Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig: Tracking Traces

Tracking Traces

Within the GRASSI Ethnographical Museum in Leipzig, the archives, magazines, conservation workshops and library form the internal network to research the material and manufacturing techniques of inventory. The design of ethnographical objects has always been shaped by the materials and workmanship used. To give an insight into this ‘networking process’, the visitor will encounter a diploma project from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (HfBK) alongside objects from the Ethnographical Museum in Leipzig.

Exhibition Site GRASSI Museum Leipzig

DATES 31/08/2014—22/02/2015

Subject of this gallery exhibition is the examination of six masks from New Ireland and the curatorial and conservational analysis of two examples. The scientific measures leading to such a conservation project are like an expedition in which with the decoding of the used materials and their processing the cultural historic context and the material basis of the object are determined. On this basis, the conservation strategy is specified. The visitor is invited to follow the criminological investigation of conservators and scientists to decode hidden secrets of the objects together. Questions may be: what are the mysterious eyes of the masks made off and what is a turbo petholatus?