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● TAKING CARE – Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Spaces of Care
KHM-Museumsverband, Weltmuseum Wien (AT)
Statens museer för världskultur (SE), Mucem – Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (FR), Nationalmuseet (DK), Linden-Museum Stuttgart (DE), Slovenski etnografski muzej (SI), Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món/Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ES), MARKK – Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt (DE), Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford – University of Oxford (UK), Royal Museum for Central Africa (BE), Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (NL), Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – University of Cambridge (UK), Museo delle Civiltà – Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali (IT), Culture Lab, Tervuren (BE)
State of the art
World cultures museums should no longer be conceived primarily as repositories of heritage to be preserved but rather as places of encounter and practice, of social experimentation and innovation where narratives of diversity can be (re) discovered, co-created and publicly shared.
Description of the project
While planetary in cause and scale, the negative effects of the environmental crisis are unequally distributed, affecting most intensely some whose positions are already extremely fragile, including indigenous and formerly colonized peoples, and contributing to rising global insecurity and inequality. TAKING CARE places ethnographic and world cultures museums at the centre of the search for possible strategies to address these issues. These museums, with their histories and collections, speak directly to these urgent challenges: planetary precarity, inequality, and the future of plural democracies. The project is framed around the notion of care, caring, and the power relations assumed by those who “care for” someone or something. It positions ethnographic and world cultures museums as spaces that confront planetary challenges in participatory and creative ways and explores the under-tapped potential of these. Through TAKING CARE, the partners develop closer and more trustful networks with members of diverse communities including indigenous peoples and shifts museum practice towards caring for people, not just objects.
Creative Europe’s support
Through the project, involved organisations established an interdisciplinary network of international and diverse museum experts, artists, scholars and activists in order to generate innovative artistic and scholarly input on the project’s topics.
#museums #ethnographic collections #climate crisis #colonialism #care #diversity
Beyond Environmental Sustainability
The interrelations between global inequality and the effects of the climate crisis are one of the main topics of the project. In this context, gender equality is discussed in the project, especially in the context of care work.
Contact
www.takingcareproject.eu Creative Europe Project Results
