Total displacement: Exhibiting folklore and the boundaries of museum space

Date

2011-06-01

Author

Savaş Sargın, Ayşen

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For the establishment of an open-air folklore museum there seems to be two possible methods. The material in display can be displaced from their original environments and relocated on a constructed site; or they can be kept at their original places to be converted into "museum objects". It is the claim of this paper that the method applied would change neither the end product nor its interpretations. The total displacement of an object from its "original context" is not only a necessity, but also an inherited characteristic for the exhibitions of folklore museums. In the context of an open-air folklore museum, where the "environment" becomes the actual space of museum, the demarcation line between the door and the display case, the furniture and the building, and the landscape and the museum space becomes obscure. The redefinition of objects in museums as context-free, autonomous artefacts is an inevitable condition of their institutionalization - this autonomy being required for their displacement and relocation to different museum settings. A redefinition and decontextualization process can be used as a tool to shift attention from the ideological significance of cultural objects to their material and documentary qualities.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/108012

Collections

Department of Architecture, Article