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Afterword: A Shared Space—What Next?
- Edited by Erica Lehrer, Concordia University, Montréal, Roma Sendyka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Book:
- My Museum, a Museum about Me
- Published by:
- Jagiellonian University Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 28 June 2023, pp 187-192
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Summary
1. CHANGES IN THE GALLERY
In the gallery on the first floor of the Kraków Ethnographic Museum (MEK), in the exhibit describing winter rituals, there are various objects used in holiday carolling. In Poland, carolling is practiced in cities and villages during the winter solstice, and involves groups of boys and young men, usually dressed in various costumes and carrying props, visiting local homes to bring success for the new year. A pre-Christian custom, it was later combined with Christmas and the nativity plays propagated by Franciscan monks. In the gallery there are photographs of carolling masks worn by people dressed in a costume representing a Jew. A demonic-looking figure, frequently situated in proximity to that of the devil, this “Jew” is present in carolling and carnival processions across Europe, in performances reaching back to the Middle Ages. The photographs at MEK are accompanied by my commentary:
[Who are you, mask?]
The masks of “Jews” and “Gypsies” in various carolling groups will not let me rest. I have been asked many times: why do we display such caricatures? What about the feelings of Roma and Jews visiting the museum, who, standing before them, may ask themselves: is this my museum, a museum about me? What are the origins of the Jewish character among the carollers? The time when pre-Christian carolling met the ceremonial theater of the church? From which direction did they enter the canon? Was it the Jewish rabbi carolling with King Herod, or the Jewish merchant accompanying the turoń? Are these traces of commedia dell’arte through the figure of the Venetian merchant Pantalon and his servants? Or perhaps the origin is entirely different? In any case, even today competitions for carolling groups perpetuate the caricatured presentations of the figures of the Jew and the Gypsy: in Żywiec, “Żywieckie Gody” has taken place every year since 1969, and in 2016 “Dziady Żywieckie” was added to the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (Polish Chapter). From the city's Zabłocie neighborhood comes a version called the “Jukace,” where bands of costumed youths roamed, their whips whistling. The ritual loses its innocence if we look at local conflicts. In 1918 the damages sustained by Jews at the hands of their Christian neighbours in villages around Żywiec amounted to 100,000 crowns.
The Ethnographic Museum i Dream of is a Shared Space
- Edited by Erica Lehrer, Concordia University, Montréal, Roma Sendyka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Book:
- My Museum, a Museum about Me
- Published by:
- Jagiellonian University Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 28 June 2023, pp 35-44
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
For many ethnographic museums, the last few years, or even decades, have been a time of experimentation. In numerous institutions one can observe efforts to seek out new forms of engaging the public as well as the development of new collecting and research practices. Among other influences, these changes are responding to the democratization of museums, the new needs of audiences, internal reflection among ethnographic museum practitioners, and the evolution of the discipline from which these institutions originated, namely today's cultural anthropology, which was widely known as ethnography at the time many of them first emerged. As a result, museums in many parts of the world are renaming themselves in ways that reframe their (and our) relationships to the museum's collections and to the people from whom they were sourced. These new namings are accompanied by revolutionary re-imaginings of museum architecture and new forms of curatorial expression. In short: these museums want to tell a new story about the human world.
The Ethnographic Museum of Kraków (MEK) is experimenting in many ways, and blazing new trails in the process. Those who are setting out in search of new forms of expression for this place can be referred to—following the lead of one issue of the MEK Annual—as a “community of seekers.” In selecting areas for research, in interpretation of the collection, in educational activities, as well as in publishing, temporary exhibition projects, digital activities, and partnerships, our experiments engage with the material and immaterial aspects of the museum.
THE IMPERMANENCE OF THE PERMANENT EXHIBITION
There is also work taking place in the museum to make changes in the permanent exhibitions in several directions. Selected examples follow. In 2009 the museum's Festival of Ethnodesign generated new materials related to contemporary design. In the following years a gallery regarding the power of seasonal regeneration embodied in springtime ceremonies connected to nature (titled Od-no-wa) was completely transformed. The next phase was a change in the curatorial approach to art from MEK's collections. A 2015 exhibition entitled Nieobjęta Ziemia [Unattainable Earth] emerged from stories about art that reached beyond academic knowledge; the script (and the title) was based on a book by Czesław Miłosz, which had been the inspiration for the exhibition's curators.