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Introduction. Legacy and impact: Latin American and Caribbean museology today

Luciana Menezes de Carvalho et Ana Carolina Gelmini de Faria
p. 7-9
Cet article est une traduction de :
Introdução. Legado e impacto: A museologia latino-americana e caribenha hoje [pt]
Autre(s) traduction(s) de cet article :
Introducción. Legado e impacto: La museología latinoamericana y caribeña en la actualidad [es]
Introduction. Héritage et impact : La muséologie latino-américaine et caribéenne aujourd'hui [fr]

Résumé

This issue of the ISS is the result of a selection of works related to the theme proposed by ICOFOM for its 46th annual symposium, held in the city of Recife (Pernambuco, Brazil) November 6-10, 2023, in partnership with the 31st Annual Symposium of ICOFOM LAC (ICOFOM Latin America & the Caribbean). The theme, titled “The Legacy and Impact of Latin American and Caribbean Museology,” was proposed by colleague Elizabeth Weiser with the intention of “remembering and celebrating this long tradition as we examine the theoretical legacy and impact of the histories of Latin American and Caribbean museology” (ICOFOM, 2023).

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Notes de la rédaction

This introduction was written originally in Portuguese, translated using AI tools, and then proofread by the ISS team.

Texte intégral

1As our opening words for this introduction, we would like to highlight the following reflection by Vinicius Monção, featured in this publication:

The theme of this panel invites us to think and discuss the legacy and impact of Latin American and Caribbean museology. If its articulation immediately gives us a sense of valuing our region’s academic, technical, and intellectual production, it also, figuratively, lights a spark of attention and questioning. After all, what do we want to know with this evocation? What metric can be used to analyze this statement?

2Indeed, what we hope to find in what we understand as the legacy and impact of museology produced in a particular region of the world is something we can reflect a bit more on. We highlight some references for this reflection: by bringing this theme into the 21st century, as proposed in the title of this brief introductory text, our intention is to demonstrate how possible legacies and impacts still resonate in contemporary times. The legacies, particularly following the significant milestone of the Round Table of Santiago de Chile, can and should be remembered, as is also done in this publication. However, it is essential to celebrate how our Latin American and Caribbean museology can still serve as a model today for other museologies or museum practices carried out around the globe.

3Thus, the texts in this issue can be divided into three groups: 1) articles that revisit the legacies of LAC thought in light of contemporary discussions and dialogues; 2) articles that sit on what we call the frontier; that is, they revisit legacies in the theoretical realm but also explore their reverberations through practices in the field; and 3) articles focused on addressing the impacts of a fully transformed museology in the 21st century that owes much to the reflections and experiences lived in this part of the world.

4In the first group, focused on revisiting the legacies of LAC thought, Virginia González’s “Aportes históricos al campo de la museología Argentina” presents the process of building Argentine museology over three decades of the 20th century, as a result of understanding and organizing the museal institutions that emerged during this period, many of them initiated and overseen by the Argentine state. Luiz Borges, Telma Lasmar, and Ilza Carla Lima’s “Epistemes sureadas y silenciadas: Una relectura de dos hitos fundacionales de la museología latinoamericana” is a current and critical reflection on concepts and propositions from the 1970s and 1980s: museality, integral museum (museo integral), museal fact (fato museal), and social worker, based on the hypothesis of “a systematic process of epistemic-ideological emptying” of these reflections. And “The legacy of Santiago de Chile in ICOM publications,” by Anna-Lou Galassini, Yves Bergeron, and Manuelina Maria Duarte Cândido, aims to understand the phenomenon of the Round Table, its influence and integration into the field of museology worldwide through a survey of its transmission in ICOM and ICOFOM publications.

5The second group navigates an interesting frontier of revisiting legacies but using museum practices that make an impact on the present as a starting or ending point. The work by Diogo Jorge de Melo, Isabel Cristina Teixeira do Carmo Lopes, Gisele Nascimento Barroso, and Cássio Alexandre Souza dos Santos, titled “Museología y (mito)poética: Revisando los debates del ICOFOM con nuevas contribuciones teóricas y prácticas,” seeks to review conceptions of the relationship between museology and poetics from debates within ICOFOM, advancing the concept of mythopoetics, which is fundamental in laying the foundations for current museal practices in the Museo Virtual Surrupira de Encantarias Amazónicas. Similarly, in the work “Developing museological methodologies for unpacking colonial legacies in Barbados,” Natalie McGuire draws a parallel with the museology experience in the Afro-Caribbean territory, in an “anticolonial journey” towards community protagonism and its constant confrontation of colonial ideologies – all based on the museal and museological development of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society.

6Finally, the third group is deeply immersed in contemporary museological reflections and practices, often shaping the practices in our region. Sofia Alexandre Carvalho’s "Tracing (de)colonial imaginaries through personal archiving: A decolonial methodology tool" is the result of a methodology investigating the relationship between museum narratives and racism in Portugal that also addresses the author’s own colonial heritage, resulting from a self-investigation that aims to confront this legacy and provide a decolonizing methodology that spans both object and subject. And the work “Quién carga a quién? El caso de Giro gráfico, como en el muro la hiedra,” by Ana María Sánchez Lesmes, which is based on an exhibition held in Europe using images produced in the Americas, points to how this kind of collaboration can trigger reflections on dynamics, controversies, and legacies, considering the hypothesis that colonial practices may always exist in collaborations between the global North and South.

7Since the early days of ICOFOM LAM (the precursor to ICOFOM LAC), the effort has been to show that here in the region there is a distinct way of reflecting on museology from the rest of the world. It seems to us that this is the great legacy defended by this subcommittee of museology. However, through this publication, it becomes clearer in 2024 that this effort to demonstrate and defend a way of doing museology is very much of this region. That is, the effort, once aimed at defending the existence of a discipline of museology, is now dedicated to supporting museal practices that champion an anti-colonial perspective highly valued in this territory. The impacts of LAC museology can be reflected in the new museum definition, which places community participation at the center of what ICOM understands as a museum.

8To close these introductory remarks, we return to the conversation with Monção: “Fortunately, I believe we are on the right track when we come together to debate aspects of a collective and community agenda.” Even though we are an archipelago, as he himself suggests (inspired by Glissant), in our diversity of small – or large, like Brazil – worlds that coexist, we impact museology when we are unified in defending a museal practice and museological reflection ever closer to the daily lives of our people.

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Référence papier

Luciana Menezes de Carvalho et Ana Carolina Gelmini de Faria, « Introduction. Legacy and impact: Latin American and Caribbean museology today »ICOFOM Study Series, 52-2 | 2024, 7-9.

Référence électronique

Luciana Menezes de Carvalho et Ana Carolina Gelmini de Faria, « Introduction. Legacy and impact: Latin American and Caribbean museology today »ICOFOM Study Series [En ligne], 52-2 | 2024, mis en ligne le 08 novembre 2024, consulté le 10 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/iss/5793 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12o9q

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Auteurs

Luciana Menezes de Carvalho

Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
carvalho.lucianamenezes[at]gmail.com.

Articles du même auteur

Ana Carolina Gelmini de Faria

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – Brasil
carolgelmini[at]gmail.com.

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