Reinterpreting the Museum Context of Folk Livelihood Culture: A New Perspective

Abstract

Within the scope of established ethnographic museum practices and the generally accepted museological perspectives at the Ethnographic Museum, the exhibition contextualization of cultural artifacts from the folk livelihood culture has typically focused on presenting the concepts of chronological and technological progress, or the regional characteristics of natural environments—such as mountainous, flatland, and river basin areas. This approach has also served to illustrate key themes from other aspects of folk culture. However, during the last decade up to the present, the presentation and interpretation of the role and significance of the culture of livelihood has taken a different course. This is clearly evident from exhibition projects such as “This is Us – Traditional Professions in Serbia,” “With the Umbrella Along the Path,” as well as the planned project under the working title “Folk Livelihood – The Second Half of the 20th Century.” The reflections in this paper reflect my professional transition as the curator of collections in the field of Culture of Livelihood at the Ethnographic Museum, which developed as a natural extension of the first two projects and serves as a precursor to the forthcoming one. The paper concerns the concepts, approach, and contextualization of folk culture of livelihood (in a museum setting), which was never realized in an exhibition format. The discussions are presented in a hybrid approach, blending ethnographic-museological and anthropological-museological perspectives, with the aim of offering a case study on how to bridge new and traditional views of ethnographic cultural heritage within the field of livelihood culture research.