Dialog

Ethnographic museums are increasingly striving for various kinds of exchanges with local diaspora groups, whose cultural heritage they maintain in their collections. This article tackles the keyword "dialogue", an often-applied concept in the public sector, museums, and especially in the National Museums of World Culture. With empirical examples from a current dialogue project, called Ongoing Africa, at the Museum of Ethnography and previous research, the article discusses how the application of "dialogue" in ethnographic museums may be understood. This is followed by a theoretical discussion of the concept: what kind of dialogue is performed in Ongoing Africa, and how are the aims of dialogue imagined and expressed by museum employees? Furthermore, the article argues that the ideas and performances of dialogue are shaped within two different – and sometimes conflicting – discourses.