EVOLUTION OF THE IMAGE OF THE «OTHER» IN EUROPEAN ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUMS IN THE CONTEXT OF DECOLONIZATION

Abstract

Based on an analysis of scholarly works in museology, the article presents the genesis of European ethnographic museums and the political context of their functioning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Museums that exhibited ethnographic objects for public viewing created imaginary imperial spaces based on evolutionary theories of physical
anthropology and connected Europeans with the colonial world. The author highlights the characteristic features of the Habsburg monarchy's narrative about the subnational entities of the empire, which influenced the creation of national and regional museums in Austria-Hungary. The peculiarities of the formation of museum ethnography in Galicia during the Habsburg Empire are analyzed. The influence of the organization of large exhibitions on the genesis of European ethnographic museums is determined.
The significance of the first scientific ethnographic exhibition in Kolomyia in 1880 for developing ethnographic museology in Galicia is emphasized. The study raises complex issues about the evolution of ethnographic museums in the modern postcolonial world. It identifies the challenges associated with rethinking the role of the ethnographic museum in a contemporary, globalized, multicultural society. The contradictions and experiences of museums in representing the image of different ethnic-confessional communities in a multicultural society are considered in the example of museum expositions in Poland. It has been defined that attempts to reformat the museum discourse on the representation of ethno-national communities in the expositions of ethnographic museums in Krakow and Tarnów have become an example of an innovative approach in ethnographic museology.