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Megan Bosence

Megan Bosence, M.A.

PhD Student

Dissertations Title

Contemporary Representations and Repatriation of Indigenous Art and Culture on the Pacific Northwest Coast

(supervised by Dr. Andreas Etges)

Academic Profile

Megan Bosence is a PhD Candidate in American Cultural History at the Amerika-Institut and Graduate School of Language and Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). In 2019, She received her MA degree in American History, Culture and Society at the LMU Amerika-Institut. She earned her BA degree with Honours in Art History and a Minor in History from the University of Victoria in Canada in 2015, while previously completing her Visual Arts diploma in 2010 from Camosun College. Megan has also volunteered and continues to build her career within the museum and gallery settings alongside and in-between her studies.

Her research interests include Canadian and U.S. Indigenous histories, cultural history, museology, art history and memory culture.

Abstract

Playing a unique role in shaping cultural memory, museums contribute to our understandings of the world and our communities, including histories and ongoing patterns of colonial violence. This is especially the case with Indigenous cultures, which have long been misrepresented due to a historical prioritization of settler perspectives. While examining existing research focused on past models of museology entrenched within power structures, this PhD project will analyze the evolving relationships between Indigenous communities and museum staff and the Indigenous culture they work to display and preserve. This will involve research in historical and current museum practices, focusing on the Pacific Northwest Coast and including sites in both Canada and United States.

To do this, this project will include interviews from Indigenous and non-Indigenous museum staff and guest curators, with a focus on contemporary museums and cultural institutions that have evolved into collaborative spaces seeking to both work with and for Indigenous communities striving to reclaim traditional spaces and protect their heritage. This project will also explore the curation of exhibitions that aim to promote a broader understanding of Indigenous history and experience, while trying to answer if Indigenous representation within these museums maintain a collaborative process to uphold Indigenous knowledge. This study will also examine the methods and limitations of museums as sites for reclaiming Indigenous culture and identity, such as the challenges in representing and repatriating Indigenous cultural objects and how Indigenous and non-Indigenous administrative staff across the Pacific Northwest aim to nourish relationships within (and between) local communities.


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