Two new PhD publications by the Museum of Ethnography

The Museum of Ethnography has recently published two new PhD studies of its colleagues. Marianna Berényi's work titled A Museum Without Walls - The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Online Practice of Hungarian Public Museum Collections, reflects on the consequences of the pandemic by focusing on a single type of institution belonging to a single cultural sector of a crisis affecting the whole of humanity. Hannah Foster's Museum - The Endangered Species book is concerned with the changing nature of museums, their social relevance and their search for a way forward, which parallels the social, moral, economic and natural crises of planet Earth, its crisis phenomena and its responses to them.

A Museum Without Walls - The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Online Practice of Hungarian Public Museum Collections

On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, a state of emergency was established in Hungary, and a government decision was made, among other things, that from 16 March 2020, schooling and education should continue outside the classroom, in a digital work schedule, due to the spread of the epidemic. As with all cultural and public institutions, museums in Hungary were then closed until mid-June to resume their activities behind closed doors aigain from 11 November 2021 to May 2022, during the period when the pandemic claimed a heavy toll. The newly published volume of the Museum of Ethnography, A Museum Without Walls - The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Online Practice of Hungarian Public Museum Collections, deals with this period. In other words, the author, Marianna Berényi, has documented the consequences of the pandemic by focusing on a single type of institution belonging to a single cultural sector of a crisis affecting the whole of humanity.

When the Johns Hopkins University concluded its global data collection on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, on 3 October 2023, it had recorded more than 676 million cases and 6.88 million deaths. The viral disease has had an unprecedented impact on everyday life, including the world of museums. Institutions have been forced to close for extended periods of time, fully or partially, and this has been a major stimulus to the growth of their digital activities. The full implementation of classical museum functions and an uncertain vision of the future led institutions to make their work and their public service and public collection role accessible to all in the only public space available, the internet, where, in addition to their recreational programmes, they provided quality support for public education, which was also forced to go online.

The volume, published in the Ethnographic Museum's PhD thesis series, explored this very rapid process using the methods of digital anthropology, as well as the analogue and digital antecedents that have enabled museums to go online. The author has documented how initially simple solutions have become increasingly professionalised, changing the relationship with digital data, digitisation, online space and social media. It also analyses how the institutional practices of Hungarian museums have been transformed by the pandemic, how museum communities have responded to digital developments, and what feedback these interactions have generated on the attitudes of museum professionals and the consumption of content by visitors. 

The volume is based on a comparative analysis of Hungarian and international research that has investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the author has processed the results of a visitor questionnaire survey of 1,000 visitors in 2021 and a national survey of 350 museum staff in 2021, and supplemented the analysis of the types of digital content that were considered most representative with a follow-up study of museums in 2023. 

The 350-page volume with 98 illustrations was designed by L. Dániel Németh, edited by Emőke Gréczi, proofread by Éva Kómár, and the introduction was written by Lajos Kemecsi, Director General of the Museum of Ethnography, and Róbert Keményfi, Director of the Ethnology Department of the University of Debrecen. The book is available for purchase in the bookstore and webshop of the Museum of Ethnography.  

Museum - The Endangered Species

What is a museum for today? How confident are museums in the contemporary world? Why do we need museums in the present? What is their vision for the future? How similar are societal responses to the climate crisis to museums' options for finding their way?

Published as part of the Ethnographic Museum's PhD thesis series, this volume seeks uncertain answers to the many questions of a disorganised world. Ethnographic museologist Hannah Daisy Foster explores the changing nature, social relevance and wayfinding of museums, drawing parallels with the social, moral, economic and natural crises, crisis phenomena and responses of planet Earth. Following the similarities between the crisis of the planet and the crisis of museums, the author embarks on a thought experiment that seeks to find a grip on the messy labyrinths of the museum world. If we think about saving the human-dominated planet along the lines of reintegration into nature, can museums be saved by immersing themselves in the world of objects? Would a posthuman, object-centred approach, thinking of the world and museums as a common habitat for all kinds of living and inanimate things, be a way out of the crisis of museums?

The author mixes the methodologies of ethnography - cultural anthropology and museum anthropology with a little philosophical approach and scientific speculation, bringing together the theories of social sciences and museum practices in an engaging, readable adventure into the messy world of museums. Case studies analysing exhibitions at the Weltmuseum in Vienna, the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest push the boundaries of critical, postmodern museum understanding and narrative, their reflections playful yet serious. The volume is ordinary among dissertations presenting hard data and fixed items, and their publication solutions, highlighting the diversity and richness of research and publications produced at the Museum of Ethnography.

The foreword to this 246-page, structured volume, which is divided into three large chapters and contains fewer illustrations and more large type, was written by Boróka Lipka, one of the author's students. The preface is also the first critical reading of the volume, which is as much an overture as a gesture. The volume is an invitation to think actively about the future of museums and to expand the museum network outlined by the author.

The book is available in the Museum of Ethnography's bookshop and webshop.