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This study project will critically address the question of displaying Europe through applied museum collection research. In 2011, the Museum Europäischer Kulturen (MEK) has developed the current main gallery to present its collection. Since, diverse actors ranging from authoritarian governments to decolonial activists, have been confronting and deploying the notion of ‘Europe’, ‘identity’ and ‘heritage’ in increasingly charged political contexts. At a critical juncture of the European project, in the context of post-utopian, post-Brexit, post- pandemic, post-colonial public sphere, museums like the MEK need to respond to these shifts. The study project will be the first makeshift, experimental, provisory step to problematize Europe in the museum.
Turning the MEK gallery into a laboratory of applied collection research, the student group will develop new research-based perspectives on the MEK collection in collaboration with the museum curators. The aim of the project is to mobilise and re-activate the collection as a vital, critical resource through a range of methods drawn from ethnology, material culture and museum studies. The seminars will provide practical skills in collection research ranging from object biography, visual approaches to archival methodologies, developing the participants’ research and curatorial skills. Through the current debates about Europe and collections, the students will be encouraged to undertake their individual object research and develop group approaches in order to rethink Europe in the museum. |
