Download Mary Bouquet Bio - I`m trained In Social Anthropology (PhD

Mary Bouquet
Bio - I’m trained In Social Anthropology (PhD Cambridge) and specialised in Museum Studies. I work
at Utrecht University where I teach at University College. I also coordinate the Cultural Heritage
Internship Programme (CHIP) at UCU. Defining periods of my life have been spent in museums: in
Lisbon, at the National Museum of Ethnology (mid-1980s); at the former National Museum of
Natural History, Leiden (early 1990s); at the former Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Oslo
(mid-1990s); and at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (round 2000). These diverse experiences of
museums, collections, and exhibitions have given me unique insight into this field of cultural
production. I have published several books and articles on museums; Museums: A Visual
Anthropology (Berg, Oxford & New York) will be published in 2012.
Research – my current research concerns renovation processes in museums: how do these
institutions make their historical resources present? What do they choose to profile and how do
they do that? And how do these moves fit into broader heritage dynamics whereby certain sites,
institutions and practices are identified (or not) as having value that goes a step up from the local?
The Tropenmuseum’s bid for recognition of its colonial collection and heritage is a case in point.
Photograph – this is me, photographing light effects in the BIG Mountain Building, Copenhagen.
Photography is an important methodological tool in museum work, as it is for teaching and
researching. It enables us to remember things – including the way that light works in a specific
context; and to put together disparate things – as in exhibition-making. It is crucial for researching
historical collections and, more generally, for training the eye.