16th-17th June 2011: Symposium "One History - Two Perspectives: Exhibiting the Northwest Coast in the Future Humboldt-Forum"

The future Humboldt-Forum where Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum will move in a few years, is currently the most prominent German museum project. For curators this move means both a major challenge and a major opportunity in presenting ethnological objects in a new and innovative way. The symposium with prominent participants from North America and Europe will focus on one of the oldest and best-known collections of the museum, its objects from the American Northwest Coast and the way it can be presented in the future Humboldt-Forum. International scholars, artists, and curators in the field of American Northwest Coast anthropology, art and history will exchange ideas and experience in the development of alternative readings of museum collections in contemporary exhibitions and through co-operational projects with source communities. The goal is to develop new ways of conveying the „cultural Other“ in a museum-setting as well as to draw attention to new aspects within the collections. The symposium is part of a joint research project of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin and the Kennedy Institute for North American Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin on "One History – Two Perspectives: Culturally specific modes of representation of the 'exotic Other' at the Pacific Northwest Coast." It is funded through a grant by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research.