Reframing the Ethnographic Museum

Since the later part of the twentieth century, ethnographic museums have come under increasing scrutiny, and many have reflected on and changed their presentation as they have questioned collections, often made by colonial officials and explorers. Now is a good time to explore whether new developments in display and cultural politics provide a viable future for ethnographic museums. In particular, policies for restitution by colonial era institutions creates a changed landscape for ethnographic display both in the countries from which they originate and in former colonising states.Reframing the Ethnographic Museum offers the reader a wide range of cultural settings across the world where ethnographic displays have appeared in their local circumstances. Non-European museum strategies have raised new problems but also new solutions. Nationalism has been especially significant in museology in Asia, and in Africa new museum objectives have emerged. However, they all share a problematic future in a digital age when the aura of artefacts is challenged by digital repositories and a public less willing to travel to visit original objects. Authors in this book grapple with the new complexities facing them as curators in the contemporary world.