Session 09- Muséologies et Citoyenneté

"In the ninth webinar, the Babel Tower has explored several concepts. The first was the expographic rupture proposed by Dominique Schoeni, anthropologist, museologist and interpreter. Schoeni chose four aspects to represent the museology of rupture: a) it is a traditional museology rethought; b) it is the need to overcome the impasse of the ethnographic exhibition traditionally associated with the collections and their classifications; c) it is making free use of the scenography and available objects to build a theoretical reflection or a story; d) the visitors leave the exhibition with some doubts about their knowledge, beliefs and judgments.
Then, Mario Moutinho – Rector of the Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies – and Judite Primo – UNESCO Chair Education, citizenship and cultural diversity since 2017 – talked about Sociomuseology, intended as a school of thought and an ongoing process. They organized their speech in five points: 1) the roots of sociomuseology: Museology and education, with reference to the work of Paulo Freire; 2) what is sociomuseology? They gave a definition stating that sociolomuseology reflects a considerable part of the effort to adapt museum structures to the constraints of contemporary society. Sociomuseology is constituted, as a disciplinary field of teaching, research and performance that favors the articulation of museology, with the social sciences and humanities; 3) an example of ongoing work: from aggression to insurrection (contribution to a decolonial pedagogy); 4) coloniality as one of the aspects of modernity and which is at the center of the activity of sociomuseology; 5) lines of action for sociomuseology. During the debate, Moutinho adviced some essential bibliography, such as Introdução à Sociomuseologia (MOUTINHO & PRIMO 2020)
Armando Perla – independent curator, part of the founding teams of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Swedish Museum of Migration and Democracy – presented an intervention called Museology of human rights (droits de la personne): from theory to practice. Questioning the current definitions, he proposed his own definition in terms of “a type of museology from below, a set of museum practices and a corresponding body of theory that aim to further human rights through the prioritization and participation of historically excluded people in all museum processes that directly affect them”, offering some examples between Canada and Mexico." Giusy Pappalardo