Book presentation '24 European Ethnographic Museums' by Sara van der Heide
25/10/2011

Tuesday 25 October, 8 p.m.

Free admission, lecture in English

Reservations can be made by sending a e-mail to mail@smba.nl.

Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and ROMA Publications cordially invite you for the launch of the publication 24 European Ethnographic Museums by Sara van der Heide. For this occasion Moosje Goosen wrote the story The Museum of Western Folklore: A Commemorative Speech, which will be read this evening.

24 European Ethnographic Museums is a publication of the work with the same title, by Sara van der Heide. The work, consisting of a series of 24 drawings, lays bare the Western obsession with the categorization and conservation of artefacts and people. Van der Heide’s series becomes a collection of artefacts in and upon itself by recording the names of European ethnographic institutions. In the 19th century these museums explicitly referred to their colonial constituents, whereas today they often bare more euphemistic names such as ‘Museum der Kulturen’ or ‘World Museum.’ While some of the European ethnographic institutions have attempted to come to terms with the past of their collections and heritage, Van der Heide focuses upon the way in which language continues to reflect the political present of these institutions. This publication includes the story The Museum of Western Folklore: A Commemorative Speech, written by Moosje Goosen in conjunction with the work.

The reading of this story will be accompanied by Van der Heide’s new work, Art History (2011), which will be shown for the first time. Art History consists of 2x80 slides (two carousels) of red, black and white drawings. The slide projection, comprising abstract images referring to modernism, abstract expressionism, so called ‘primitive art’, applied arts and feminism, call to mind the classic academic lesson in the history of art. Unlike this conventional and linear art history, the work does not distinguish these ‘-isms’ into clearly distinctive fields; instead, the images will merge and morph fluently in a loop of red, black and white.