An Analysis of the Role of Museums in the Polish-German
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1 2014, Iziko Museums Publications in association with ICOM-SA, Cape Town IZIKO MUSEUMS OF SOUTH AFRICA 25 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town, 8001 Telephone: +27 21 481 3800 Fax: +27 21 481 3993 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.iziko.org.za ICOM-SA 3 Davann Court, 50 Bellair Road, Vredehoek, Cape Town, 8001 Telephone: +27 21 461 2315 Fax: +27 82 660 5497 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.icom-sa.org.za ISBN: 978-0-621-43105-6 Design: Estelle Tanner.design All material is strictly copyright and all rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is forbidden. 2 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgment 1 Introduction Shahid Vawda 3 Powerful Ideas – Museums, Empire Utopias and Connected Worlds Susan Legêne 15 Cultural Policy as Utopia: The Case of South Africa Shahid Vawda 31 Teachers and Museums Wayne Alexander 49 Politics and the Presentation of Cultures in Museums Zvjezdana Antos 69 From Ethnology to Civilisations Museum, the Multiple Trajectories of ATP/MuCEM Collections 81 Myriame Morel-Deledalle In Search of the Utopia of the Past: Reflections of Antiquity Upon a National Narrative Katerina Mavromichali 93 Global Challenges for Regional Utopias Dennis Hermann 113 Imposed Utopias. Establishing Collections, Building the Israeli Nation State Judy Jaffe-Schagen 123 4 Museum Collections between Ideology and Reflection Tone Kregar & Tanja Roženbergar 139 Images for the Future: Aspects on Collecting Contemporary Images and on Future Collections 151 Elisabeth Boogh & Merja Diaz Seeking Common Ground: How Digital Museums Might Play a Role in Promoting Peace Laura Kate Gibson 165 Obey, Play and Learn – Political Ideologies and Childcare Christine Fredriksen 177 Rethinking the Practice of Collecting and Displaying Ethnographic Objects at Mutare Museum 189 Njabulo Chipangura Expectations, Disillusionment and Hope - for an Evolutionary Process in South African Museums 207 Balthi Du Plessis Windhoek – Vantaa City Museum Cooperation Leena Hiltula 219 From Military Museum to Remembrance Museum - Finding a Balance Danielle Kuijten 229 Can Museums and Art Exhibitions Play an Active Part in the Process of Reconciliation? Gregor H. Lersch, Berlin 239 5 Utopias and Dystopias: Museums and the idea of historical progress and multiple-trajectories. 6 Acknowledgements On behalf of the organizing committee I would like to extend my very special appreciation to Leontine Meijer-van Mensch, President International Committee for Collecting (COMCOL from hereon) and Jari Harju, President International Committees for Museums and Collections of Archaeology and History (ICMAH from hereon) for partnering with ICOM-SA to host this international conference at the Iziko Museums of South Africa in Cape Town. As a research-based museum IZIKO has been privileged to host this stimulating and thought provoking conference under the auspice of the ICOM-SA Board who so generously gave of their time and expertise. Professor Shahid Vawda and Bongani Ndhlovu spent numerous hours together with Sibongiseni Mkhize, CEO, Robben Island Museum and Mr Mxolisi Dlamuka, crafting and giving essence to the theme of the conference. When they finally shared the theme with COMCOL and ICMAH there was much lively debate and input from Renée Kistemaker and Leontine Meijer-van Mensch. The keynote addresses, given by Dr Susan Legêne (Professor of Political History, Vrije University, Amsterdam) and Mr Mokena Mokeka (Creative Director, Makeka Design Lab.), aptly set the tone for the conference, offered critical insights and stretched our minds to move from outdated paradigms of museum collections to make deeper meanings, provided alternative perspectives and strengthen connections through research, museum collections and exhibitions with new suggestions for interpretation. To all presenters and participants: your contributions to the conference discourse was insightful and make a small contribution towards the creation of our own theories and case studies. I would especially like to thank Laura Gibson for the central role she played in making everything appear easy and harmonious as the person responsible for the organisation of the conference. Her great organisational skills, reliability, attention to detail and depth of understanding of the conference theme made the conference and this publication possible. This conference and the publication would have not been possible without our referees, copyeditors, funders, partners and networks, including ICOM for the funding they made available to COMCOL. I would particularly like to thank the following sponsors for their generosity: The City of Cape Town for the donation of the conference bags; Wits University for stationery and promotional material; Boshendaal and La Motte for the wine sponsorship; Iziko SA Museum shop and café for the bottled water; Robben Island Museum for the subsidized ferry tickets and Iziko’s Education and Public Programmes Department for sponsoring the bus for the delegates. To the Iziko team, Annelize Kotze, Olga Jefferies, Iziko’s Customer Services and Institutional Advancement Departments, a special thank you for going the extra mile to ensure that the conference reception, lunches and celebratory dinner went smoothly. Rooksana Omar 6 1 Utopias and Dystopias: Museums and the idea of historical progress and multiple-trajectories. 2 INTRODUCTION Utopias and Dystopias in the 21st Century Museums Shahid Vawda These papers were given at a joint International Council of Museums (ICOM) Committee for Collecting (COMCOL) and Committee for Museums and Collections of Archaeology and History (ICMAH) conference in November 2012. Hosted by the Iziko Museums of South Africa in Cape Town, museum workers from across Europe and Africa convened to address the theme “Utopias and Dystopias: Museums and the Idea of Historical Progress and Multiple-trajectories”. The idea of the museum, at least in its invention during the age of high colonialism and the industrial revolution, was one based on a number of attributes that sit comfortably with the idea of utopia. Indeed the keynote speaker Susan Legêne refers to colonialism as represented in European museums as “empire utopias” and its wider resonance in the mythological presentation of utopias by a silent referent, but not absent dystopias. If by utopia we mean a place or state of social, political and economic affairs as perfect and inevitable, where a place for everyone is loosely arranged around the notion that progress and equity is guaranteed by the state and manifest in society, then that has indeed been an embedded idea underlying much of modern human history. For monarchs it might have been a benevolent despotism, while utopia for republicans represented a society and state without the overbearing oppressive monarchies; for democrats it was a society based on the right to vote and equality; for communists a society free from exploitation and class differences; for freedom fighters it was free of the shackles of colonialism and based on building a nation free from the ideologies of the cold war. Other utopias no doubt existed, from religious orders to secular communes. What these have in common is that large groups of people were galvanised by the possibility of a society free from the unbearable present. 2 3 INTRODUCTION - UTOPIAS AND DYSTOPIAS IN THE 21ST CENTURY MUSEUMS Yet, in a world thoroughly turned upside down, periodically in our last few decades, and perhaps even centuries, none of the visions that we are accustomed to, whether as religious visions or articulated new social, political and moral orders, seem to have the stability of the past, nor any purchase on the present. Instead, the future seems ambiguous and uncertain. The present conundrum of prescient future imperfections suggests that utopias and dystopias, together, need much more exploration in the context of museums and exhibitions. An example from literature is Orwell’s 1984 and Lowry’s The Giver where the dystopia is presented as utopia, thus reversing the logic, and breaking the binary of utopia versus dystopia. The simulacra of dystopia and utopia seems apposite to explore via museums in a world where the news media is controlled by a few conglomerates and where a financial crisis is represented as everyone else’s fault except those of the very financial institutions that precipitated this drama, or where the state has unprecedented access to resources to present its case with little countervailing voices, and fleeing the iron cage of bureaucracy is a daily, unending contemplation for “ordinary” citizens. The simultaneous existence between the promise of utopia and the discomfort and torment of dystopia is challenging for museums to represent. It is true that many aspects of such situations have been explored in museums, as will be seen in several of the papers in this collection: the fall from grace; modern bureaucracies’ control over populations; the vagaries of industrialism, capitalism, or communism; the violence and discrimination of colonialism; the broken promises of nationalism or even supra-nationalism (as in current Europeanism) and socialist internationalism; the promise and inadequacies of multicultural tolerance; and varieties of religious fundamentalisms. Yet, at the same time for others the re-make of the world (turning it right side up, if you will) heralds new possibilities, the fulfillment of utopian dreams of less dependence on former imperial powers, of greater South- South and South-North political and economic co-operation, of greater equal treatment and ideas about human rights,