Museums and collections in conflict. Reflections about (ethnographic) collections in modern museums

This article critically discusses the fact of moving existing collections (the collections Butcher's Hall, Museum of Folklore, Maritime Museum and especially the Ethnographic museum) to a new museum, namely MAS. Starting from recent opinions about museums and museum practices on one hand and objects on the other, it is said that it is becoming increasingly difficult to look upon a museum as a place where historical objects can be kept, researched and displayed. Museums, at least local or urban museums, are more of 'centers of civic dialogue', which means that the local community must have a say in the filling-in, for example through new material or immaterial heritage. Thus, the existing objects and collections call be regarded as more of a problem than an asset. After all, they have been collected from the ideology of a dominant group and threaten to bring in the 'look' of that group into the new Museum. The idea that they can be appropriated in and by the local community and can be given a new meaning (from below), is only partially true. After all, the 'material turn' in social sciences have proven that 1) the objects (by their form, materiality, capacity) can't be given any random meaning and 2) that the past of an object keeps playing an important role in it's meaning. This is particularly true for ethnographic objects and collections, which, due to their Specific 'cultural biography', can't easily give another message than the one given at the time of their collection.