Romuald Hazoume's “Ear Splitting,” made of brush, speakers and plastic can (left). A portrait mask from Ivory Coast at the Metropolitan Museum (right). Left, CAAC/Pigozzi Collection, Geneva; Right, Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposium: The Future of Ethnographic Museums
Conference at the Pitt Rivers Museum & University of Oxford, 19– 21 July 2013
The conference will mark the completion of the five-year RIME project funded by the European Union, and involving ten major European ethnography museums. RIME’s (Réseau International de Musées d’Ethnographie) stated aim has been to encourage ethnographic museums to “redefine their priorities” in response to “an ever more globalizing and multicultural world”. Since then workshops, exhibitions and symposia have been held at the RIME participating museums. Underpinning much of the discussion at these events has been the fundamental question: what is the future of ethnographic museums? In order to address this question more fully, an international cast of distinguished scholars will speak at the Oxford 2013 conference and responses will be made by representatives of the RIME museums. This conference aims to move the debate about the purpose of ethnographic museums in the post- colonial period forward and to envision new ways of thinking and working in those museums in the future.
Keynote Speakers
James Clifford (University of California at Santa Cruz)
Ruth Phillips (Carleton University),
Wayne Modest (Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam),
Corinne Kratz (Emory University),
Sharon Macdonald (University of Manchester),
Annie Coombes (Birkbeck College, University of London),
Kavita Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi),
Nick Thomas (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge) and
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (New York University).
Papers will be followed by responses from representatives of the museums participating in the RIME project.
Registration
Registration for this conference will open in October 2012, when further details about costs will be available. However, places will be limited so please indicate your interest in advance by contacting: RIMEinfo@prm.ox.ac.uk Further details will then be sent to you when registration starts.
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