How do you imagine a Roma museum? What shall a Roma museum collect and exhibit?
For our RomaMoMA blog, we asked Roma and non-Roma artists and arts professionals to answer a simple but complex question:
How do you imagine a Roma Museum? What should a Roma Museum collect and exhibit?
While the responses are quite diverse, there is a conjunction of similar problematics and visions.
In one case, the importance of Romani leadership within such an institution was highlighted, while someone else focused rather on the strong educative role this new museum should definitely play. Another interviewee developed the concept of a Museum of Connections, highlighting the importance of a physical space: “in using physical sites and exhibits, contemporary art has the ability to preserve what fact-based historical records cannot: how it feels for individuals to exist in a particular place at a particular time”. Specific projects and artists were named, like the initiative and foundation Get the Heck to School, that offers scholarships to impoverished Roma girls to finish elementary school and pursue further education. Someone also emphasised the need to include the two most important historical events when creating a Roma museum of contemporary art: Roma Slavery and the Roma Holocaust, as these landmark events and histories are as vital to address as the contemporary art scene.
Did we make you curious? Then check out the video to hear more!
Find all participants´ biographies here: Interviewees_Biographies
Stay tuned, more interesting questions coming soon!
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