sarah v. melton

…Well, that will teach me to make promises in the digital ether.

I’m now in Johannesburg, South Africa, working on the next portion of my research. I’m spending most of my time at the Apartheid Museum here in Jozi, learning more about the history of the site, how the curators and staff make decisions about its content, and what visitors think of the exhibits. I’ve been here for a little over two weeks so far, and I’ve learned a ton. (I’ve also gotten mostly used to driving on the left side of the road!)

Since my research consists of three case studies, I’ve been trying to learn more about the networks that museums create. For two of my sites, Holocaust memorialization was a huge influence, just as it was for the development of fields like memory and memorial studies in the academy. The creators of the Apartheid Museum were greatly inspired by a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, while former Birmingham mayor David Vann initially got the idea for a civil rights museum by visiting Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust victims. In thinking through these connections, I’m reminded of Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory (Stanford UP, 2009), which examines the ways that memories borrow from and interact with each other, specifically Holocaust memory and struggles for decolonization. I’ve thought about multidirectional memory quite a bit in the past few months, particularly since the museums I study cross-reference each other’s histories and historical contexts. The BCRI has a permanent human rights gallery that features the anti-apartheid struggle quite prominently, for example, and the Apartheid Museum worked with the Smithsonian Museum of American History to bring a special exhibit on Brown vs. Board of Education to South Africa.

(I do, I should note, sometimes find historical comparisons problematic, but that’s for another time and post.)

Once I started noticing these connections, I began to wonder about patterns of memorialization. When and where did these sites of memory begin appearing? I want to make some kind of argument about these patterns in my dissertation’s introduction, so I’ve decided to use Viewshare to visualize these geographical and historical relationships. I’ll be building on the data from the International Sites of Conscience (they have a neat map here that shows the locations of their 300 member sites–they’re by far the largest consortia of museums of “social issues”), as well as other sites that I find to fill in the gaps. I don’t expect to find every single memorial or museum, but I anticipate that I’ll have enough data points to make some conjectures about where, when, and why these kinds of sites of memory became so prominent on our landscapes.

I’m excited to begin this work, though it’ll take some time to aggregate everything. At any rate, it’ll give me a break from transcribing…

It’s a sad day. I received word over the weekend that my mentor, committee member, and friend Ivan Karp had passed away. He and Cory were two of the most generous people I’ve met, and I am a better person and a much, much better thinker for knowing Ivan. I will miss you.

Here is the message from Dr. Cory Kratz:

Many of you know about Ivan's critical illness this last month and that he was
battling back from systemic sepsis of an unknown origin.  He was regaining
strength and making great progress with physical therapy, and regaining his
lucidity from the cognitive effects of his long term stay in an ICU.

Last week, Ivan was transferred to a critical care rehabilitation hospital in
Albuquerque. He began physical therapy, and a number of other therapies to
regain strength and functioning. Saturday he  had an excellent day, he took
more steps and had wonderful visits with me and friends. Saturday night he
suddenly died.  No one is clear about the cause, except that he was very weak,
and that perhaps his heart gave out or he had an embolism.

Next week, on Monday, 26 September, Lisa Tedesco and David Kuehn
will open their home in Atlanta from 4.30 pm to 7.00 pm for those of you who
wish to visit with me. They live at 480 Emory Circle, walking distance from
campus, about 3 blocks from the North Decatur Building. The first of several
tributes to Ivan will take place in Washington, DC on Friday, 18 November
at/near the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art, during
the annual meetings of the African Studies Association. It will take place at
the Ripley Quad auditorium with a tribute program from 5-6 pm, followed by a
reception. I will send more precise directions when I have them.

           Other tributes will be planned in future, including one likely at
the 2012 meetings of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco.
At University of New Mexico, the International Business Students Global group
has already renamed one of their programs as the Ivan Karp Emerging Economies
Program. The book, Translating Knowledge, which Ray Silverman is editing on
museum-community relations and connections will be dedicated to Ivan and I will
complete the piece he was going to write for the volume. I am sure there will
be more....

 I know you join me in mourning Ivan's passing, and take solace in knowing that
he made a difference for so many, was widely respected and loved, made major
contributions to African Studies, Anthropology, Museum Studies, Public
Scholarship and more. We will miss him, but his spirit and influence are still
with us.

With sadness,
Corinne A. Kratz
Professor of Anthropology and African Studies
Emory University