The Globe in a Glass Case
Ethnographic Collections in Ireland
The AAI wishes to thank:
The Heritage Council,
The Arts Faculty at Griffith College Dublin,
The Department of Anthropology at NUI Maynooth,
for financial support towards the conference.
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National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, Dublin
Friday 11 - Saturday 12 May 2007
Ireland is home to a large number of ethnographic collections and objects, both in the hands of the state and of private collectors. Only a small proportion of this material however is actually on public view. This conference will try to draw attention to this material, and has brought together some prominent invited speakers, respected experts in their field who represent major museums, to discuss this material in the light of the most recent contemporary debates about collecting and the treatment of material heritage.
What makes a collection 'ethnographic'? How should we present these collections? How should a museum make the link between the objects and the people who crafted them? What is the future of ethnographic collecting?
Click here for the Full Timetable, including a list of the speakers (Word format).
Click here for the Speakers' Backgrounds.
Click here for the Conference Poster (pdf format, 3.6MB).
Click here for the Registration Form - we regret that we are still setting up our online registration facility, but please inform us using this form by post, or email <anthropology.office@nuim.ie>.
Click here for help locating Accomodation.
Transport to the Venue
Buses to Collins Barracks are: 90 (from Aston Quay), 92 (from St. Stephen's Green), 25, 25A (fromWellington Quay).
The venue is also very conveniently next to the LUAS tramline. A Map is available.
Conference Organisers
Dr Seamas O'Siochain, NUI Maynooth
Dr Pauline Garvey, NUI Maynooth
Dr Adam Drazin, Trinity College Dublin
The Conference Mission
This conference will be the first to hold up to scrutiny extensive ethnographic collections held on the island of Ireland. Ethnographic collections is the name we give to the assemblage of both overseas and indigenous folk-life objects. While exhibitions based on its overseas ethnographic collections have been regularly mounted by the Ulster Museum, the collections of the National Museum of Ireland have lain in storage, unseen by the general public. This presents a scenario which has to be explained. As such, the conference represents an invaluable opportunity on two fronts. Firstly, through an anthropological lens, participating speakers will focus on the wider social and political implications of these assemblages and their visibility in Ireland. Secondly the conference will make a theoretical contribution to the nature of material culture and representation.
This conference is particularly prescient: in recent times, major changes have been taking place in the Republic of Ireland as historical events are being re-evaluated and assessed. Nationalist history such as the 1916 rising and Ireland’s role in WW1 have come into focus. Concomitant with these developments is an increasing emphasis on Ireland as a multi-cultural society, multi-culturalism becoming an ever popularlabel attached to Irishness. In view of changes taking place in Ireland such as (a) less exclusive focus on national history as a colonised country and (b) more inclination to look outwards and place Ireland in an international context, it is arguable that a change in attitude to the National Museum of Ireland ethnographic collections is related to broader changes in Irish society. Ongoing with such changes is popular and media debate focusing on an assessment of the uniquely Irish in Irish culture. The issue of how labels of self and other are applied has never been more timely. The conference will address these issues, encompassing possibly, a consideration of nationalising strategies of the twentieth, and tendencies towards greater internationalisation in the twenty-first century. For example the National Museum of Ireland has significant ethnographic collections but these have been out of view for a considerable period. Now a permanent exhibition space is being planned for the near future. This raises questions as to why the change in 2006? What should be exhibited and how?
A conference of this kind contributes a unique perspective on exhibitions, material culture and the nature of representation. Contemporary anthropological scholarship looks beyond analysis of museum exhibits as taxonomies but realises that the material thing and its social visibility is not arbitrarily part of this relationship. Firstly, artefacts are not intrinsically ‘ethnographic’; systems of collection and classification designate them as such (cf. Lidchi). Secondly, the physicality of the exhibit belies the instability and transience of meaning that is applied to it. Therefore while analysis of museum exhibits, categories and labelling illuminate this process to some degree, the relevance of the collection must be placed in a broader framework. A material culture perspective recognises that placing object collections in a social, political and ideological context forces us to recognise that exhibiting and storing are not opposites: ‘[K]eeping valuable objects in vaults is not the negation of public circulation…selective ‘forgetting’ is a distinct act that is inherent in museum practice…’ (Van Beek 1991:358). The non-viewing of collections is as socially and politically salient as the viewing (Van Beek ibid). No exhibition therefore is an isolated event but highlights socially constructed boundaries of perceived relevance and sensitivity. For example traditionally home-grown folk-life exhibits have had a privileged place over ethnographic collections in Irish museums. Not coincidentally, the ethnographic collections coincided with Ireland’s participation in the British Empire, which have been forgotten, suppressed or neglected since the foundation of the state. Conversely folk-life collections emerged from a particular ideological context which extolled the life of ordinary folk – particularly country folk – as exemplifying the authentic soul of the nation. More recently the ideological dimension of this enterprise is now subject to critique, leading to uncertain future for such collections.
A material culture perspective contributes to the analysis of these questions because it is at once anthropological and simultaneously ideally suited as a bridge for inter-disciplinary debate on how‘…societies try to police the boundaries between where and when materiality should be manifest’ (Miller 2005: 30). Not only do viewable collections – what is celebrated, collected and exhibited – infer a particular set of social priorities but by materialising these priorities they actually constitute it. These questions hold relevance to the museum sector, the humanities and social sciences. The conference represents collaboration between members of the Anthropology Department, NUI Maynooth and the National Museum of Ireland. It will additionally build on a material culture network already underway incorporating colleagues in the Archaeology Department, University College Dublin, the Anthropology Department, NUI, Maynooth, the Sociology Department, Trinity College, Kilmainham Gaol Museum and Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art and Design.