Magdalena Buchczyk

Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum (eBook, PDF)

Textiles, history and ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum delves into the history and the changing material culture in Europe through the stories of a basket, a carpet, a waistcoat, a uniform, and a dress. The focus on the objects from the collection of the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin offers an innovative and challenging way of understanding textile culture and museums. The book shows that textiles can be simultaneously used as the material object of research, and as a lens through which we can view museums. In doing so, the book fills a major gap by placing textile knowledge back into the museum.

Each chapter focuses on one object story and can be read individually. Swooping from 19th-century wax figure cabinets, Nazi-era collections, Cold War exhibitions in East and West Berlin, and institutional reshuffling after German unification, it reveals the dramatically changing story of the museum and its collection. Based on research with museum curators, makers and users of the textiles in Italy and Germany, Poland and Romania, the book provides intimate insights into how objects are mobilised to very different social and political effects. It sheds new light on movements across borders, political uses of textiles by fascist and communist regimes, the objects' fall into oblivion, as well as their heritage and tourist afterlives. Addressing this complex museum legacy, the book suggests new pathways to prefigure the future.

Featuring new archival and ethnographic research, evocative examples and images, it is an essential read for students of textile and material culture, museum and curatorial studies as well as anyone interested in history, heritage and craft.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. April 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781350226746
• Artikelnr.: 67575588

Autorenporträt

Magdalena Buchczyk is a Junior Professor in Social Anthropology of Cultural Expressions at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. She conducts ethnographic research on collections, material culture and intangible heritage. Publications include articles in Museum Anthropology, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Journal of Museum Ethnography and Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture.

Inhaltsangabe

List of Figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Textiles beyond
the folkloric Fieldwork trajectory Textural ethnography The problem of
crafting collections Outline of the book 1. Sample collection: Dreams and
archives Encounter A place for the museum Textile archives World stage
Conclusion 2. Carpets: Knotted histories, recurrent patterns Nationalist
folklore School and museum Regained Territories Post-war reconstruction
Truly Polish craft Scraps Recurrent patterns Conclusion 3. Woven basket:
Untethered art Trader in exotica Survivors Waiting Thread On demand Valuing
work Stubborn survival 4. Waistcoat: Colour and Cold War Language island Go
West Perforating the Iron Curtain? Vestige Conclusion 5. Cook's uniform:
Refashioning the social fabric Renewal Reorientation Blue-collar museum
House ghosts Costume/fashion Conclusion Conclusion: From unification to
prefiguration Collection reconceptualized Other futures Prefigurative
acquisition Conclusion Bibliography Index