”Alt racehovmod bliver her så ynkeligt”. Visualisering af kultur i Nationalmuseets etnografiske samling

Authors

  • Anne Folke Henningsen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.3099

Keywords:

ethnographic collections and exhibitions, anthropological theories, popular education, denial of coevalness, ’natural’ and ’cultural’ peoples, discourses of cultural authenticity

Abstract

In a case study of the reorganisation of the ethnographic exhibition at the Danish National Museum in the 1930s, the author questions the assumed effects of the curatorial strategies of one of the central characters behind it, Kaj Birket-Smith. Contrary to the explicit intentions of the curator, it is argued, the new style of exhibition invited the Danish public to understand themselves as culturally superior to the people represented, by positioning the latter outside of time and history. The wider implications of such representations of authenticity and timelessness in the ‘other’ are briefly discussed in relation to present-day ethnographic exhibitions. 

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Issue

No. 2 (2012)

Section

Articles

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