Commentary: Encounters at the National Museum of Australia: a moment in an ongoing process of engagement

Abstract

This is not an easy paper to for me to respond to as I took part in the research project associated with the Encounters exhibition and was involved in the curation of Indigenous Australia – Enduring Civilisation at the British Museum. However I did not have any role in the Encounters exhibition itself. Robinson begins by stating that the dual mandate of museums – institutions that preserve, document and research collections as well as providing diverse opportunities for community access – is being substituted by a range of participatory practices. My perspective, perhaps to be judged as naïve, is that the collections and the different ways in which they are valued are likely instead to be at the centre of participatory practice. The research project that led to the two exhibitions was intended to be a stage in a participatory process linking objects in the British Museum with Indigenous communities in Australia, researching the existing evidence about the historical and cultural significance of the objects at the time of their manufacture and their present significance to the descendant communities. The research and the exhibitions could only be stages in the process given the scale of collections and the complexity of the undertaking.