A notable appointment
Professor Margaret Kartomi
Professor Margaret Kartomi has recently returned from Berlin where she was invited to join the International Advisory Board for the presentation of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art of the National Museums of Berlin (Prussian Cultural Heritage) in the Humboldt-Forum.
The German government is establishing the Humboldt-Forum to rival the Pompidou Centre in Paris, which attracts many millions of visitors to its museums, galleries and associated performances each year.
The government is unifying all of Berlin's best state museums into the Humboldt-Forum, relocating some into the recently restored royal palace in central Berlin, which is located near Berlin's Museum Island (in the river Spree).
One of the nation's leading ethnomusicologists, Professor Kartomi was invited to advise the Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art on new ways of presenting, developing and researching their sound and visual materials.
The event included a reception given by the Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor and Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, B. Neumann, and a dinner hosted by the President of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Culture Foundation), Prof H. Parzinger.
As a German speaker (Professor Kartomi did her ethnomusicology doctoral degree in Berlin), she was also asked to appear on German TV to give her impressions of the Humboldt-Forum, including finding ways to digitise and repatriate historically valuable field recordings back to their original owners, and about the importance of musical sound as part of the content, not just the inessential context of, modern museum exhibitions.
"It is of course a very important cultural initiative as part of the decision to promote Germany's cultural heritage to the world, and for the great Berlin Phonogram Archive - established in 1900 - to receive recognition as the world’s oldest and best-developed museological sound collection, supported by the European Union, which has set up a digital audio- and audio-visual showcase called Europeana," Professor Kartomi said.
"I am very proud to be able to represent Monash internationally to promote debate about innovative collaboration and knowledge transfer throughout the memory institutions of Europe."