ANN ARBOR, Mich. – On March 10, Dr. Margaret M. Bruchac of the University of Pennsylvania will give a lecture on the decolonization of museum collections at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
The lecture will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Helmut Stern Auditorium.
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An associate professor of Anthropology, Bruchac’s lecture will focus on rethinking and recovering the histories of objects found in museum collections. She will discuss strategies using material analyses, consultation and critical re-assessments of museological categories that may misrepresent an object.
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Bruchac will use case histories of “object witnesses” -- objects that tell about Indigenous and colonial settler interactions -- to demonstrate her practice of “reverse ethnography.” She will show how the histories of certain objects can be recovered through understanding the movements and actions of non-Indigenous curators or collectors.
A consultant to the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society, Bruchac is also an author. Her latest book, “Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists” was released in 2018 and won the 2018 Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award.
Learn more about the lecture here.
The UMMA is at 525 S. State Street.