to Rane Willerslev, Øivind Fuglerud, Idunn Kvalø, Tone Wang, Kjersti Larsen, Tone Cecilie Karlgård, Arne Aleksej Perminow, Martin Hager-Saltnes and Ralf Znotis.

Thanks to Pål Henry Engh from LPO studio (Oslo) for introducing me to the topic of the museum debate.

A special thanks goes to my family. Without your support, given in every possible form, all of this wouldn’t be possible.

Thanks to all my friends, to those who made my journey through these fine years in Milan and to the older ones who share my happiness now.

Thanks to Giorgia for her i-phone reviews and skype brainstorming on the project from its very start till the very last detail.

Thanks to Andrea, Ilaria, Jacopo, Elena and Francesca for the advices. Thanks to Michela, Lynn, Sara, Giulio, Carlos and Jacopo for comforting phone-calls or messages, and thanks to my ‘Norwegian’ friends David, Andrea and Carlota for some information supplies.

In the end I’d like to thank the Liceo Artistico Calcagnadoro (RI) for letting me use their model laboratories, in particular my gratitude goes to Franco Guercilena for his generous help with woodcraft.

MUSEUM IN AN AGE OF MIGRATIONS OSLO KULTURHISTORISK MUSEUM

The world we live in it’s becoming everyday more a world of ‘others’ rather than a world of ‘self’. Students, workers, professionals and tourists are the new nomads, protagonists of a dynamism now more intense than in the past and which interests all kind of spheres: from the economical to the demographical one, from the political to the cultural one. This phenomenon, increased by Internet and globalization, is being responsible of a change in our way to perceive the history, art and the idea of nationality.

In this climate of trans-culturalism and transnationalism, a multiplicity of voices is required for the narration of different stories, which is why the ethnographic museum as it was in the colonial era is not appropriate anymore.

Ethnographic museums’ role today should be to express the contemporary age by representing all the different points of view through different ‘lens’.

But, how to represent each identity without giving a wrong interpretation? How to neutralize the political influences? What to show and how to make it talk to the visitors? What to tell them and what not to tell?

Those choices are turning the institution of the ethnographic museum from a temple of conservation of material colonial memory to a forum of debate and experimentation, a place of meeting and discussion among cultures.

A new approach to the museum and exhibition design, possibly enriched by the use of new successful tools, will be essential to acquire a new sensitivity with which to generate a new museum type.

My design-based discourse will focus on a new Kulturhistorisk museum in Oslo and on how to rethink the way its ethnologic section works and exhibit in a post-colonial era.