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CAM Bulletin No. 24 September/October 2014
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CAM's 2014-2017 Executive Council
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President Rooksana Omar CEO of the Iziko Museums of South Africa served as Director of the Luthuli Museum from 2006-2010 and Acting Director of the eThekwini Heritage at the Ethekwini Municipality from 2001-2005. She is Past-President of the South African Museums Association and ICOM South Africa and serves on the boards of Castle Control and Groot Constantia. Rooksana graduated with BA and Honours degrees in history from the then University of Durban-Westville and completed an MBA recognizing the need to transform a sector that had in the past denigrated and downplayed the importance of the majority’s history and culture in the post-apartheid era.
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Vice-President Amareswar Galla has been for three decades a champion of cultural democracy and heritage. An alumnus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, he is the founding Executive Director of the International Institute for the Inclusive Museum. He held full professorial positions at the University of Queensland and the Australian National University. His publications focussing on inclusion and active citizenship range from World Heritage: Benefits Beyond Border (2012) to Heritage Curricula and Cultural Diversity (1993). He was co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Intangible Heritage and founding Editor of the International Journal on the Inclusive Museum and the Inclusive Museum Book series.
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Treasurer Ericka Chemko is Program and Operations Manager at the Edmonton Heritage Council and Member Services Manager at the Archives Society of Alberta. She was a Project Manager at the Inuit Heritage Trust Inc. in Canada's Arctic for eight years. In 2009 her work in establishing a training program for Inuit heritage workers was recognized by the Canadian Museums Association. Ericka holds a BA in Anthropology with a focus in Museum Studies from the University of British Columbia, an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, and a Certificate in Cultural Resource Management from the University of Victoria.
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Past-President Martin Segger retired as director of Art Galleries and Collections at the University of Victoria, Canada and adjunct professor in the Department of History in Art. He is a Research Associate, Centre for Global Studies. He holds a BA and Diploma of Education from the University of Victoria (UVic), and a MPhil in Renaissance Cultural Studies from the Warburg Institute, University of London. In 1982 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and 1999 a Fellow of the Canadian Museums Association. At UVic he founded the international Cultural Resource Management Program.
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Lumepa Apelu, Principal Officer, Museum of Samoa has extensive tourism experience in Samoa. She is a mathematics graduate, a cultural advocate and active member of the community. Before she went into muse um work she managed a family business. She writes for the museum and is responsible for collections and staff management. She has created local, regional and international partnerships through her dedicated advocacy. She created and updates the museum website and Facebook page. She works well with museum volunteers and is seen as a role model by many of her peers.
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Richard Benjamin heads the International Slavery Museum at National Museums Liverpool, responsible for the strategic development of the museum, partnerships, research and collection management. He is Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery. Richard gained a BA (Hons) degree in Community and Race Relations at Edge Hill College and an MA and PhD in Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. In 2002 he was a Visiting Research Scholar at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute of African and African American Research, Harvard University. In 2012 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Edge Hill University and became an Independent Governor in 2013.
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Claude Faubert is Director General of the Canada Science and Technology Museum and Vice-President, Collection and Research as well as Vice-President, Exhibitions for the three museums governed by the corporation: the Canada Science and Technology Museum, the Canada Agriculture Museum and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Claude was a member of ICOM’s Executive Council from 2007-2013 and from 2011-2014 chair of ICOM’s committee that allocates annual funding to International Committees as well as to special projects. Claude is a director of the Canadian Association of Science Centres and of Cimuset.
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David Mbuthia is head of the National Museum of Kenya (NMK)’s central region. He has worked at NMK for 13 years and now oversees 12 museums and close to 50 sites and monuments. David has been involved in exhibition and policy development, strategy and work plans, implemented education programmes for different audiences, and participated in many international organizations. David has a BSc in Environmental Studies from Kenyatta University and an MSc in applied Ecology and Conservation from the University of East Anglia (UK), and is enrolled in the Cultural Heritage Management Program at the University of Victoria.
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Kim Outten Stubbs is Chief Curator at the National Museum of The Bahamas where for over 20 years she has worked towards the development of a national museum system establishing the Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation, Balcony House Museum, San Salvador Museum and Long Island Museum. She has represented The Bahamas at the UNESCO/ CARICOM Museum Development Workshop for the Caribbean and on the executive of the Museums Association of the Caribbean. Outten Stubbs has MAs in African and African American Studies from the State University of New York at Albany and in Museum Studies from the University of London.
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Huism Tan is Head, Curation and Exhibitions, National Library Singapore. Prior to joining the National Library in 2012, she spent 22 years in the museum sector. Huism was Deputy Director, Curation and Collections and Senior Curator, West Asia at the Asian Civilisations Museum and one of the key curatorial staff on the conceptualization and development of the two phases of the Asian Civilisations Museum (1997 and 2003) as well as the gallery development of the Peranakan Museum in 2008. Aside from curating exhibitions on Islamic subjects, past exhibitions and displays include topics on Southeast Asian and Chinese culture.
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Mrinalini Venkateswaran has a formal background in archaeology as well as museum studies and experience on site in West Asia and in museums in India and the UK. She has developed and implemented documentation and collections management systems for major museums and collections in India. She is currently Projects Manager of Eka Archiving Services, New Delhi and is the author of the children’s book Monuments of India (2009). She has recently co-authored Long Exposure: The Camera at Udaipur, 1857-1957 on the historic photographic material at the Pictorial Archives of the Maharanas of Mewar (2014).
Learn more about our Executive Council HERE.
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Pacific Voyaging Workshop, Museum of Samoa
by Tarisi Vunidilo, Secretary-General, Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA) and Lumepa Apelu, Principal Officer, Museum of Samoa
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Participants in Museum of Samoa Workshop
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The Museum of Samoa organized a side event at the UN Conference on Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) on Pacific Voyaging to continue dialogue on climate change. Vunidilo’s paper, “The Role of Museums in Culture and the Environment,†focused on case studies from Vanuatu, Guam and Samoa and the roles museums play in educating communities on topics relating to cultural protection, climate change and promotion of indigenous knowledge such as navigation. Pacific peoples’ views on museums have positively changed over the years. Museums are now viewed as extensions of schools, where in the case of Vanuatu the local museum runs kastom (pidjin for custom) schools to deliver the revival of sand-drawing, an ancient form of language. Other Pacific museums prominently feature traditional canoes in their exhibitions supported by artifacts that reflect the total reliance of our forefathers on their environment. Communities today must learn from our ancestors how they balance the use of natural resources for their sustenance and at the same time think of the future of the next generations.
Hokule’a, Hikanilia and Gaualofa crew members were part of the workshop. Students and lecturers of the National University and the University of South Pacific also participated. The museum continues dialogue on climate change through this workshop and highlights the art of voyaging and partnerships with CAM and PIMA. Entertainment was provided as well as an interactive exhibition by the Hokule’a team. The Polynesian navigator Nainoa Thompson came to the museum the following day to speak on the importance of voyaging and to sign the mural that was donated to the museum by Conservation International and painted by the world renowned artist Wyland with the help of local artists of the Tiapapata Arts Centre.
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A Commonwealth for the Blue Economy, Commonwealth Human Ecology Council (CHEC)
by Nicholas Watts
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Nicholas Watts, Tarisi Vunidilo, and Lumepa Apelu
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A Commonwealth Council for Human Ecology (CHEC) side event at the SIDS conference addressed the potential Commonwealth contribution to the Blue Economy, including a major conference on oceans and fisheries at the Malta Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2015 that could also serve as a platform for a Charter for Sustainable Oceans and Fisheries and include presentation of the concept of a CAM/CHEC travelling exhibition on Fish and Fishing in Fishing Dependent Communities. The UN conference provided an excellent opportunity for Apelu, Vunidilo and Watts to meet and share experiences, hold exploratory discussions about the proposed exhibition and the history and culture of fishing and related art and artefacts in Samoa. A visit to the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum in Apia helped further illustrate the role of literature in the ‘marine imaginary’. Participants in the SIDS meeting and in the corridors were enthusiastic about the exhibition, one advocating that it should “go cool and large, and buy a disused freighter to convert into a travelling exhibitionâ€, instead of the planned, more modest, converted shipping container.
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Recent Donations
CAM is very grateful to the following individuals and organizations for their support:
- Royal Commonwealth Society – Edmonton Branch
- In memory of Past-President Duncan Cameron through the Museums Foundation of Canada
- Benefit concert/CD release party for Scenic Route to Alaska http://www.scenicroutetoalaska.com/
- Robert Bruce Shephard, Medicine Hat Alberta
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MEMBER NEWS
CAM Council member David Mbuthia featured in University of Victoria Newsletter
David recently completed a program called Inspiration through Cultural Objects sponsored by the French Embassy that involved consultation sessions with 20 teachers from 10 different schools and focused on how to involve more than 200 students from Nairobi slums in developing exhibitions. Read the complete article at: http://secure.campaigner.com/Campaigner/Public/t.show?7384i--3oiec-o5f1996&_v=2
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OBITUARY - Doreen Nteta
Thanks to Andre Le Roux for alerting us to the passing of our Cowrie Circle member Doreen Nteta on September 5, 2014 at her home in Botswana. Please see Le Roux’s obituary on our Facebook page regarding her singular contributions on behalf of South Africans and Africans as head of the Botswana National Museum in Gaborone. In the dark days of Apartheid, she started the National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC) with nothing but the Act, a piece of paper on her desk.
Of her role with CAM, Amareswar Galla wrote:
Comrade Doreen as we lovingly called her was passionate about human rights and change. She was the host of the CAM Seminar and Outreach Program: Botswana and South Africa. Museums and the National Identity: Ideas, Issues and Applications, September, 17-28 1995. Her diplomacy and sensitivity were critical as we started planning for it even before South Africa was readmitted to the Commonwealth of Nations.
Doreen had a sense of humour to get the point across in difficult circumstances and especially in dealing with the legacies of the Apartheid regime. In fact, when we met in Gaborone, we had three stalwarts of CAM entertaining us with their cryptic comments and the most enjoyable sense of humour – Doreen and our Past Presidents the late Duncan Cameron and the late Emmanuel Arinze. It was an honour to work with them for all of us. They leave a legacy of strong sense of justice, which is what CAM is all about.
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WELCOME TO NEW CAM MEMBERS
Mohammed Juma Mugheiry, Zanzibar Stone Town Heritage Society, Tanzania; Robert Bruce Shepard, Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre, Medicine Hat, Alberta
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COMMONWEALTH NEWS
Commonwealth Day Theme, March 10, 2015
The theme for next year’s Commonwealth Day will be A Young Commonwealth in recognition that people aged 25 or under account for the majority of the Commonwealth’s population and play a vital role in sustainable development and democracy. Please let the Secretariat know if you develop any programs or activities in relation to Commonwealth Day.
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Demise of Commonwealth Business Council
The Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) has gone into liquidation. Established in 1997 by Commonwealth Heads of Government, the Council was intended to encourage greater private sector involvement in the promotion of trade and investment. Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamlesh Sharma has announced that a new entity will be established.
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