Local Heritage
Self-made Museum in Provincial Poland: The Idea of Local Heritage
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Janusz Barański
The object of the study is a private ethnographic collection, gathered over the past years by Stanisław Iwańczak, a retired farmer and a construction worker, in the village of Niedzica, in the southern Polish region of Spisz, exposed in a former farm building. The collection consists of agricultural tools and crafts, furniture, housewares, costumes, utensils, religious pictures, photographs, books, letters, decorations. In the creation of the collection were also involved the children of Mr. Iwańczak, who emigrated in the 1990s to the United States. The conducted ethnographic research shows that the collection plays an important role for an ancestral identity, but also a wider one - local and regional. The reconstructed traditional interior hosts periodical family celebrations, especially during the visits of Mr. Iwańczak's children every year, but also photo shoots and music of local folklore groups are conducted, as well as school classes about the culture of the region are organized. This self-made museum, with collected objects de memoire, seems to be a kind of mental and cultural asylum for the members of the family living abroad, as well as for the local community. The collection is an anchor protecting against losing relationships with the tradition of the region. It represents the heritage of absence, at the same time playing the role of a transmission belt linking generations, enabling trans valuation of this heritage in the modernized environment.
Permanent Exhibition about the History of a Town: Discourse Analysis Regarding what Counts in the Context of a National Minority
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ágota Jakab Ladó
The Szekler Museum of Ciuc is a museum of a small town, Miercurea Ciuc, Romania, but it has a regional importance. The town itself is the center of the historical Szeklerland with a predominantly Hungarian population – officially the biggest minority in Romania. The first exhibition of the Association of the Szekler Museum of Ciuc was organized in 1930 – this is considered to be the first real step to the foundation of the museum. In 1950 the Szekler Museum of Ciuc, as an institution, was born. Between 1963-1981 the museum has moved into its current location, the almost 400 years old Mikó Castle. The Szekler Museum of Ciuc is currently home to five permanent exhibitions: Pace of Time in Ciuc (Csík) - Folk Snapshots of Everyday Life; Preserved Sacred Art Treasures; The Franciscan Printing Workshop from Şumuleu Ciuc; The Story of the Mikó Castle and the newest one At a Crossroads. The History of Miercurea Ciuc. The exhibition presenting the history of the town was opened in August 2018 and has the museum staff, the mayor and the local government and the townspeople as main stakeholders. The works for organizing this exhibition began back in 2012, since then many opinions has been formulated and stated, many decisions has been made in order to create the content that can be seen today. This paper aims offers a short discourse analysis about what has been important in realizing this exhibition and what counts today from the perspective of different stakeholders.
Exclusion through Discourse : Boundaries and Obstacles Accessing Institutional Language
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Blanca Jove Alcalde
Based on seven months fieldwork at two art institutions in Nottingham (UK), this paper analyses audience engagement in discursive public programmes. With discursive public programme this study refers to the events that art institutions do such as talks, conferences, or symposiums, which use language as their main form of expression. Therefore, increasing understanding of discursive public programmes as instances for audience participation and involvement. Since the 1990s different curatorial literatures have theorised discursive practices as the way to transform passive users of the institution into active participants (Hoffmann, 2014; Ribalta, 2010). These writings have stated that it is through processes of learning and exchange of ideas that ‘audiences become participants, collaborators even, in the development of what constitutes the institution. (...) and the institution can become a mutual learning system’ (Farquharson, 2013: 57). In addition, through these events curators have aimed to guarantee plural programmes that would recognize the multiplicity of society (Kolk, and Flückige, 2013; Esche, 2004; Jameson, 1991). ‘A permissive and imaginative space for expressing individual and collective desires’ (Esche, 2004). However, this curatorial literature has been primarily written by the curators themselves, without including the perspective of those ‘active participants’, and thus making impossible the analysis of such involvement. Accordingly, based on my fieldwork, this work analyses actively plural discursive practices at two art institutions in order to reconsider and reassess ways to create participatory spaces for discussion.
