Exhibition: "Nomadic Artefacts: Historical Objects from Mongolia"

Between 22 September 2017 and 21 January 2018, the Museum of Ethnology Hamburg, an ASEMUS member, presents an exhibition entitled "Nomadic Artefacts: Historical Objects from Mongolia", resulting from a research project involving several institutions in Austria, Germany and Mongolia. Among the project partners is the Weltmuseum Wien (World Museum Vienna), also an ASEMUS member. Nomadic Artefacts attempts to interweave and present the movements of ethnographic objects from Mongolia through various socio-political and institutional spaces. Their transfer between Asia and Europe, Mongolia, Vienna and Hamburg is recorded – it indicates the transnational interweaving of object histories and museums with their mutual relations and influences. The research project leading to the exhibition follows and examines the movements of artefacts, in this case Mongolian ritual objects, through various spatial, socio-political and institutional contexts. The topography and the “knowledge” of these things are interwoven with cultural transfers between Europe and Asia, with Viennese and Mongolian science and museum history and practice, with the impacts of political suppression and democracy processes in Mongolia, and with modes of human-object interactions and the power of things. The exhibition was curated by Dr. Maria-Katharina Lang, from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Social Anthropology. Partners include the World Museum Vienna, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, the National University of Mongolia, the Mongolian University of Sciences and Technology, the Kharkorum Museum, the Bogd Khan Palace Museum, the Museum of Ethnology Hamburg and the Völkerkundemuseum der J. & E. von Portheim-Stiftung, Heidelberg. It was previously presented in Vienna in 2016 and Ulaanbataar in 2017. Further to the exhibition, an extensive website presenting the broader research project and the process leading to the exhibition is also available. A range of related publications have also been produced in this context and are presented on the website. For additional information about the exhibition which is currently presented at the Museum of Ethnology Hamburg, please visit http://www.voelkerkundemuseum.com/1061-0-Nomadic-Artefacts.html For information about the research project, please visit https://nomadicartefacts.net/