Criteria for the muscological treatment of African pieces in collections: a proposal of applied museology (documentation and exhibition) for the Afro-Brasilian Museum.

Abstract

This paper gathers some reflexions on the process of working with African collections in art-and anthropology musei. It deals with the determination of a classifying typology both of ethnographic objects and theoretical principles which give orientation to a process of appreciation of the collection, to a museological project and exhibition plan, as well as to its programming. It was conceived out of the need to formulate a museological project for the Afro-Brazilian Museum at Salvador, as well as to support its implantation. It points to basic elements of certain production types, classical of the African cultures and art, from the patrimonial viewpoint, typic of a collection of theis nature, and faces them with the specificity of this collection, through a pilot-”corpus” of pieces and objects which are part of it.