Workshop with Women's History Museum Zambia

As museums in a changing cultural climate, we must open ourselves to new knowledge about our collections. One of the Swedish National Museums of World Culture's (NMWC) primary visions is that "we are museums about the world, with the world - for the world."

For the last few years, in the Afrika pågår/Ongoing Africa project, we've been working on upgrading the vision of Africa mirrored in the museum and its collections.

One of our most successful collaborations has been the Empowering Women's History Project. An alliance with the Women's History Museum Zambia (WHMZ), with whom we've been exchanging knowledge and ideas since 2019. The project is partially funded by a Creative Force grant from the Swedish Institute. It aims to share histories by creating a digital platform to share Zambian cultural heritage objects housed in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, Sweden. Thus giving source communities access to them while establishing an opportunity to create a context and understanding for the museum collection. WHMZ is the creator of the podcast and QR code exhibition Leading Ladies.

This August, we made our second trip to Zambia to brainstorm IRL, workshop our plans, and meet our counterparts and the stakeholders who made the project so rewarding.

Mulenga Kapwepwe, a co-founder of Women's History Museum Zambia, and Michael Barrett, Curator for Africa, National Museums of World Culture, Sweden

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. It's the conversations that happened in between that were even more inspiring.

Being immersed in a different meeting culture than the one we're used to, with the luxury of being able to talk until we've sufficiently analyzed an idea, was uplifting.

The artists in the exhibition Fabricated Stories guided us through their work based on objects from the museum's collection of cultural items from Zambia. In return, they got to pick our brains on everything practical and esoteric to do with art, museums, and cultural heritage—more on the Fabricated Stories exhibition in an upcoming post.

How do you stick out in a world with so many things competing for your attention? A frequently asked question. A successful example is my new favorite roundabout art. Proving that sometimes, you can't beat old-school, the chicken sculpture from a poultry grower at the crossing of the Great East Road is an ad that definitely steals attention from the new tech around it.

We continued our workshop at Chaminuka Lodge outside Lusaka. Chaminuka has the most extensive private collection of contemporary art in Zambia. Chaminuka will also be the physical and spiritual home of the WHMZ, which is now in the planning stage. The design and construction of the museum buildings will take into account the fourteen senses of the Zambian indigenous knowledge system. And will be built with as little impact as possible on the environment. For example, no trees will be removed.

Thea Skaanes, Curator for Africa (NMWC); Charlotta Ödvall, Deputy Director Collections (NMWC); Anna Tarschys, Program Coordinator (NMWC); Michael Barrett, Curator for Africa (NMWC); Victoria Phiri Chitungu, co-founder WHMZ; Johanna Berg, Project Manager/Researcher (NMWC)

And because Disney has influenced most of our childhoods, I couldn't go to Zambia without wanting to see the animals from Lion King in real life…

Text & photos Andrea Davis Kronlund