The institution of the ethnological museum is being heavily scrutinized in current discourse in Germany. The audio tour Discussion Atmospheres features different kinds of conversations about colonialism, ethnological museums, and racism in the museum. It does so not in the sense of proposing a new curatorial program but in the form of actual spoken words. The audio tour is composed of fragments of conversations about Germany’s colonial past, the institution of the ethnological museum and the connection between the past and the present. It invites the listener to question how these conversations influence the way ‘ethnographic’ objects are displayed. Where can current discourses be seen in the presentation of objects at the Humboldt Forum?
The intention of the tour is to prompt a new perspective on displayed objects in the Humboldt Forum: to look at them not as enigmatic expressions of alien cultures but as active agents that shape and influence cultural-political life and debates in contemporary Germany.

Format: Audio tour

 

About the author:

Andreas Rumpf studies Cultural and Social Sciences in the fifth semester at Humboldt University. He is a museum enthusiast and participated in the research group as a starting point to look at museums critically from a scholarly perspective. He is particularly interested in museums as a site of knowledge creation and knowledge transfer.