A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Ethnographica 6. (Szeged, 2008)

Hanneleena Hieta: Ethnographer s and three realities - how agency and institutional tradition intertwine in the museum setting

Ethnographers and three realities - how agency and institutional tradition intertwine in the museum setting HIETA, HANNELEEN A (University of Turku, Faculty of Humanities) I visited the Ópusztaszer National Historical Memorial Park for the first time in the summer of 1996. The Feszty cyclorama painting was on everybody's lips those days, but my attention was drawn more to the ethnographic open-air museum village. It was interesting to me as a Scandinavian that these buildings had been erected as recently as the 1980s and 1990s. Why were the Hungarian open-air museums so "late" in comparison with those in my country? And, since they clearly were a product of a different era, what kind of museum-ideology lay behind them? Who had built this ethnographic museum? What were the scientific, professional and educational aims of those persons? In Eileann Hooper-Greenhill's words: "Museums have always had to modify how they worked, and what they did, according to the context, the plays of power, and the social, economic, and political imperatives that surrounded them. Museums, in common with all other social institutions, serve many masters, and must play many tunes accordingly. Perhaps success can be defined by the ability to balance all the tunes that must be played and still make a sound worth listening to." 1 The purpose of this article is to present the museum professionals as individuals who make their choices about representation within and as part of the cross-currents of scientific tradition, institutional conventions, existing material resources and the actual historical remains of peasant culture. For this research project I have conducted interviews with several museum professionals during the years 1997 and 1998 as well as 2000. I have based my research on these interviews as well as written sources. This article sums up some of the themes and findings of my licentiate dissertation for the University of Turku, Finland." Institution and power: some remarks on theory As we set out to scrutinize the work of museum professionals it is perhaps worthwhile to spend some time on theories of institutions. This is because we have in the above quote by Hooper-Greenhill defined museums as institutions and, in light of the quote, it would seem that institutions per se are responsible for their adaptation to their context. The anthropologist Mary Douglas, however, has said that it would be 1 Hooper-Grenhill 1992, 8. 2 Savolainen 2005. A Licentiate of Philosophy is a postgraduate degree which includes all the academic studies required for a Doctor of Philosophy and a dissertation which is 50% in size of a PhD dissertation.