MUSEUM Spotlight Archives of Creativity, ARCHIVES OF HUMAN DIVERSITY 76 FIG. 2 (below): End-blown flute carved from a human femur. Surinam. 18th century or earlier. Bone. L: 35 cm. Reportedly collected in Dutch Guyana by Ami Butini and donated to the Bibliothèque Publique of Geneva in 1759. MEG Inv. ETHMU K000134. © for all images MEG-J. Watts. FIG. 3 (below): Anthrozoomorphic figure, bat (?). Zapotec (?), Oaxaca, Mexico. 6th century BC–9th century AD. Terracotta. H: 22 cm. MEG Inv. ETHAM L000043. The City of Genevafinally has a new “ethnography” museum, thanks to the unanimous and concerted efforts of both the city and the canton. With the full support of the city’s populace and with contributions from the estate of Hélène Lancoux, the cramped museum located in the Carl- Vogt regional school building closed its doors in September 2010 and a new building designed by architects Graber Pulver (fig. 1) will be inaugurated on October 31, 2014. The new Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève (MEG) will be the venue for the presentation of a substantial permanent collection as well as of world-class temporary exhibitions. Its exterior façade is covered with interweaving metal sheets reminiscent of traditional plaiting work and presides over an attractive garden designed by Guido Haeger. In addition to the exhibition spaces, the museum will house a store; a restaurant; several reception halls; three auditoriums for lectures, events, and film screenings; a media center; and the Hélène Lancoux library. The latter will enable visitors to enhance their knowledge by consulting or borrowing books, films, and music, or they can make use of these at the museum on small screens or in listening rooms. The term “ethnographic museum” generally conjures up the notion of a “world-museum-minus-Europe” institution, one that is devoted to exotic cultures and faraway places. But in Geneva, the MEG’s mission will be to preserve and study artistic and material culture from everywhere—very much including Europe. It will be one of the few ethnographic museums in existence to follow this approach, where the Old World’s material cultures, popular arts, and vernacular religious expressions have a place alongside those of non-Western cultures. In an installation designed by Atelier Brückner of Stuttgart, about a thousand objects from the permanent collection will be shown in seven main sections: a historical introduction, a separate section for each continent, and one devoted to ethnomusicology. SHEDDING LIGHT ON A LITTLE-KNOWN HISTORY Immediately upon entering, the visitor is immersed in an introductory gallery that acquaints him with the background of Geneva’s ethnographic collection. It gives an account of this small city’s cosmopolitan past and of its relationship with the By Boris Wastiau world at large, in addition to examining the evolution of European perceptions of the arts and cultures of the world in a more general way. The new MEG is the result of these complex histories of collecting, research, and exhibition. This introductory space includes many remarkable and unusual objects that testify to widely varied provenances. The question is also posed—without being definitively answered—of what an “ethnographic object” really is, given that it is so often defined primarily by the notion of difference. While many of them come from private collections, the objects in the MEG’s collection also include many pieces from the public institutions that preceded it. The earliest acquisitions objects come from the city’s Bibliothèque Publique (Public Library), a curiosity cabinet from 1702 that was the library for the university founded by John Calvin in the sixteenth century (which also sent the Huguenot minister Jean de Léry to study the Tupinamba Indians of Brazil, the results of which he published in 1578). One of these early pieces is an example of Japanese lacquer furniture (ETHAS 021380) that was donated by the wealthy merchant Guillaume-François Franconis in 1707 and which, in addition to being one of the first pieces of its kind to have reached Europe, is evidence of the commercial relationships that existed between Geneva and the Dutch East India Company, with which the donor was affiliated. Other objects in this historical introduction became part of the library’s collection at a time when European voyages of world exploration were at their apogee and testify to the ambition of developing a scientific understanding of the world based on the “natural science of man.” These include Ming Dynasty rhinoceros horn libation bowls (ETHAS K000237 and ETHAS 066132) donated in 1758 by Micheli du Crest, a Swiss Guard sergeant stationed in France, and “tiger teeth” and a human femur flute (fig. 2) that the library obtained in 1759 from seminary student Ami Butini (1718–1780), who became a plantation owner and slave trader in Surinam. In the nineteenth century, objects from this library went to the Musée Académique, which was founded in 1818. Perspectives about them changed as evolutionist theories developed in the mid part of that century. New gifts began to enrich the collection while at the same time acquisition networks developed. It became a priority to gather objects following statistical principles, which meant that
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