The anthropologist's gaze. An exhibition at the Egyptian Museum in Turin on the relationship between Egyptology and anthropology

At the Egyptian Museum in Turin, the exhibition The Anthropologist’s Gaze will be on view until Nov. 15, 2020. Set up in a room on the second floor, the small exhibition is created by the curators of the Turin museum branch in collaboration with the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin (MAET), closed since 1984.

The aim is to place the collections of the two museums in dialogue in order to reconstruct the relationships between Egyptology and anthropology, identifying research perspectives and possible future collaborations, and to reflect on the modes of European scientific culture between the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

On display are about forty objects, mostly from MAET’s collections, that hark back to non-European cultures and ancient Egypt. Among them is a mummy of a young woman from the archaeological site of Gebelein wearing a finely pleated tunic. It has been studied in recent scientific investigations and restored at the Conservation and Restoration Center “La Venaria Reale.”

The review intends to focus on the gazes of scholars and anthropologists at the time of finding the artifacts. Looks filled with awe, wonder, and contempt that classified human groups into an evolutionary grid. According to these classifications, the inhabitants of Africa were regarded as primitives immersed in magic and superstition; Egypt, on the other hand, was considered the cradle of Western civilization. This theme is the focus of the video in the exhibition Young Africans and Egypt, which investigates the significance of ancient Egypt for contemporary Africans.

Other sections also focus on the birth and content of anthropology and the history of the University of Turin’s Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.

For more info: https://museoegizio.it/

Pictured is the mummy from the archaeological site of Gebelein

The anthropologist's gaze. An exhibition at the Egyptian Museum in Turin on the relationship between Egyptology and anthropology

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