University of Évora | May 4, 2023

On May 4, 2023, members of the TRANSMAT team presented some preliminary results of the project to undergraduate students taking the Museology module (coordinated by Prof. Fátima Nunes), taught at the University of Évora.

Elisabete Pereira, PI of the TRANSMAT project, and research fellows Liliana Caldeira and Maria Figueira, presented some provenance research case studies related to ethnographic objects from the project’s partner museums, Museu Nacional de Arqueologia and Museu Municipal Santos Rocha.

How did the objects from these museums arrive in Portugal and when? Who collected them? For what purposes were they collected from their places of origin? How were they used and displayed in the various stages of the museums’ existence? What values and meanings have they taken over time? These were some of the questions addressed during the 120 minute lecture, that highlighted the specificities that characterize the biographies of the objects and collections of the two museums, as well as the analytical potential of provenance research for the critical study of ethnographic museum collections.