On the Road to ‘5 Questions on the Collections’: The Zurich Ethnographic Museum Collaborative Workspace Series Exhibitions 2022-2024

Abstract

Collaborative research on museum collections is standard today in ethnographic museums, where the power of interpretation, questions of expertise and ownership rights are critically discussed as necessary steps towards decolonizing western museums and knowledge. After a range of collaborative projects, between 2022 and 2024 the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich ran the Workspace Series as a format for making knowledge production in an ethnographic museum transparent and for sharing collections, museum work and collaborative research with originator and migrant communities, as well as the general public. Five key questions were formulated to show how mutual understanding depends on negotiating basic information and ascertaining insights into different perspectives. The aim was to demonstrate how important this mutual trust is for collaborative research that is relevant not only to western audiences, but particularly also to originator communities of collections preserved in our museums.