Das Museum Sem Nenhum Caráter
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('MMM') }}
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('YYYY') }}
| English |
| Part of: 99 Questions |
| Colonialism and Coloniality |
Initiated by a burning museum in Brazil, the Das Museum Sem Nenhum Caráter project spanned over two years, encompassing a series of workshops and subsequently resulting in the following publication. The full version is free to access here.
With workshop and publication contributions by Denilson Baniwa, Mabe Bethônico, Nego Bispo, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Michael Dieminger, Chandra Frank, Andrei Fernández, Sara Garzón, Paulo Knauss, Noé Martínez, Thaís Mayumi Pinheiro, Ivan Muñiz-Reed, Julia Richard, María Sosa and Rolando Vázquez
The project’s initiation resulted from the tragic fire, which almost entirely devastated the Museu Nacional de Rio de Janeiro’s collection and building. With some 20 million objects, the collection is one of the most important in Latin America and the world, with the loss including perhaps the last testimonies, in the form of artefacts or language records, of the numerous Indigenous communities in Brazil.
The collaborative project Das Museum Sem Nenhum Caráter took its inspiration from the novel Macunaíma: O herói sem nenhum caráter by Mario de Andrade and gathered a variety of practitioners and thinkers to explore questions surrounding decolonial curatorial practices and the evolving of museum concepts around care. In particular, the digital workshops held throughout 2021-2022 addressed questions of how a pluralisation of narratives and perspectives can become visible and the role translation, fictionalization and the voids in collections is within museums and their narratives.
Over the course of several digital workshop sessions, the project invited participants to share their thoughts and responses on the subjects of postcolonial curating, translation and fiction and subsequently resulted in the publication of a rich and multilingual compilation of essays, photographs, a poem and a recipe. The contributions are primarily in Portuguese, English and Spanish. The contributors were free to choose which language they wished to write in and no contribution is translated. By including different languages, we want to offer multiple access points for contributors and readers, rather than limit our audience. We want to understand a museum as a place for plurality, whether through multilinguality, different forms of expression, or diverse ways of looking at the world. This plurality resists the notion of understanding everything, and resists the idea of the universal museum.
Since the fire at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut have supported the museum in its recovery efforts. Four years later, there is still a long way to go towards complete reconstruction. Meanwhile, this process has been used to reflect on the fundamental challenges of museum work and develop new ideas and concepts. In the process, the Museu Nacional/UFRJ and the Goethe-Institut became important partners in a museum exchange project, which together with partner institutions, organised the Museum Conference in Rio de Janeiro on 3rd and 4th June, which was also digitally accessible. The central themes of the hybrid conference were “Museums and society”, “Collections and archives” and “Communication, international networks and sustainable structures”.
The Goethe-Institut supports the permanent strengthening and exchange between South American and European Ethnological and Natural History Museums to jointly exercise ways of being a museum in the future. This cooperative workshop between the Humboldt Forum and the Museu Nacional is part of the series of workshops supported by the Goethe-Institut and the German Federal Foreign Office and developed between museums to enable exchange between experts and multipliers in the museum sector, foster institutional development of museums and enhance collaboration between museums through joint projects in South America and Europe.
According to Isabel Hölzl, Director of the Goethe-Institut Rio de Janeiro:
“We are in times that we institutions need to reflect on our relevance in a constantly changing world. It is clear that this work cannot be done alone, but only together with others. The exchange between museums has been crucial along the way. The diverse and international experiences, and the perspective of non-museum visitors, will help reinvent what the museum and its collections can mean a value to their respective societies.”
A workshop and publication by Michael Dieminger and Thaís Mayumi Pinheiro
Organization by Goethe-Institut Rio de Janeiro / Supported by Foreign Minister Germany / A collaboration between Humboldt Forum Berlin and Museu Nacional de Rio de Janeiro
