Gradients of alterity: museums and the negotiation of cultural difference in contemporary Norway

Gradients of Alterity 13

Gradients of AlterityMuseums and the Negotiation of Cultural Difference in Con-temporary Norway

Marzia Varutti

Part of the charm of museums as objects of study resides in their propensityto reflect and inform social and cultural change. As platforms for intercul-tural communication, museums are ideal sites for the investigation of howcollective values and attitudes coalesce and evolve over time. The analysisof these processes is all the more relevant in a country such as Norway,whose population is becoming increasingly multicultural (Goodnow & Ak-man 2008). In Oslo alone, a quarter of the population are immigrants, most-ly of non-Western origin (Council of Europe 2008:2). How are museums re-sponding to these changes in Norwegian society?

This article endeavours to provide an answer to this question through ananalysis of museum displays of non-ethnic Norwegian cultures in a sampleof museums in Oslo.1 These include the Intercultural Museum (IKM) andspecifically the exhibition Our Sacred Spaces; the Kon-Tiki Museum; theethnographic galleries of the Museum of Cultural History of the Universityof Oslo; and the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (specifically, thegalleries devoted to the Sami and the display of the Pakistani apartment).The study also draws on examples from other museums, such as the Glom-dal Museum in Elverum (specifically the permanent exhibition Latjo Dromdevoted to the Travellers minority). These museums were selected sincethey are the main sites in which the visitor may encounter non-ethnic Nor-wegian cultures, given their location in the capital and their prominence inthe national museumscape.

The analysis of museums of non-ethnic Norwegian cultures is based ondiscourse analysis of displays, analysis of relevant literature and interviewswith museum curators and academics. The investigation yielded two maininterrelated insights. Firstly, the various modalities in which other culturesare represented in museums point to a range of different articulations of dis-cursive and representational practices which I call “regimes of representa-tion”. Secondly, different “regimes of representation” reveal different kinds

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of assumptions and perceptions of cultural alterity, suggesting that not allOthers are equal, but there are different categories of Others, as well as gra-dients of cultural alterity. In the conclusions, I use these findings to questionthe role that museums can play, in Norway and beyond, in the making ofmore inclusive societies.

Museum Displays as Regimes of RepresentationThe reader might legitimately question my use of the concepts of “Other”and “cultural difference” as analytical categories. These concepts are prob-lematic because they imply a self-centred stance in relation to which othercultures are viewed and commented upon. Indeed, it might be objected thatthe use of these concepts actually helps to reinstate and formalize the verysystem of assumptions about other cultures that this article is trying to de-bunk. Aware of this risk, I resolved to retain the term “Other” (hyphenated)for the sake of brevity and clarity to signify “non-ethnic Norwegian”. Theconcept of cultural difference is used in the definition provided by HomiBhabha (1988:18):

[cultural difference] is the process of the enunciation of culture as “knowledgeable”,authoritative, adequate to the construction of systems of cultural identification. […][it] is a process of signification through which statements of culture or on culture dif-ferentiate, discriminate, and authorize the production of fields of force, reference,applicability, and capacity.

Understood as a construct, cultural difference is a useful concept for theanalysis of cultural phenomena, especially when contrasted with the moredescriptive notion of cultural diversity (e.g. Bhabha 1988; Eriksen 2006).Explorations of how cultural difference is created, expressed, negotiated orreinvented in museums gain saliency when framed through the perspectiveof material culture, that is, considering how museum objects are used for theabove-mentioned purposes. As Christopher Tilley (2006:61) notes, “mate-rial forms do not simply mirror pre-existing social distinctions, sets of ideasor symbolic systems. They are instead the very medium through which thesevalues, ideas and social distinctions are constantly reproduced and legit-imized, or transformed.” It might be added that in order for material formsto become such media – in Alfred Gell’s (1998) words, to carry agency –some kind of human intervention is needed (see also Keane 2001:75; Steiner2001:210). In museums such agency becomes visible in the work of cura-tors: the writing of texts and labels, the selection and juxtaposition of ob-jects, the choice of images, photos and references that complement the dis-play. Moreover, displays always entail processes of displacement and re-in-terpretation which I argue, following James Clifford (1997:3), are constitu-tive of cultural meanings and therefore deserve scholarly attention.

In order to analyse these processes, I draw on Arjun Appadurai’s (1986)


theory on the social life of things. Appadurai’s main argument entails thatduring their social life, objects move across different regimes of value andas they do so, they take up different meanings. Building on Appadurai’sconcept of regime of value, I argue that different combinations of displaytechniques and narratives constitute different regimes of representation inmuseums. It follows that – applying Appadurai’s theory – museum objectscan be made to evoke different meanings according to the museological re-gime of representation through which they are framed.

The concept of regime of representation can be fruitfully juxtaposed withthe concept of regime of visibility. As in the case of Appadurai’s regimes ofvalue, the term “regime” indicates that a system of control of what is beingrepresented and seen is in place. The emphasis on regulation is also centralto the anthropologist Stephan Feuchtwang’s (2011:65) conceptualization ofregimes of visibility as “a disposition of political authority, in a narrowsense, and more broadly, an habitual ordering of the world into what can andwhat cannot be seen, a regime which also entails ways of making the invis-ible apparent, of imagining it. Behind visualization is an invisible authoritythat makes it possible, an authority that reveals hidden principles and forces,of good or of malice, of truth or of error.” In Feuchtwang’s approach, theregime of visibility is firmly inscribed in (and indeed made possible by) thecombined deployment of political authority and scientific authentication,which legitimate and validate what is on view.

In the context of a museum display, such political authority and scientificauthentication are manifested in the work of curators. The regime of repre-sentation can then be understood as the result of curatorial choices and pro-fessional knowledge; these, to paraphrase Feuchtwang, constitute the invis-ible authority behind visualization. The regime of representation is then aconcept that facilitates the analysis of processes of exhibition making bygiving a name to the set of interrelated display techniques and narrative linesthat constitute a given museological genre.

The concept of regime of representation enables and invites a closer ex-amination of its constitutive elements and of the dynamics through which agiven regime is manifested. Among these, framing is one of the most ana-lytically relevant. As Saphinaz-Amal Naguib (in this volume) aptly shows,framing is a useful tool to analyse museum representations.

Framing can be understood as a perspective, a specific angle of interpre-tation of objects and texts, a given way to organize the elements of an exhi-bition so that they convey a specific world-view, a mood, or an idea. Inshort, framing is a museological device through which a regime of represen-tation is instantiated. A regime of representation can be translated throughdifferent kinds of framing, and conversely, the same kind of framing devicecan be deployed in the context of different regimes of representation.

Taken together, these concepts assist scholars in analysing museum dis-

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plays by providing analytical tools to decode the museological “genre” of adisplay (that is, its regime of representation) and to examine how, within agiven museological genre, a specific perspective or world-view is being putforward (that is, how the exhibition is “framed”). For a discussion of fram-ing as museological device, the reader can refer to Naguib’s article in thisvolume. In the following, I will focus on regimes of representation.

The displays in the museums considered in this paper can be “read”through the lenses of the regime of representation deployed for the depictionof cultural difference.

The “Other” Within – the Norwegian Museum of Cultural His-toryThe Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (Norsk Folkemuseum) is aprominent site for the display of Norwegian cultural identity. Albeit histor-ically linked to Norwegian folk, peasant and rural traditions, the Museumhas been sensitive to the changes affecting the population of Norway andhas reformulated its institutional mission to reflect these changes. As a re-sult, today the Museum aims to represent not only Norwegians, but all thepeople inhabiting the space of Norway, including the Sami indigenousgroup, ethnic minorities and migrant communities.2

At the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, the visitor can walkamong rural and urban buildings including housing units, churches, schools,banks, pharmacies of diverse historical periods and geographic locations.One of the most distinctive features of the Norwegian Museum of CulturalHistory lies in its propensity to let the visitor experience the built, artistic,cultural and natural heritage of Norway. The homogeneity of the Norwegianheritage is challenged and problematized historically and culturally. So forinstance, over the last decade the museum has devoted a number of tem-porary displays to non-ethnic Norwegian communities. In the permanentexhibition areas, the most prominent of such displays are those devoted tothe Sami and to the Pakistani communities living in Norway.

The gallery displaying Sami indigenous cultures is composed of two seg-ments: the first opened in 1990, the second in 2007. The first section is most-ly informed by an ethnological approach framed by an historical perspec-tive: the display aims to show features of daily life in Sami communitiesduring the period when the Sami collection was created (roughly mid-1800sto mid-1900s). The historical perspective is important in the display, sincekey historical events contribute to illuminate the cultural, social, economicand political trajectories of development of Sami communities in Norway.For instance, visitors learn about the 1826 Border Treaty with Russia, whichillustrates how small-scale Sami communities became victims of politicaldecisions made far outside their reach, or the burning of Samiland during


World War II and the deep impact on Sami social life of the ensuing processof reconstruction.3

The display makes a conspicuous use of black and white historical photosportraying Sami people, dwellings and landscapes. Special attention is de-voted to Sami historical figures such as the reindeer herder, artist and writerJohan Turi, referenced here to illustrate the debate on the “origins” of Samipeoples. Panels provide information on the distribution of Sami communi-ties in the landscape and their seasonal migratory paths, thus helping to his-toricize (through panel titles such as “The East Sami maintained old ways”)and territorialize the Sami. A display style inspired by an ethnographic per-spective is detectable in the use of mannequins to show Sami “traditional”costumes, and of dioramas portraying living conditions, hunting practices,fishing methods, etc. The exhibition approach in this gallery might be de-scribed as an ethnographic display style centred not so much on the presentas on the past.

The section of the Sami gallery added in 2007 presents the visitor with astrong contrast. The display opens with a powerful political statement: “Weare Sami and we want to be Sami.” The tone – assertive and authoritative –provides a sharp contrast to the distant, analytical and didactic tone of mu-seum texts in the older section of the gallery. Even more visually striking isthe contrast between the collages of black and white historical photos de-picting Sami herders in the old gallery segment, and the life-size frontal pic-ture of a young Sami in a punk rock dress style smiling at the camera in thenew gallery addition. This picture is a powerful challenge to received defi-nitions of Sami culture, and resonates strongly with the opening statementof the gallery section. There are no mannequins or life-size dioramas of ruraldwellings on display in this section. Rather, exhibits include newspaper ar-ticles and posters about Sami rights and political independence movements,the Sami flag, photos of the Sami Parliament, books, design items, and thereproduction of a contemporary Sami flat – recognizable as Sami only fromdetails such as Sami “traditional” symbols on clothes or objects. In short,this new section of the gallery aims to acknowledge and celebrate theachievements of the Sami political movement and intellectual scene (includ-ing literature, theatre and the arts).

The layering of narratives, display techniques, museological and culturalapproaches to the displays of Sami cultures deployed in the two sections ofthe permanent gallery at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History encap-sulate the complexity of the historical relationships between the Norwegianmajority and Sami indigenous communities. It also casts light on the ten-sions between curatorial expertise and indigenous knowledge, and betweenestablished museological traditions and new modes of display shaped by thebalancing of different political and cultural agendas, and by an acute con-cern with contemporary issues.

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The other area within the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History devot-ed to non-ethnic Norwegian cultures is included in the permanent displayApartment building. Wessels Gate 15. As the name suggests, the display isa detailed reconstruction of an apartment building originally located in cen-tral Oslo. The apartments reconstructed include a flat inhabited by a Paki-stani family. The Pakistani flat presents an intriguing combination of Nor-wegian old-style furniture and exotic spices, Asian food and Norwegiandécor.

The flat is replete with marks of cultural hybridity. This is mostly the re-sult of cultural syncretism whereby Pakistani migrant communities to Osloreformulated over time their cultural identities by mixing Pakistani and Nor-wegian elements. Whilst the smallest items could be carried in the migrationprocess, the most bulky and thus the most visible items, such as furniture,are Norwegian. The inclusion of the Pakistani flat in a “traditional” (archi-tecture-wise) Norwegian building, inhabited by “traditional” (ethnicity-wise) Norwegian families, together with the emphasis put on the hybridityof the material culture on display, indicate an effort to re-define the very no-tion of Norwegian identity.

Globally considered, with its intensive use of photographic documenta-tion, dioramas, mannequins and contextualizing texts, the regime of repre-sentation deployed in the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History is a com-

Figure 1. Interior of the reconstructed Pakistani flat, Norwegian Museum of Cultural History.


pelling combination of historical and ethnographic-folkloric approaches. Inparticular, this regime of representation is characterized by an emphasis on“witness-objects”, that is, objects that can be considered as both historicaland cultural tokens. Only a few categories of “Others” are displayed at theNorwegian Museum of Cultural History: for the time being, only the Samiand Pakistani communities have been included in the Museum’s permanentexhibitions. Yet their presence in this particular museum bears a strong sym-bolic weight: these “Others” have been formally included in the Norwegianethnoscape.

Experiencing Difference – the Intercultural Museum (IKM)Loosely inspired by the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Artopened in Glasgow in 1993, the Intercultural Museum (IKM) started to takeshape in the late 1980s as an initiative of Bente Guro Møller (Møller & Ei-narsen 2008:141). The IKM is currently a section of the umbrella institutionOslo Museum, also including the City Museum and the Theatre Museum.The Intercultural Museum is not easily placed in established museum cate-gories: it is not a museum of art though it hosts art installations, it is not anethnographic nor an historical museum properly speaking, but rather a com-bination of these museum genres. The words of Bente Møller (2008:143) onthis point are illuminating: “When we work towards changing attitudes, it isimportant to talk to the whole person, not just their rationality. […] Artopens cognitive rooms in us other than those opened by theoretical knowl-edge. That is why we always have art exhibitions in addition to cultural his-tory exhibitions.”

The temporary4 exhibition Our Sacred Space introduces six religiouscommunities in Norway: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christiani-ty and Sikhism. By showing “religious diversity in Norway today” the ex-hibition aims to “encourage dialogue between people with different reli-gious practices”. At the IKM performativity is very important. The visitor ispart of the mise en scène, s-he is invited to take up temporarily the role of avisitor to a religious space, for instance taking off shoes, washing hands,wearing a headscarf and so on.

The architectural structure of the IKM is intriguing. The building was for-merly a prison, thus the exhibition space is composed of a series of smallcells and niches, linked by corridors. In the context of the exhibition OurSacred Space, corridors are liminal spaces where the visitor briefly reappro-priates his or her identity before entering another religious context and tak-ing up another role. This enactment is made all the more meaningful by thesequence and juxtaposition of different faiths as visitors literally “divest” afaith to “wear” another.

The objects on display are not labelled, they can be freely touched,

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smelled, acted upon – a bell can be rung, a candle can be lit, incense can beburned. Objects are not presented in a way that draws attention to their ma-teriality and uniqueness, nor to their aesthetic, historical or scientific value.Rather, they contribute to creating a background, a canvas for the deploy-ment of personal feelings, memories, emotions and personal understandingsof the sacred. There is no judgemental connotation in the panel descriptions

Figure 2. Visitors are invited to take their shoes off and wear slippers at the entrance to the ex-hibition Our Sacred Space at the Intercultural Museum.


of the different religious practices. The equanimity deployed in the displayof the different religious spaces (resulting for instance from the equal exhi-bition space allotted to each group and the factual, non-discriminating texts)helps to create an effect of homogeneity. The six religious spaces ultimatelyelide each other transforming the display, quite paradoxically, into an emi-nently secular space. One might wonder whether there is a risk of over-simplifying the complexity of these religious spaces, and of giving the visi-tors the comfortable feeling to have “understood” the different religiouscommunities, to have somehow appropriated them, and later simply divest-ed them.

In museological terms, it could be argued that the IKM presents the itemson display as ethnographic specimens, that is, as objects that tell us some-thing about our own, and/or other cultures. But Our Sacred Space does morethan this. The ideas underlying the exhibition and its museological approachare compelling because they challenge the basic notions of museum and mu-seum object, and subvert established museum practices. Yet, this is a mu-seum. Despite the efforts to accurately reconstitute six sacred spaces, theseare ultimately artificial set-ups. As such, the IKM offers a “safe” environ-ment to explore spaces that many visitors might hardly have the chance orthe interest to visit. In this sense, the IKM offers a non-threatening venturein spaces often closed to non-adepts, and conversely, it enables the main-tenance of a certain distance from the real sacred spaces of these communi-ties, made fictionally available through the museum’s panoptical gaze.

Crystallizing Difference – the Museum of Cultural History, UiOThe Museum of Cultural History of the University of Oslo was formally es-tablished in 1999 through the merging of three formerly independent Uni-versity museums (Archaeology, Numismatics and Ethnography – whichwas founded in 1857).5 After having been repeatedly incorporated and dis-incorporated from the University, today the Museum is part of a constituen-cy regrouping all the University Museums of Oslo, and enjoys the doublestatus of museum and university department.6 The Museum includes ethno-graphic galleries devoted to the Circumpolar regions, Africa, Asia, and theAmericas. The galleries differ not only in geographic focus, but also in con-ceptual approach, museological formats and display techniques. In short, itcould be said that the Museum of Cultural History conflates several mu-seums in one.

The gallery devoted to the Circumpolar regions for instance, presents amostly ethnographic approach, evidenced by the intense use of mannequinsand life-size dioramas. The way in which objects, historical black and whitephotos, and text are juxtaposed in the glass cases exudes a concern withpedagogy.

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In a similar vein, in the African gallery, objects are also framed through eth-nographic lenses. One can find again mannequins and dioramas (though lessprominent than in the Arctic section) as well as a wealth of photos providingvisually evocative backgrounds for objects. Texts are relatively limited andfall short of providing adequate contextualization for artefacts, whose func-tions, meanings and values might remain obscure to most visitors. Enlargedbackground photos reproduce stereotyped images of the continent: Tuaregin the desert, women carrying water containers on their heads, straw huts,Masai warriors dancing, dark and thick forests. Similarly, the coffee-tablebooks available for browsing – bearing titles such as The Vanishing Tradi-tions of Berber Women, Africa Dances, Africa Adorned, The Masai etc. – dolittle in the way of challenging received ideas and providing informationabout contemporary African communities. Display techniques emphasizethe exotic and aesthetic character of African cultures.

The Asian Gallery includes items from China, Korea and Japan. This gal-lery combines a plurality of exhibition approaches. A hint of exoticism char-acterizes the display of curiosity and iconic artefacts such as the shoes forwomen with bound feet, fingernail covers, or the magnificently embroi-dered capes and garments dating back to the Qing dynasty. In line with theimportant tradition of ceramic connoisseurship in China, ceramics and teaimplements are among the most prominent items on display. Ceramics are

Figure 3. View of the Arctic gallery, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo.


exhibited in purpose-built cabinets made to resemble those in use in Chinain private houses or tea-rooms. This mode of display also recalls the wayceramics are displayed in private collections, thus suggesting an approachto these artefacts based on aesthetic appreciation. In other areas, the exhibi-tion style takes a more ethnographic approach, as for instance in the choiceto display a selection of traditional musical instruments, and traditionalKorean and Japanese clothing items complemented by panels explaining thepatterns, and a miniature weaving loom. Aside from these instances, mostof the objects selected for display in the Asian gallery lend themselves to beappreciated as aesthetic items, and indeed are the object of collecting andconnoisseurship traditions. The display methods used in the gallery presentthe material culture of Asian countries as fine art, inviting an aesthetic andhistorical, more than an ethnographic gaze. This approach is corroboratedby the choice not to illustrate objects with panels and texts, but rather tolimit captions to the minimum and provide limited information through anobject list hanging from each exhibition shelf.

In the American galleries the exhibition style can be described as ethno-graphic. In contrast with the other galleries, here a panel provides a title forthe exhibition (“Americas, contemporary and past identity”), the openingdate (November 2008), and the names of the curators and the professionalsinvolved, thus indicating the “authorship” of the display. The ethnographicapproach is visible in the re-creation of specific settings such as the religiouspractice of Santeria in Cuba, or the reproduction of ritual offerings for theDay of the Dead in Mexico. Artefacts are organized around specific topics– such as “shamanism” and “global links and urban centres” – and contex-tualized through rich panel texts and contemporary photos.

In parallel to the four permanent galleries examined, the Museum of Cul-tural History also hosts temporary exhibitions bringing into focus specifictopics and/or contemporary issues. The engaging museological approachesdeployed in the temporary exhibitions offer a stark contrast to the inertialcharacter of the permanent galleries.

A good illustration is provided by the exhibition We Paint the Stories ofOur Culture, held at the Museum in spring 2011, and presenting a selectionof contemporary artworks (paintings, sculptures and artefacts) from Aus-tralian Aborigine artists.7 Collected during anthropological research in Aus-tralia by the curator Maria Øien, the works aim at providing an overview ofthe cultural diversity and heterogeneity of styles expressed in the arts ofAustralian Aborigines.8 The display unfolds on several levels. On a mostimmediate level, it is a sensory and aesthetically powerful experience. Arte-facts are displayed in an art-gallery mode, skilfully hung against a whitebackground, powerfully illuminated by spotlights, surrounded by minimaldesign. This approach brings to the fore the materiality of the exhibits: thelarge, brightly coloured, pigment-saturated involute patterns exert an almost

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hypnotic effect on the viewer. It is simply not possible to walk absent-mind-edly past these exhibits. But the exhibition strives to reach beyond the aes-thetic impact, to offer an intellectually engaging experience. The visitor getsto learn about the cultural significance of the works, and the specific sym-bolic meanings embedded in their materiality (referring to Aboriginalmyths, songs, story-telling). Artworks are prefaced by panels providingcontextualizing information. Exhibition texts draw on anthropological in-sights and critical reflection on such topics as religion and the relationshipbetween the land, the ancestors and living communities, notions of traditionand innovation, the cultural significance of designs, the ties between Abo-rigines and Australian national identity. In addition, each artwork is accom-panied by an interpretative text provided by the artist. The cultural meaningsof the objects on display further invite critical reflection to the extent thatthey challenge lingering divides between art and ethnography, and tangibleand intangible cultural categories. This exhibition provides an example ofthe possibility (and efficacy) of museological approaches combining visualimpact and cultural contextualization, artistic sensitivity and anthropologi-cal depth of (cross-)cultural understanding: the display is visually engaging,appealing, accessible, yet faithful to the inherent epistemological and cultur-al complexity of the exhibits. Regrettably, however, this kind of critical, re-search-driven reflection that should be the benchmark of a university mu-seum, has hitherto been only to a limited extent incorporated and reflectedin the Museum’s permanent galleries.

The four permanent galleries considered – Arctic, African, Asian andAmerican – share one feature: the authenticity of objects is of pivotal impor-tance. Objects are made to be iconic, to represent a culture, but at the sametime, their individual potency and singularity cannot be left in the back-ground: these are unique artefacts bearing considerable historic, artistic,technical and cultural value. These objects do not need to be interpolated bya strong narrative. Rather they act as brush strokes that, taken together, col-lectively contribute to forming the big picture of a distant “Other”.9 Becausethey do not have to support other narratives than their own uniqueness andauthenticity, they can afford to be aestheticized. Aesthetics becomes here amode of apprehension of distant cultures (see Naguib 2004, 2007); this isnot incompatible with other approaches, such as the ethnographic and his-torical. Indeed, at the Museum of Cultural History exhibits are presentedboth as items to be admired in themselves, and as culturally and historicallysalient, to be understood as part of a specific cultural system. Objects arehistoricized through the extensive use of black and white historical photosas contextualization material. With the exception of the Americas gallery,there are few references in the displays, texts or pictures to contemporaryliving societies; when the display does tackle cultural features that might beconsidered as “contemporary” or “modern”, as in the case of market ex-


changes in the African gallery, these are framed as a Western import, as ifto imply that these societies are “modern” only in those spheres of social lifethat are influenced by the West.

All things considered, the displays at the Museum of Cultural History donot succeed in displacing stereotypical images of Other cultures. In the Af-rican gallery for instance, the earthenware, ivory horns, Benin bronzes,masks and wooden sculptures strongly resonate with collective imageryabout the African Other, as do the Amazonian feather headdresses, Meso-american basketry and Plains Indian leather items in the Americas Galleries,or the igloo in the Circumpolar gallery. The object-stereotype (the mask, thebasket, the feathers) is used as a prop, a tool to invite visitors to learn moreabout the cultures on display, yet without really challenging previously heldand received understandings about them. Conversely, displays at the Mu-seum of Cultural History essentially reassure the visitors in their assump-tions about Other cultures. To an external viewer, this situation might seemsomewhat paradoxical in a museum employing several professional anthro-pologists. It is only by exploring the process of exhibition set-up, rather thanjust analysing its final result, that other relevant analytical elements emerge,for instance the fact that anthropologists have no direct responsibility for ex-hibitions, which are managed by a separate exhibitions department, current-ly headed by an archaeologist.10 This problematic division of responsibili-ties within the Museum encroaches upon the disciplinary expertise of socialanthropology (understood as the science devoted to the study of culturalphenomena and their interpretation in a cross-cultural perspective) and cur-tails the potentially significant role that social anthropologists might play inreshaping the ethnographic galleries. Whilst these organizational issues helpto explain the poor conditions of the ethnographic galleries, they do not pro-vide a satisfactory response to visitors’ expectations of more accurate andupdated cultural representations.

The Kon-Tiki Museum: the Aesthetics of the ExoticThe privately owned Kon-Tiki Museum is devoted to the life and achieve-ments of the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his lifetime expedi-tions across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. The fulcrum of displaysat the Kon-Tiki Museum are the vessels used by Heyerdahl and his crewmembers, as well as detailed photographic and textual material document-ing the expeditions; these are complemented by ethnographic artefacts, ar-chaeological finds and botanical specimen. The local communities encoun-tered during the expeditions appear as secondary characters in narratives fo-cusing on Thor’s persona and endeavours. The ethos of the intrepid, solitaryexplorer connecting with the natural environment is here celebrated as aproperly “Norwegian” archetype.

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The general emphasis on Thor’s persona rather than on artefacts was re-versed in the special exhibition Tiki Pop Culture, held at the Museum in2009. The exhibition was devoted to the spread of images, objects, food anddrinks associated with the Pacific which occurred upon the return of Ameri-can soldiers after the end of the Second World War, and which was revivedby the interest generated by Thor Heyerdahl’s expeditions. The display casta critical eye on the development of Pacific-inspired paraphernalia and popculture around the world, and specifically in Norway, where Tiki restaurantsand bars revived the flavours of the “South Seas”. The exhibition includedcontemporary art (sculptures and textiles reproducing and re-interpretingPacific “traditional” patterns), exotica and a vast array of gadgets (includingsmall sculptures, mugs, shell bracelets and Hawaiian-style flower neck-laces) collected by Norwegian enthusiasts. On display was also a recon-structed corner of a Tiki-inspired bar, complete with Pacific wooden carvedpoles, flowered textiles, and a Pacific-themed menu with exotic drinks andfood.

The exhibition Tiki Pop Culture is particularly interesting for the ironic,self-reflexive view on the appropriation and commodification of the Tiki ac-coutrements as emblems of the exotic Pacific Other. The exhibition reflect-ed on the aesthetizing gaze directed at Pacific objects. In so doing, it project-ed the image of a distant, exotic Other reactualized in today’s tourist andconsumerist enactments. The display recalled Susan Stewart’s (1984:146,148) comment on exoticism: “the exotic object represents distance appropri-ated […] To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen anda trophy […] [the souvenir’s] otherness speaks to the possessor’s capacityfor otherness: it is the possessor, not the souvenir, which is ultimately thecuriosity.” The Kon-Tiki Museum develops an aesthetics of the exotic thatresonates strongly not only in an historical dimension (the events of WorldWar II and Thor’s expeditions) but also in its contemporary implications.The exhibition Tiki Pop Culture in particular played with the ideas of exoti-cism and consumerism, casting a disenchanted gaze on Western practices ofconstruction and consumption of cultural difference. By drawing the visi-tor’s attention to cultural distinctiveness and on cultural difference, displaysaccentuate the dichotomy between an implicit Norwegian “us” and theOther, but interestingly, they do so in a self-reflective way. The “Other” en-countered in the Kon-Tiki Museum is not threatening but appealing, not pre-sent but distant in place and time, not real but imagined. These features ul-timately facilitate and encourage its consumption.

Hybrid Regimes of RepresentationThe analysis of displays in the museums considered in this study evincesthree main regimes of representation: aesthetic, ethnographic and historical.


The Museum of Cultural History (especially the African gallery) and theKon-Tiki (especially the Tiki Pop Culture exhibition) offer instances of aes-thetic regimes of representation. This kind of regimes of representation em-phasize the aesthetics of artefacts through a range of ad hoc display tech-niques. These tend to singularize the object and to draw attention to its ma-terial properties, for instance through precise, powerful lighting and the useof individual glass cases. The exhibit is presented as a work of art. Consist-ently, texts and captions are limited, as they are not perceived to be essentialto the full appreciation of the exhibit. Exhibition approaches of this kindease cross-cultural comparisons, and often lead to generalizations and theestablishment of a canon, such as “African Style” or “Nordic aesthetics”(Varutti 2010).

Examples of ethnographic regimes of representation can be found at theMuseum of Cultural History, and in the Norwegian Museum of CulturalHistory, especially the section of the Sami gallery dating to 1990. Ethno-graphic regimes of representation focus on the cultural significance of ob-jects and their contexts of production, use and consumption. In line with thisaim, ethnographic style displays make a significant use of contextualizingmaterial such as dioramas, mannequins, texts, diagrams and photos. Ethno-graphic regimes of representation are centred on cultural features; for in-stance, prominence is given to craft traditions, religious practices, dwellingcustoms, strategies of climatic adaptation, lifestyles, and so on. Culturalcontext, and its spatio-temporal variations, are the lenses through which theobjects on display are interpreted here.

The Museum of Cultural History (especially the Arctic galleries), theNorwegian Museum of Cultural History (in the old section of the Sami gal-lery) and the Kon-Tiki (in the permanent galleries) instantiate the categoryof historical regimes of representation. Historical regimes of representationare primarily concerned with providing historical context for the events,peoples and cultures on display. This notion might recall the concept of “re-gimes of historicity” developed by the French historian François Hartog(2003). In Hartog’s view, a regime of historicity may be understood as theway a society deals with its past, and in more detail, the ways in which his-toricity is lived, conceptualized, deployed, and the way the past, the presentand the future are articulated (2003:19, 35, my translation). It follows thatdiscussions of regimes of historicity imply a self-reflexive concern with theway temporalities are conceived and perceived within and across societies– a concern that is more appropriately defined as historiographical, ratherthan historical. The concept of historical regimes of representation deployedhere differs from Hartog’s regimes of historicity since it does not aim to ex-plain the different ways in which societies relate to their past (and to timemore broadly). Rather, more coarsely, it aims to define the internal consist-ency of a set of display techniques, approaches and narratives that create an

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historical backdrop for the events or cultures displayed. In this sense, in thenotion of historical regimes of representation the emphasis is put on regimesand the systemic, coherent qualities it suggests, whilst in Hartog’s concept,the analytical focus is on the notion of historicity. Thus, historical regimesof representation are characterized by a conspicuous use of historical pho-tographic material (especially black and white photos), and by the deploy-ment of narratives of “progress” and of progressive “civilization”. This im-plies that historical regimes of representation are not necessarily exclusivelyconcerned with the past, but also characterize exhibitions engaging withcontemporary issues such as climate change and environmental pollution.Historical and ethnographic regimes of representation can be intimately en-tangled in the context of a display, yet it is still useful to distinguish themfor analytical purposes (see below). Whilst an historical perspective may bepresent in ethnographic regimes, their main focus is kept on cultural fea-tures, and social change is usually explained through reference to culturalelements. Similarly, in historical regimes of representation we may find thatcultural details and ethnographic analyses greatly enrich an historical an-alysis, yet the main concern of the historical regime is communicating thechronological sequence of events, and setting events one in relation to theother, usually on the basis of a cause-effect logic.

The identification of these three regimes of representation – aesthetic,ethnographic and historical – serves here analytical, rather than descriptivepurposes. This also implies that these ideal types are not exhaustive, onemight identify many other regimes of representation defined by variouscombinations, approaches and emphasis in display techniques and narra-tives. Defining, however approximatively, these three ideal-types of re-gimes of representation – aesthetic, ethnographic and historical – allows meto locate, by way of inference, another open, hybrid category which com-bines features of the three ideal-types described. In the same way as withAppadurai’s regimes of value, in fact, regimes of representation are not dis-crete, closed systems, but open and fluid: their borders are blurred, they canmerge, overlap, dissolve. Indeed, it is hybrids of these regimes of represen-tation that are most interesting to explore.

Among the museums considered, examples of hybrid regimes of repre-sentation can be found at the Glomdal Museum (notably the Latjo Drom ex-hibition on Travellers), the IKM, the new section of the Sami gallery and thePakistani flat, both at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, and thetemporary exhibition “We Paint the Stories of Our Culture” at the Museumof Cultural History of the University of Oslo. Hybrid regimes of representa-tion, however, cannot be reduced to a set of arbitrary choices of museum cu-rators. On closer examination, they reveal an internal logic and consistency.Interestingly, these are all relatively recent displays, indicating that this re-gime of representation has crystallized over the last five or six years. More-


over, these museums chime with Anthony Alan Shelton’s (2006:492) de-scription of “new” museums as “threshold institutions constructed betweenmajor intellectual, historical and social fault zones, at the intersections andbetween the interstices of conflicting, contradictory and paradoxical, pluri-cultural cross-currents”.

In such hybrid regimes of representation, the centrality of the object-mas-terpiece constructed as an icon of authenticity is displaced to the benefit ofmore evocative approaches using objects as springboards for narratives thatappeal to personal experience, emotions, memories and imagination. This isalso suggested by the generalized emphasis put on the creation of detailed,thematic contexts that engender a mood and a background enabling an im-mersive museum experience. Displays are characterized by open, multiplenarrative lines making room for a plurality of points of view. The narrativemode often adopts a documentary style, using meta-narratives, real-lifestories, individual accounts, personal life-trajectories, belongings and mem-ory boxes. These display techniques tend to conceal curatorial agency in or-der to convey the sense of a more direct relationship between audiences andthe communities represented. This exhibition approach is less concernedwith providing an accurate, comprehensive representation of a group thanwith establishing cross-cultural links that contribute to locating that groupwithin a broader national or global arena. This effect is also achievedthrough a thematic focus on universal topics and issues which are then ex-plored in a cross-cultural perspective.

Gradients of AlterityIn a report for the Norwegian government, the museum professional PerBjorn Rekdal (2001:15) wrote: “one expected result of increased museumactivity connected to our cultural diversity is that this can contribute to theintegration of new groups in Norwegian society.” Whilst it is beyond thepurpose of this paper to discuss the degree to which this objective is beingsuccessfully pursued, this statement confirms the concern among museumacademics and professionals for the potential role that museums can play inthe development of a more inclusive and cohesive society. Less debated arethe implications of a range of concrete modes of cultural representationadopted by museums in the pursuit of this goal. The analysis of museumsdeveloped in this paper helps to shed light on this issue.

When juxtaposed, the analyses of the different regimes of representationin the museums examined project different kinds of assumptions and per-ceptions about the various “Others”. This suggests that not all non-ethnicNorwegian enjoy the same museological status, but there are in museumsdifferent categories of Others, as well as gradients of cultural alterity.

This might be a surprising finding in a country that identifies egalitarian

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individualism as one of its main values (Gullestad 1992), but Norwegian so-ciety might not be as egalitarian as imagined. The historian Einar Niemi(2008:5) explains that since the 1990s, a minority policy hierarchy has grad-ually taken shape, whereby the Sami are the most prominent group, fol-lowed by national minorities, and lastly immigrant communities (see foot-note 1). In the same vein, the anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen talksof a “hierarchy of Norwegian Others” (2002:232), and Elisabeth Eide (n.d.)of “scales of Norwegian-ness”.

That there are different kinds of non-ethnic Norwegian communitiesmight not be a novelty per se. What deserves attention, however, is the roleof museums in reproducing such hierarchies and subtly communicatingthem to audiences. I would argue that through the deployment of differentregimes of representation, the museums analysed in this study implicitlycommunicate such hierarchies. In more detail, in the museums consideredthere are to my mind at least four different categories of Others: the Sami;the mostly integrated national minorities (such as the Travellers); the par-tially integrated immigrant communities (such as the Pakistanis); and moredistant “Others”, culturally and geographically far from Norway. Whilst thisis an oversimplified interpretation of cultural complexity in contemporaryNorway, museums do not appear to engage in a critical rethinking of suchgross categorization.

In general, one can notice that the less the ethnic group is statistically, so-cially, economically or culturally relevant in Norway (thus unlikely to playany role in the (re)definition of Norwegian national identity), the more itsmuseum representation is characterized by essentialism, objectification,generalizations and exoticism. For instance, a group that has been inhabitingwhat is today the Norwegian territory for a very long time – this is obviouslythe case for the Sami indigenous group, but also for the Travellers, officiallyrecognized as an ethnic minority since inhabiting Norway for more than 100years – enjoys dedicated museums and/or display space, and the possibilityto play an active role in the set-up of their museum representation. This isthe case for the Sami at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, and theTravellers at the Glomdal Museum.

Gradually, this kind of opportunities are being extended to groups ofmore recent settlement in Norway, such as immigrants, refugees, asylumseekers, and so on. Migrant cultures are often presented in the context ofcollective displays conflating the diverse groups in an allegedly unifiable“immigrant culture” (as for instance at the IKM). However, museums areslowly developing a sharper focus on migrant communities. This is attainedeither through exhibitions devoted to a specific group – for instance thePakistani flat at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, or FotsporSomalia–Norge/Footprints Somalia–Norway, which was an exhibition de-voted to Somali culture held at the Glomdal Museum from June 2006 to


June 2008 – or through a thematic approach – for instance the temporary ex-hibition innSYN=INNsikt held at the IKM in Autumn 2010 focused on mi-gration and the role of language as bridge or barrier among cultures; in asimilar vein the exhibition Hijab og hodeplagg – med rett til å velge/Hijaband head wear – with a right to choose held at the Museum of the City ofOslo in Spring 2009, explored the use of the hijab as a fashion item.

The preference accorded to hybrid regimes of representation in these ex-hibitions can be interpreted as a heightened recognition of the visibility ofnon-ethnic Norwegian communities in Norwegian society, and of the needto represent cultural difference in “politically correct” manners as a way tofoster intercultural dialogue and social cohesion. Increasingly, such politi-cally correct representations serve to negotiate the gradual introduction of“foreign” cultures in the domestic ethnoscape. In fact, in most instances,“politically correct” representations of other cultures focus not so much onthe “Other” and its cultural difference, as on its relation with the Norwegianmajority. This results in an implicit, gradual redefinition of Norwegian na-tional identity and citizenship.

To illustrate this point, I will use the example of the Sami. The display ofSami culture in the new gallery section at the Norwegian Museum of Cul-tural History emphasizes the similarities between Sami and ethnic Nor-wegians. The punk girl in the opening photo is not recognisable as a Sami,her cultural belonging is overridden by her statement as an individual – incontrast to the anonymity of the featureless Sami mannequins used in the oldsection of the same gallery. The photo of the young Sami punk signifies re-bellion, including rebellion against previously fixed definitions of “Sami-ness”. It is also an image of modernity as it redefines the image of the Samiby locating Sami culture in the hybrid space of a subculture – punk rock –that transcends cultural borders. Precisely because Sami culture is definedhere in non-culturally specific terms, it is easier to link it to Norwegian cul-ture. This point chimes with Eriksen’s (2002:223) analysis of the under-standing of cultural difference in Norway as a lack of Norwegian features:the Other is such precisely because it is not culturally similar. The invisibil-ity of Sami as a visually distinctive group in today’s Norwegian society isperhaps the most patent indication of their degree of integration. The “natur-alization” of Sami also appears in museum texts such as “Sami are now tobe found in all walks of life…”, or “daily life becomes more and moresimilar to that of other people in the country” (Norwegian Museum of Cul-tural History). The core message of the displays of Sami culture at the Nor-wegian Museum of Cultural History appears to be: “we are all ultimatelysimilar”.

Another instance showing the centrality of the equation “similarity-equality” for the integration of non-ethnic Norwegian cultures is providedby the permanent exhibition Latjo Drom, at the Glomdal Museum, illustrat-

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ing the culture of Travellers’ communities. The display is interspersed withreferences to Norwegian history, cultural elements and collective imagery.For instance, a Traveller witness points out that hygiene has always beenvery important for her and that she used Lano soap for her children. TheTravellers’ own reference to an item so firmly inscribed in Norwegian col-lective imagination such as Lano soap (the most widespread brand of soapin Norway since the 1930s) might not, at first glance, seem noteworthy. Yet,the fact that this information was retained by the curator and by the Travellercommunities as relevant suggests the existence of a shared set of referencesand values associated with “Norwegianness” in relation to which other cul-tures are located, and locate themselves. Conversely, the curator of the per-manent exhibition reported11 that on some occasions visitors claimed thatthe display is not objective since it does not account for Travellers’ involve-ment in knife fights, misappropriations and so on. In response to suchclaims, the curator usually points out that museum displays of Norwegianpeasant culture do not either display fights, drinking habits and so on, andquestions possible double standards for Travellers. What the curator is aim-ing at with this answer – and what some visitors are resistant to accept – isthe extension of the regime of representation of the Norwegian majority tonon-Norwegian cultural components. In other words, the permanent exhibi-tion Latjo Drom is negotiating the transition and the acceptance of Travel-lers into the Norwegian nation. It is doing so by striving to present Travel-lers’ culture as both unique and distinctive, and situated within the frame-work of Norwegian history and culture. The core message of the display,mediated by the Museum authority, could be crudely synthesized as “they[the Travellers] are like us”. Yet the very creation in 2004 of this dedicatedpermanent exhibition is evidence that this statement is not obvious, butneeds to be enforced – and museums are precisely contributing to this end.

ConclusionsIn this paper, I proposed to extend Arjun Appadurai’s concept of “regime ofvalue” to museum displays by means of its reformulation as “regime of rep-resentation”. I used this as an analytical concept in a study of the way Nor-wegian museums tackle cultural difference.

In general terms, the construction or depiction of cultural difference inmuseums (as in other media) has mostly followed two main lines: the tem-poral or the spatial. Art and history museums have traditionally centred onthe chronological development of cultures, essentially locating the roots ofcultural difference in a different historical trajectory, whilst anthropologymuseums have worked with notions of cultural difference as linked to a dif-ferent spatial or geographical location. Based on this study of museums inNorway, the last generation of museums displaying other cultures seems to


aim to transcend this dichotomy, striving to open up an in-between spacewhere cultural identities are neither past nor faraway, but rather multiple,fluid, ever-changing identities that are here and in the present. Perceptionsof cultural and territorial belonging overlap and intersect, creating new co-ordinates of identity where ethnic communities can both maintain stronglinks with their cultures of origin, and be fully part of the multicultural so-ciety in which they live. Crucially, there is a growing awareness of theseprocesses among museum professionals, the political body and Norwegiansociety at large (Ministry of Labour and Social Inclusion 2010; Rekdal2001).

If Victorian museums, according to Tony Bennett (2006) educatedmasses to “civic seeing”, that is, to becoming the “modern” citizens of“civilized nations”, the last generation of museums and displays of culturaldifference in Norway appear to operate as sites for a “multicultural seeing”,educating audiences to become citizens of a multicultural, open-minded,cosmopolitan and globalized world. In this sense, the hierarchization of cul-tural difference that surfaces in museum displays is not necessarily nega-tive: it can be understood as part of a long-term process of acceptance andintegration of different cultural communities, and ultimately as a way togradually negotiate the multi-ethnic profile of the Norwegian nation.

Although museum representations do not really challenge received un-derstandings about different categories of Others, but rather work withinsuch schemata, their efforts to break through established regimes of repre-sentation and to explore new visual and narrative ways to present other cul-tures are important and deserve to be encouraged. Museums will have tocope with the challenge, but also the extraordinary opportunities, to workwith ethnic communities to better translate the complex, imaginative pro-cesses through which Norwegian and non-Norwegian cultural elements arebeing constantly re-articulated and reinterpreted in the formulation of col-lective (ethnic) identities. This direction bears the potential to transform mu-seums from sites of superficial showcasing of cultural diversity, into labor-atories for the development and expression of the inspirational culturalvibrancy of a truly multicultural country.

AcknowledgementsI wish to gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the ResearchCouncil of Norway to this research project (YGGDRASIL mobility grantn.195787/V11). I also wish to thank colleagues at the IKOS – Departmentof Culture Studies and Oriental Languages of the University of Oslo, whereI was a visiting researcher from September to January 2010. In particular, Iam grateful to Professor Saphinaz Amal Naguib and the members of the re-search programme Patterns of Cultural Valuation for providing valuable

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comments and an inspirational framework for my research. I furthermorewish to thank the participants in a seminar held at the Museum of CulturalHistory, University of Oslo, in March 2010, where I presented a draft of thispaper, for their insightful comments. My thanks also to Arlyne Moi for com-menting on previous versions of the article. Any mistakes remain my soleresponsibility.

Marzia Varutti, Visiting ResearcherDepartment of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS)University of OsloDuehaugveien 8C0851 OsloNorwaye-mail: [email protected]

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1 Since this article is mostly concerned with the ethnic dimensions of cultural difference,the analysis focuses on indigenous groups, ethnic minorities and migrant communities,rather than on religious or linguistic minorities. It should also be noted that, in additionto the Sami indigenous people, Norway officially recognizes five national minority groups:Kven, Forest Finns, Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and Romany (Travellers).2 Thomas Walle, curator, Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. Personal communica-tion, 25 November 2009.3 I am grateful to Dr Leif Pareli, curator at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History,for these insights. Personal communication, 6 May 2011.4 The exhibition Our Sacred Space opened at the IKM in Spring 2007 and was extendeduntil the end of 2010.5 Dr Leif Pareli, curator at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. Personal commu-nication, 6 May 2011.

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6 The complex institutional history of the Museum of Cultural History and its collectionshave been extensively discussed by other authors (see Bouquet 1996; Naguib 2007).7 The exhibition is correlated to web pages (in Norwegian and English) reproducing allthe exhibition texts organized in thematic sections, high-quality photographs of the art-works on display, profiles of the exhibiting artists, a video interview with Aboriginewomen demonstrating the making of a traditional handbag, and photo galleries offeringa glimpse of the exhibition making process.8 Maria Øien, exhibition curator. Personal communication, 14 April 2011.9 For a discussion of the concept of “culturally distant” (fjernkulturell) see Gullestad 2001:52.10 Professor Øivind Fuglerud, Department of Ethnography, Museum of Cultural History,University of Oslo. Personal communication, 4 February 2011.11 Mary Møystad, curator of the Latjo Drom exhibition, Glomdal Museum, Elverum. Per-sonal communication, 3 November 2009.

Documents

Gradients of alterity: museums and the negotiation of cultural difference in contemporary Norway