Community and Culture
Contemporary Recognition of Cultural Diversity and the Treatment of Popular Culture Collections
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vera Lucia Cardim Cerqueira
Through the historic trajectory of the Brazilian collections belonging to the municipality of São Paulo, the replacement of the use of the concept of folklore for that of popular culture as well as alterations in the field of Museology were examined. For this purpose, the experiences that served as guidelines for Brazilian theorization in this field were analyzed, specifically the work of Georges Henri Rivière, the trajectory of the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Paris, and the idea of social museology. The conclusion of this study ascertains that there is an ambiguity between the treatment of the collections and the contemporary discourse in which cultural diversity is recognized and celebrated, even in specific public policies. This research confirms the hypothesis that, despite the establishment of new institutions, the process of valuing popular culture in places that house collections is characterized more by an appropriation and an alignment of discourse rather than by an effective rupture of boundaries or a reorganization of the field of work.
From Everyday Objects to Craft and Territory Representatives: Collection’s Acquisition of the Glass Museum of Bogotá (Mevibo)
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laura Moreno Barbosa
This paper exposes the process of acquisition of the Mevibo’s collection as a community museum in 2014, in which the glass masters and residents of the locality of San Cristóbal in Bogotá participated. For its realization the documentary collection of the museum was consulted and the pieces exhibited were observed. The collection’s acquisition experience is unique because it was proposed as a strategy to involve the community in the creation of the museum. Each piece collected and exhibited gives an account of the glass craft related to the history of the participants and of the locality, in which factories of glass and other construction materials were developed to build the city. In this way, the ordinary or everyday objects sheltered in the museum acquire the role of intermediaries to convey the importance of this sector to the city, activate the glass craft knowledge to manufacture objects, exalt the work of those who practice the techniques, and encourage the transfer of knowledge to prevent its disappearance.
What is Bristol Music?: Exhibiting Everyday Music Culture
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rehan Hyder
The emergence of Bristol as one of the UKs most notable "music cities" around the turn of the century has been a key element in the rising profile of the largest city in the south-west of England. The rise of the so-called "Bristol Sound" has been key to the articulation of the city’s musical identity and branding. Such attempts to define a regional music culture in this way are extremely contentious but have also been increasingly operationalized by official narratives and institutions to help promote Bristol’s image as a "creative city." The curation of the "Bristol Music" exhibition at the city’s MShed museum to be held during the summer of 2018 can be seen as the latest iteration of this narrative of local creativity based around the distinctiveness and edginess of Bristol’s urban culture. As content developer on this project, the author explores how notions of everyday culture can be used to explore and disrupt existing mythologies around the distinct "branding" of music and locality. By focusing on the everyday experience of music culture, the exhibition will emphasise the importance of first-hand accounts of audiences and residents in the city in order to revisit and interrogate existing "official" narratives about the Bristol Sound. By reflecting on this emphasis on everyday experience, this paper explores how a focus on how self-expression and spatial exploration can help reveal the diverse and heterogeneous musical culture of the city.
