Anthropology, Museums, and Contemporary Cultural Processes: An Introduction
Author(s)
Dahl, G. B.; Stade, Ronald
Abstract
The role of ethnographic museums was, to begin with, that of imparting information about foreign cultures. These were often described as the polar opposites of the civilized places in which ethnographic museums could be found. The museum objects metaphorically represented primitive stages in human development. They appeared like relics even if produced recently. Anthropology, ethnography, or ethnology was the academic discipline that concerned itself with primitive cultures. The ethnographic museum, with its harvests of colonial booty, therefore seemed like the self-evident medium for conveying anthropological information. Today the preconditions for this constellation have changed. Have museums become inappropriate to communicate anthropological knowledge?
