070201 SE Research Seminar Applied Global History (2024W)

Functions of Ethnographic Collections in the 21st Century

The course will address current methods and ethics in museum curation, conservation, collections management policies and procedures, exhibition development, and other tasks associated with managing, preserving, and displaying anthropological collections (artifacts and their associated
documentation). The course provides students with practical, hands-on experience in artifact care, management, preservation, and exhibition development. Students will work with the archaeological collections housed in the Weltmuseum Wien.

COURSE OBJECTIVES & STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
Through readings, discussions, lectures, and hands-on collections work, students will:
• Recognize the principles of curation, the policies and procedures that make up an effective collections management program, and the discipline of anthropology as a process.
• Identify key curation issues from pre-field planning through curation.
• Demonstrate the skills necessary to consider curation at every process stage.
• Describe the ethical issues surrounding the care and management of the museum's collections.
• Discuss both the benefits and challenges of working with collections.
• Apply the critical concept of an exhibition and the educational goals derived from it.

METHOD
Applied research together with the Dra. Claudia Augustat (https://takingcareproject.eu/author/claudia-augustat) of the Vienna Worldmuseum.
Claudia Augustat studied ethnology, art history, and Indian art history at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and was awarded her PhD from the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. She worked at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt a.M. and at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin before she became the curator for South American Collections at the Weltmuseum Wien in 2004. Since 2019, she has been the project leader of “Taking Care. Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Places of Care”. Her research focuses on Amazonian collections from the 19th century, material culture and cultural memory, collaborative curatorship, and the decolonization of museum praxis.

World Cultures and Ethnographic Museums are the museums of our time in Europe. They are in the spotlight in a changing society, confronted with public discourse about the legacies of colonialism and the challenges of living together in a culture shaped by migration and globalization.
This applied research seminar will examine some ethnographic collections of the Weltmuseum, Wien, focusing on global material history (F. Braudel, etc.). Understanding natural objects includes thinking with landscape and considering “living nature” with a soul.
Method