Museum Anthropology最新文献

This article explores the concept of fugitive histories through narrative multimodal anthropology in Black memory spaces. The aim of this research was to understand how multimodal anthropology and fugitive histories can be used to preserve and re-imagine narratives that counteract erasure. This article presents a narrative multimodal podcast I produced exploring my personal connection to racial violence, in conversation with a visit to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum to consider the ways in which narrative multimodal production and curation may benefit the health and well-being of Black communities, with a focus on Black fugitivity refusal, and reclamation as a strategic application of the Black Radical Tradition.

In 2024, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina, celebrates its 50th anniversary. Founded as the as the Afro-American Cultural and Service Center in 1974 by Mary Harper and Bertha Maxwell-Roddey at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, this case study reflects on the Gantt Center's evolution from a community-based cultural space to a full-fledged arts and cultural institution in uptown Charlotte. It focuses on the opportunities and challenges this Black-centered and Black-led institution has faced over the past half century as it has evolved from a grassroots cultural organization to a hybrid fine arts, education, and cultural institution, negotiating the needs of a growing array of funders, leadership, artists, culture keepers, and audiences. Integrating historical material, interviews with past and current Gantt Center staff, and ethnographic observation, this case study describes how this historic institution honors its deep roots as an organization serving to Charlotte's Black community as it grows into a national and international center of Black arts.

This article presents artist activist Virginia Jackson Kiah as a key figure in the phenomenon of the African American house museum. Readers will benefit from this layer of Kiah scholarship and its contributions to the field of anthropology by looking at a talented artist fueled by her status as a Black woman denied civil, civic, and human rights. Therefore, Virginia Jackson Kiah recreated herself as an artist activist who led a cultural resistance to racism in the arts prior to desegregation and the civil rights movement. As a scholar outside the realm of anthropology, art criticism, and analysis, I approach this project from the stance of a storyteller applying cultural studies methodology and content analysis. I posit that more attention should be given to the total artist—not just the person that had a grasp of brush, paint, pencil, and canvas. Besides her gifts as a painter, little has been written about Virginia Jackson Kiah, the interdisciplinary artist activist who examined culture and history as a musician, composer, singer, pianist, and arts educator. This recovery project fills several voids using archived materials and interviews which recast a total picture of Virginia Jackson Kiah as an artist and activist.

Traditional Museums have dominated the American landscape, but there exist hundreds of “Black Grassroots Museum” that are preserved by what African Diaspora museum specialist, Deborah Johnson-Simon, calls “kulture keepers;” these are everyday folk who dedicate themselves to protect and preserve the artifacts and stories of Black survival, ingenuity, resistance, and resiliency inside their homes, churches, or in community spaces, lest we forget.

The discourse around Black History in Florida's public schools and public spaces has been notably controversial and in high demand in recent years. Black museums are few in the Tampa Bay area, making the Woodson African American History Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, a community treasure. The Woodson Museum partnered with the Montague Collection, launching Women's History Month in March 2024 by featuring the “Sister Gertrude Morgan: A Ministry of Divergence” exhibition. This exhibit centers on religion, rhythms, and artistry. Sister Gertrude Morgan was an African American, New Orleans-based, multidisciplinary artist and street evangelist from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. Morgan repurposed the streets into her muse, medium, pulpit, and exhibition space in a way that can serve as a Black museum praxis framework.

Many Indigenous communities do not regard objects as inanimate, but rather as animate kin. Based on our work as a collaborative group of museum coordinators and Hopi, Anishinaabe, and Penobscot artists, we explore narratives and kinship concepts emerging from working with collections of baskets and pottery. We question how recent theoretical conceptualizations of kinship have become overly rhetorical and, therefore, risk diminishing the tangible responsibilities that Indigenous knowledge systems teach. We explore how the new social networks forged through collaborative practices implicate museum personnel in kinship-like relationships, which raises the question: What are the critical lessons museums can learn from the work of making and sustaining kin? Conventional western museology rarely contemplates these imperatives. The implications for museums that come with recognizing such networks are not only about conceptualizing kin in new ways, but also developing shared ethical protocols and responsibilities toward Indigenous knowledge and the environment over multiple generations.

With one African American museum in the county, many heritage organizations have attempted to build a museum to house artifacts and present community narratives for years. This commentary describes heritage organizations' efforts to establish a museum in a South Florida city.

Ella Spencer (my mom) was born in 1908 and died in 2002. She once told me that people of color were treated worse than farm animals, especially when they died. “They didn't get funeral rites like White folks,” she said. I contend the problem is that no one is keeping vital records such as photographs, maps, and burial ledgers of where African Americans were buried. After numerous years, several American states, cities, and counties had reported bountiful discoveries of unknown African American remains of all ages during constructions or demolitions. In 2023, more than a few news outlets were continuously reporting the findings of African American remains from beneath buildings, parking lots, overgrown vegetation, and woods. This qualitative research project was based on digital archival data research methodology and theoretical visual anthropology framework adding creativity components (e.g., photography, painting, and photo bashing technique) to effectively collect data of Alachua County, Florida African American cemeteries. This paper aims to add to the academic literature and fill the gap in African American life after death acknowledgment. In conclusion, this is a project that has many branches that need to be researched to get the whole story of African American cemeteries' survival.