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Re-signification of a collection display in an indigenous museum

22 August 2024

Renata Peters (UCL Institute of Archaeology) is leading a project exchanging knowledge with the Tikuna of the Amazon.

Poster (grey background, with colourful central image) for a series of collections-related knowledge-exchange workshops being held at a Brazilian museum, 26-20 August 2024

Renata Peters, currently on fieldwork in the Amazon, is running a series of workshops from 26-30 August at Museu Maguta, an indigenous museum located in Benjamin Constant (Amazonas state, Brazil).

This project, supported by UCL Knowledge Exchange and Innovation funding, is run in collaboration with Delphine Mercier (UCL Anthropology), Nacho Echeverria (UCL Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science) and Elisabet Diaz Pila (UCL Archaeology South-East).

The activities being undertaken have been designed in collaboration with key stakeholders from Museu Maguta and will focus on the exchange of UCL protocols of curatorship, collection management and preventive conservation that allow collections to be constantly re-signified by being safely accessed, touched, examined, investigated and documented by students and researchers.

Tikuna engagements with collections, on the other hand, develop from their sociocultural practices and are intrinsically connected to the Amazonian ecosystem. Their practices are based on ancestral indigenous knowledge that is embedded in complex networks of meanings and values.

According to Renata:

The Tikuna have expressed the desire to learn from our methods to improve condition and access to their collections through capacity building of their stakeholders. We, on the other hand, will bring back to UCL first-hand indigenous knowledge that will enrich our own approaches to collections, besides building stronger connections to originators of collections and learning how to do that in more harmony with nature."

UCL supports knowledge exchange allowing colleagues to connect with communities beyond the university to undertake a two-way exchange of ideas, evidence and expertise with the aim of benefitting society and the economy.