Vol. 10 No. 19 (2021): Indigenous protagonism and museum: approaches and methodologies / Museums, Museology and Literature: representations of the world and narrative techniques

Indigenous protagonism and museum: approaches and methodologies
The dossier aims to bring together articles in which the indigenous role in the
museum is the essential point to be disseminated, we can say, the participation
of groups or communities takes place, with indigenous people as active actors
in the curation process. The proposal revolves around the relations between indigenous peoples and museums,
considering revisionist and decolonial post-colonial approaches , positioning
indigenous protagonism in contemporary museum processes as a right to musealization. It is in the dossier's interest to know and widely disseminate curation actions
promoted by museum professionals and indigenous people together, favoring the
self-representation and participation of these actors in the elaboration of museum
discourses and in reflective elaborations. For a better understanding, curatorship is considered as all actions around the museological
object - formation of collections, research, conservation, documentation, exhibition and
education. Thus, contributions from the most diverse curators will be welcome, that is,
professionals who make up or integrate the curatorial process in museums, namely: researchers
from different fields, conservatives ), documentalists, museologists, educators, architects,
designers etc. Likewise, contributions are expected from different areas (museology, anthropology, arts,
archeology, psychology, education, architecture, social communication and others) and museum
typologies (anthropological/ethnological/ethnographic, artistic, archeological, historical,
science & technology, from popular culture and folklore, city, community etc.). Another aspect to be considered is the methodologies adopted in curating with indigenous people,
to be considered: collaboration, action research, shared curation, collection requalification,
ethnomuseology, ethno-archaeology and others that bring us elements for discussion on interactions
between indigenous and non-indigenous agents in curatorial procedures, power relations and decision-making,
considering disputes and conflicts, as well as the negotiations and agreements established to reach results,
which we hope to know in the texts presented. Making the idea more original, the proposal of the dossier covers
indigenous texts prepared by them about
their realities, experiences, visions, curators and museum management.
Our testimony is inspired by:
My name is Inã which means mother. I am Kujã [shaman], I am Kaingang. What it means
to us, the book [released with her articles], is us telling our story, ourselves
telling our story, the way we say it, and the book will be written the way we talk
about ours culture, of our people, because this is very important for us who speak
of our culture, it is not other people, what is written in the book is the same way,
the same language we speak, it is not the voice of the non-Indian , it's the
indigenous voice, it's our voice, we indigenous people, this is very important to us,
because it's not other people who are telling the indigenous story, we're actually
telling our story, this is very important to me , not only for me but for our people
this is very important and we are very proud to talk about ourselves. That's so proud!" Dirce Jorge Lipu Pereira, Kaingang, TI Vanuíre, SP, May 18, 2020.  

 

Museums, Museology and Literature: representations of the world and narrative techniques

Museums, Museology and Literature intertwine in different ways. The connections go back to the etymological root of the word museum, referring to the Temple of Muses - many of them directly linked to Literature - and to the mythological root of Museum, son of the poet Orpheus, as recalled by Marília Xavier Cury (1999). But relations are not restricted to classical origins: liable to be approximated by their potential for humanization, their functions of representing the world and their very concrete encounters in literary museums and the homes of writers, museological institutions and literary works have much to exchange.
In the Brazilian context, Mário de Souza Chagas lists a series of intellectuals from different areas of Museology who dealt with museums, memory and collections. Among them, poets like Mário de Andrade, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Cecília Meirelles and Carlos Drummond de Andrade (CHAGAS, 2015). If, inspired by your list, we set out to look for examples beyond Brazil, the inventory of authors and literary works that addressed museums and themes close to Museology tends to grow and diversify in terms of literary genres. In Argentina, Fernandez Macedonio launched, in 1975, the novel The Romance Museum of the Eternal; in France, Georges Perec writes the novel The Private Collection in 1979. On a trip to Portugal, from 1981, José Saramago introduces us to a character who not only visits the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology in Lisbon, but makes a concrete suggestion of how a particular piece of the collection should be exposed.
In the years 2000 and 2010 we found new examples. In Japan, Yoko Ogawa launched in 2001 The Museum of Silence, narrated by a museologist; in Turkey, in 2010, we met Orhan Pamuk, with his Museum of Innocence - which is a novel and museum, accompanied by a catalog; that same year, the novel Ten Thousand Guitars, in which French writer Catherine Clément portrays Rodolfo I's curiosity office, is made public; in 2013, in the United States, Donna Tart published O Pintassilgo, whose plot has important relations with the homonymous work housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In what ways do these - and others - representations of museums in literature influence - or reflect - the work of professionals in the field and the research of museologists? What echoes can the emergence of new museums and the transformations in museological thought have in literature and literary studies? You can see everything from numerical impacts - like the booming audience at the New York Frick Museum after the publication of Donna Tart's novel on the work O Pintassilgo, which the museum received in a traveling exhibition1 - to academic connections - such as the Manifesto about museums, released by Orhan Pamuk at the ICOM General Conference in Milan in 2016.
Inverting the perspective, we move from these various museums in literary works to the presence of literatures in museums. Just like the museum, the collection and memory can be an object of interest to writers, so they can also become essential for certain museological institutions. Within the scope of ICOM, the International Committee of Literary Museums - the ICLM - emerged in the 1970s, bringing together especially houses of writers. In Germany, the Association of Literary Societies and Literature Museums (ALG) was created in 1986; in France, after a series of events and documents dating back to 1993, the National Federation of Houses of Writers and Literary Heritage was born in 1997. In 2003, the LitHouses group of British literary houses and museums was created. In 2016, the Literary Museums Network is formed in Brazil. All of these organizations are active, with periodic meetings that generate publications on the themes of the homes of writers and literary museums, in addition to reflecting, at times, on the presence of literature in non-literary museums, such as historical and art museums.
The reflection on how we represent literature in our museums leads to a third point of interest in this thematic dossier: the museological narrative. Many studies in the field of Museology use the term narrative and deal with the possibility of composing speeches, critical perspectives or even plots using objects, complementary texts and various expographic resources. However, from what we have been able to investigate, there have not yet been many theorizations in this regard. In his Dictionary of Literary Terms, Massaud Moisés (1982) indicates that "the narration consists of the account of events or facts, and therefore involves action, movement and the passage of time". This is to use a very succinct definition, among the vast bibliography that discusses narrative in the literary medium. Is this concept of narration the same as that used in our practice and theory in museums? How can literature narrative procedures be studied by museologists and bring them new ideas and perspectives? How can Museology enrich critical analyzes around literature?