166 — european museums in the 21st century: setting the framework (vol 1)
img. 3.13 — Louvre, Paris, France. Pavillon des Sessions, permanent exhibition. October 2011. Exhibition design by JeanMichel Wilmotte. © Musée du quai Branly. Photo by Arnaud Baumann.
Finally, collaborative projects are increasingly part of museum practice, sometimes officially stated in the statutes of the museum, as it has been the case with COMRAF since 2003 at the MRAC and, at other times in specific projects such as the collaboration with Malian associations in Paris during the Dogon exhibition at MQB in 2011, or the exhibition “(S)oggetti Migranti” at the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini in Rome. This was the result of active exchange and collaboration between professionals from European museums and migrant associations for over a year within the framework of European fundedproject READ-ME II (Réseau européen des Associations de Diasporas & Musées d’Ethnographie). In conclusion, as highlighted forward by Maria Camilla De Palma, director of the Castello D’Albertis Museo delle Culture del Mondo in Genoa, Ethnological museums must look for a profound internal renewal if they wish to continue to play a role in contemporary society and revise their own role that they played between the traditional ‘observers’ and the ‘observed’ during fieldwork in the colonial era. Beyond ‘repatriation’, towards museums of dialogue and consultation with native communities, it is time for hybridization and the breaking down of the barriers between disciplines and categories. It is time for social inclusion and shared authority, polyphony and working with each other.
Aware of the challenges of the new millennium, most of ethnographic museums intend to play an active part in civil society. Making themselves places for politics of social inclusion and the recognition of previously marginalized cultures. Camilla Pagani