Meet Professor in Anthropology at Aarhus University, Lotte Meinert! Our intern Iana Lukina has interviewed Lotte about the collections she made during her numerous fieldworks in Northern Uganda. Iana: How did you become a collector? Lotte: The first question, I think, is: ‘Am I a […]
All posts filed under: Africa
Additions to EA748 Wodaabe, Niger
As you might have seen on Instagram, we were recently handed over a number of beautiful calabashes and lids by Mette Bovin as an addition to her overwhelmingly rich collection from Wodaabe, EA748. Today we invite you to enjoy the beauty of the calabash carvings […]
EA900-0031 Claydoll
In the beginning of October our last blog post presented a pair of fluorescent green foam shoes from Tanzania. Through a conversation with curator Thea Skaanes*, the reader was invited to ponder the importance of shoes in both every day and ritual life. Today, we […]
‘These shoes aren’t made for walking’ – a conversation with curator Thea Skaanes
The main-characters of this week’s story are these two fluorescent green plastic sandals from Tanzania. After stumbling upon these on the ethnographic collections’ database, I had a chat with anthropologist and curator at Moesgaard Museum, Thea Skaanes, who collected the shoes during her fieldwork among […]
Summer equals festival season – but what should you wear if you don’t want to be caught dead in a ‘bøllehat’?
Summer is finally upon us! And as the days become longer and warmer it becomes important to take precautions when stepping outside in the harsh scorching sunlight. For years Danish authorities have been trying to get Danes to take care and seek shelter from the […]
The devil is in the detail
Take a good look at this figure. It might look like a harmless chameleon-like sculpture, beautifully carved in black ivory wood, but you better be careful around it, because it is in fact something completely different. The name of the figure is nailu and it […]
From boys to men – with the help of Pwevo, the ideal woman
This blog post is special in the sense that it is a nearly direct translation of a description written for the Pwevo mask, which is part of the UNESCO collections from Zambia. The description takes us all the way from Moesgaard Museum’s exhibition ‘The Lives […]
Where there’s tea there’s hope
English playwright Arthur Wing Pinero said that ‘where there’s tea there’s hope’. In many societies, drinking tea is a social event; sometimes even a ritual; something to gather around, something that organises the day, a tradition, a cultural practice. And around the globe, tea is […]
Egg hunting in the Ethnographic Collections
The tradition of hunting for eggs as a celebration of Easter is older than I thought. I had always assumed that hunting for eggs was another Anglo-American scheme to make more money on capitalising on holidays. The tradition goes back to 1700’s Netherlands, where children […]
On Garments and Gender
When my son was 4 years old, he loved to dress in skirts. Reactions from the surroundings varied a lot: from the daycare assistant who laughed and said he was funny, to his great grandfather who exclaimed that skirts were for girls only. Not to […]
Drinking the bitter root: The mato oput bowl
Sometimes these days, I feel like the world is a mess. We are fighting over ridiculous things, and not focusing enough on what matters. Pardon me for the Game of Thrones reference, but it feels like we are living through the War of the Five […]
A collection of treasures and stories: Randi Dæhnfeldt’s collection
I have always found the phenomenon of ‘the collector’ immensely fascinating. Perhaps because I am a bit of a collector myself… I have saved every cinema ticket since seeing The Waterboy in 1998, and am the proud owner of a splendid rock (actual rocks, not […]
