Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T12:31:45.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Do We Need Museums in the Cameroon Grassfields?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Mathias Alubafi Fubah*
Affiliation:
Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin
Get access

Extract

This article was provoked by the recent creation of two major state of the art modern museums in the western Grassfields of Cameroon. The two museums in question are the Mankon museum, located at the fon's palace, and the Babungo museum, also located at the Babungo fon's palace. The museums were part of an initiative by an Italian NGO - Centro Orientamento Educativo (COE) - to establish five museums in some regions of Cameroon. The objectives of the initiative were:

- The protection and enhancement of the cultural and artistic heritage in its original setting through the creation of five museums (with the publication of catalogues for the collections) in five different areas, stating with the Cameroon Grassfields, which is the western part of the country where artistic heritage is the richest and where the danger of the disappearance and loss of artistic objects is greatest.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This paper was written as part of the author's fellowship at Centre of African Studies, Cambridge University sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust and Sir Isaac Newton Trust.

References

Ambrose, T. and Paine, C. (1993) Museum Basics, London: International Council of Museums.Google Scholar
Assombang, R. (1990) ‘Museums and African Identity: the Museum in Cameroon - a critique’, West African Journal of Archaeology, 20, pp.188-198.Google Scholar
Bennett, T. (1998) The Playground, Miami: Warner Bros.Google Scholar
Essomba, J. M. (1980) Etude pour le developpement des musees en Afrique Francophone en vue d'une meilleure insertion du patrimoine cultural dans le systeme educatif. Seminaire sous-region de l'UNESCO sur la mise en valeur du patrimoine culturel comme moyen educatif. Freetown, 29 Septembre - 3 Octobre, 1980.Google Scholar
Fubah, A. (2008) Art, Tourism and the Sustainability of Tradition in the Grassfields, Cameroon, Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Reading.Google Scholar
May, T. (2001) Social Research: Issues, Methods and Process, Buckingham: Open University.Google Scholar
Moore, K. (1997) Museums and Popular Culture, London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Mveng, E. (1986) Les Problemes de la Protection et de la Conservation du Patrimoine Culturel: a quand le Muse'e National du Cameroun? Colloque International sur L'Archeologie Camerounaise. Yaounde 6-9 January 1986.Google Scholar
Nkwi, P. N. (1996) ‘A Conservation Dilemma over African Royal Art in Cameroon’., in Schmidt, P. and Mclntosh, R. (eds.) Plundering Africa's Past, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp.99-109.Google Scholar
Nooter, M. (1993) ‘Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of Things Unseen’, in Nooter, M. (ed) Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, New York: Museum for African Art., pp.23-33.Google Scholar
Notue, P. and Triaca, B. (2005) Mankon: Arts, Heritage and Culture from the Mankon Kingdom. Catalogue of the Mankon Museum, Milan: 5 Continents.Google Scholar
Perin, C. (1992) ‘The Communicative Circle: Museums as Communities’, in Karp, I., Kreamer, C. and Lavine, S. (eds.) Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Ravenhill, P. (1988) ‘The Passive Object and the Tribal Paradigm: Colonial Museography in French West Africa’, in Arnoldi, M. and Geary, C. (eds.) African Material Culture, Bloomington:.Indiana University Press, pp.262-282.Google Scholar
Rivard, R. (1979) Le Musee Ecologique. No. FRM/CC/CII/79/104, Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Rowlands, M. (2008) ‘Africa on Display: Curating Postcolonial Pasts in the Cameroon Grassfields’, in P. Schmidt (ed.) Postcolonial Archaeologies in Africa, Santa Fe: School for Advance Social Research Press, pp.149-162.Google Scholar
Warnier, J. P. (2007) The Pot-King: The Body and Technologies of Power, Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, C.A. (2010) ‘Are museums still necessary?’, Curator: the Museum Journal, 37(1), pp.25-35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witcomb, A. (2003) Re-imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum, London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar