• DOI:10.1002/J.1834-4461.2003.TB02816.X
• Corpus ID: 143935413

Negotiating Materiality: International and Local Museum Practices at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and National Museum

@article{Geismar2003NegotiatingMI,
  title={Negotiating Materiality: International and Local Museum Practices at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and National Museum},
  author={Haidy Geismar and Christopher Y. Tilley},
  journal={Oceania},
  year={2003},
  volume={73},
  pages={170-188}
}

• H. Geismar, C. Tilley
• Published 1 March 2003
• Sociology
• Oceania

In this paper, we examine the idiosyncratic ways in which the Vanuatu Cultural Centre has incorporated global museum technologies into highly localised systems of object management. The convergence of understandings of subject-object relations, and indeed of materiality, highlights the effects of museum practices of objectification on local practice as well as the effects of local agenda on museum practice. In constructing a holistic analysis of the current work of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, we examine practices of display and exhibition in the context of the archive and storeroom, and grass-roots research; moving away from the emphasis on visuality and exhibition found in many museum studies, to an approach that locates display as but one form of objectification within wider social practice. We challenge some analytic models that view Melanesia and Euro-America as zones that organise subject-object relations dichotomously, highlighting instead the mutual contingency of relationships between persons and things between cultural contexts and the effects of the international exchanges of museum practice on the development of these relations.