Professor Coombes on The Future of Ethnographic Museums
Annie E Coombes, Professor of Material and Visual Culture, will be giving a lecture at a conference held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
Annie E Coombes, Professor of Material and Visual Culture, will be giving a lecture at a conference held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
The Future of Ethnographic Museums is a major international conference with lectures from leading figures in the study of museums and anthropology.
Professor Coombes' paper is entitled: "Making a Difference: Ethnographic Interventions from the Post Colony"
Abstract: Much of the debate around both the intractable problem, and conversely the potential contemporary value, of ethnographic museums has focused attention on Europe and North America. I am interested in understanding why it is that an institution which has such a potent colonial legacy still retains credibility in nations which have themselves been subjected to particularly violent ethnographic scrutiny.
This paper looks at how local collections of material culture, that in other contexts would be classed as ‘ethnographic’, are being mobilized as part of a country-wide phenomenon in Kenya. It focuses on the contradictory ways in which cultural objects are being revitalised through the community peace museum movement as a means of conflict resolution, in the wake of numerous instances of interethnic violence. Ethnographies are being constituted on the one hand, as a reinvention of local ethnicities and on the other, as part of a shared cross-cultural heritage which might provide the basis for the creation of a new national history in what remains a deeply divided country. Could it be that these community peace museums effectively constitute a local revision that radically transforms the possible roles available for the ethnographic museum today?
Professor Coombes supervises research students on colonial and post-colonial culture in Britain, South Africa, West Africa and Australia; international and colonial exhibitions; museum and heritage studies; slavery in Britain; politics and contemporary art practice.