Authors

Ksenia Pimenova¹;  ¹ Université Paris Nanterre / LESC, France

Discussion

The paper is based on a comparative ethnography of two Siberian public and state-funded museums: the Aldan-Maadyr National Museum of the Republic of Tuva and the Anokhin National Museum of the Republic of Altai. Following either repatriation (Altai) or new discoveries in Soviet-era collections (Tuva), both museums have created new settings for Buddhist relics, ancestral human remains and related artefacts. In both cases, the curators have chosen to highlight the spiritual values of the exhibits within Tuvan and Altai cosmologies, rather than their historical, aesthetic, and scientific values, which have typically been emphasized in Soviet and post-Soviet 'authorized heritage discourses' (Smith 2006). What do museum curators and other museum staff (directors, scenographers, custodians) do to make the heritage 'sacred' and 'alive'? After a brief presentation of the complex biographies of these relics and archaeological human remains, the article analyses the two museum settings as examples of recontextualization (Appadurai 1986; Myers 2001). In both cases, the recontextualization was aimed at allowing local visitors to express their respect and reverence within the exhibition spaces. The theoretical aim of this article is twofold. On the one hand, we aim to further reflect on the recontextualization that relied on various medial, discursive, and sensory operations. On the other hand, the ethnography of museums contributes to the development of a relational and processual approach to the concept of 'sacredness'. Rather than being an intrinsic quality of the exhibits, sacredness here is constructed by mostly secular actors and within secular museum institutions.