Individualism, Museum Expansionism, Politics

NOT WITCHCRAFT: 1

Posted by Pete on November 12, 2009 at 12:06 pm.

The latest version of Museum Identity Magazine is up. You can get the digital edition here or email greg(at)museum-id.com to sign up to the mailing list for your free print copy.

You will also see the first of a regular column written by me. Greg Chamberlain said I could write about anything I wanted. So I’ve entitled it NOT WITCHCRAFT.

Back in May, a minister of the Copperbelt region of Zambia made a statement that museums were academic sites that helped promote tourism and not centres of witchcraft. Zambia still has a Witchcraft Act that can punish practitioners with jail time. There are many who prefer the more traditional process of accusing someone of harvesting child organs and beating them to death. Understand the severity of the situation for a politician to make this statement on International Museums Day where the theme was museums and tourism. “Please don’t set fire to our museums and their staff. We need them so people visit our country”.

Also, thanks to Nick Poole for the shout-out on his column.

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Witch Hunts Then & Now. « Dan Cull Weblog says:

15 November, 2009 at 7:54 am

[...] post, that has never managed to form shape enough to post, and then funnily I noticed that Pete at Newcurator blog just announced his new column in: museum id magazine a column called ‘Not Witchcraft‘. [...]

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