What is sacred? Care practices for museum collections.

Museums today are often seen as secular spaces, some actively trying to distance themselves from their religious etymological origins—the Greek word ‘mouseion’, meaning a temple of the Muses. Nonetheless, museums such as the Weltmuseum Wien continue to house ancestors and the dead, and contain powerful objects: Yurupari flutes from the Colombia-Brazil border are deliberately unseen in the exhibition, being spiritual entities that cannot be viewed by uninitiated individuals; in a related gesture, the altar ensemble of a spirit medium from Northeast Thailand was gifted to the museum as a space capable of containing the altar’s power.

This roundtable centers on the apparent contradiction that arises between the secular museum as a home to such spiritual artefacts, questioning whether the museum really is a secular space and how this status impacts the meaning, value, and care of the artefacts in collections.

The roundtable brings together the following panelists:

Ayesha Fuentes is an objects conservator and researcher specializing in the care and study of material religion. She has a PhD from SOAS University of London (2021) and is a graduate of the UCLA/Getty MA in Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials in 2014. She recently completed a postdoc on access and conservation ethics for material heritage collections at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, works frequently in collections across the Himalayas, and is currently Conservation Research Associate at Cambridge University Library. For more about her work, see www.ayeshafuentes.com .

Elena Holzhausen, is an art historian, diocesan conservator and head of the art department of the archdiocese of Vienna. She studied art history, German studies, and Asian art at the universities of Würzburg, Heidelberg, and Vienna.

Claudia Augustat holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and has been the head of the South America Collection at the Weltmuseum Wien since 2004. From 2015 to 2017, she served as the curatorial director of the reinstallation of the permanent exhibition at the Weltmuseum Wien. From 2019 to 2023, she was the project leader of the EU co-funded project Taking Care: Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Spaces of Care. Her research focuses on material culture and cultural memory, museums and colonialism, collaborative curatorship, and the decolonization of museum practice.

The roundtable will be moderated by Alisa Santikarn and Renée Riedler.

An event organised in collaboration with GloCo Heritage Studies Vienna.

Round table in English language
To participate in the event, all guests need a valid museum ticket.
Participation is free for annual ticket holders, Weltmuseum Wien Friends, Patrons, Members and Ambassadors as well as ICOM members and holders of the Kulturpass.
Registration: online
Meeting point: WMW Forum
Admission from 6.30 p.m.