Seminar series with Jocelyn Sky Bardot, University of Melbourne

Mapping Global Networks of Museum Exchange: Understanding the Dispersal of Dja Dja Wurrung (Australia) cultural items

The collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural items within Australia began as a colonial project and has resulted in the global dispersal of cultural items through networks of museum exchange. In a period of museum ethics centred on relationship building between collections and people, useful ways to connect dispersed collections with descendant communities are being sought out. Using the Online Heritage Resource Manager – a relational database – the dispersal of Dja Dja Wurrung (Central Victoria, Australia) items has been explored through mapping the associations between entities – objects, people, organisations, events and places – that were involved in the collection and exchange of Dja Dja Wurrung heritage. This study argues that it is the associations between entities that allow us to make sense of complex museum collecting histories and propose a way of re-connecting collections with Dja Dja Wurrung people. This talk explores preliminary findings in Jocelyn Bardot’s doctoral research and theorises what the future of dispersed collections might look like under this model of re-collection.

Open to all and refreshments will be served in the staff common rooom (6th floor), courtesy of  UCL Centre for Critical Heritage Studies.

Photo: © courtesy of the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation