Our first department day of ITP 2025 (Daniel Oliveira Lira, Brazil, ITP 2025)
Written by Daniel Oliveira Lira, Specialist in Indigenism, FUNAI (Brazil, ITP 2025)
Thursday was my 4th day at the ITP, and it was definitely the most packed so far. According to the schedule we were supposed to get to know better the museum departments we’ll be working with directly. I was assigned to the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas – AOA alongside Fernando Astudillo (Associate Professor of Anthropology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito – Ecuador), Julián Roa Triana (Independent Museums Consultant – Colombia), Kataraina Poi (Assistant Guardian of Taonga Māori Tairāwhiti Museum – New Zealand), La’akea Ai (Digital Humanities Specialist at Bishop Museum – Hawai’i) and our 2025 ITP Senior Fellow Chantal Umuhoza (Museum Curator at Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy).
Because the department covers such a huge part of the world, the staff split us into regional groups to better discuss our specificities. My morning was with the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research – SDCELAR, where we were received by the Head of section Danny Zborover, the SDCELAR Curator Louise Cardoso de Mello, and the Senior Administrator Clara Ruiz Alvarez. We discussed about such important ongoing projects the Centre has been developing on Indigenous and Afrolatino heritage, and we shared successful experiences (or not quite) in our careers about the endless balancing act between community expectations, academic demands and museum rules. It was interesting to explore the confluences among those projects led by the Centre and the work we ITP members have been developing, besides being oddly reassuring to know that we face struggles that are shared by museum workers all over the world.
After lunch we were fortunate enough to watch a lovely presentation of The British Museum Choir, while joining our fellow participants from Oceania. Afterwards, we visited the museum’s laboratories and technical areas to better understand how the research and documentation of museum’s the collections work. We got the chance to talk to the staff and better understand the process and methods used by technicians during research and documentation of the museum’s collection.
Then we headed to the museum’s galleries for a visit. We had visited the museum’s galleries on the first day we started the Programme, but now, the idea was to have a more critical view of the galleries and how the objects were placed and exposed. During the visit, I was incredibly surprised to find a 19th century club from the Macushi people, from the northern part of Amazonia, from which I descend, shown by the SDCELAR staff.
In the evening, we were invited to take part in the staff party, where we had the chance to interact with the staff from all the areas of the BM. The theme of the party was “country” (which I must confess I didn’t know), and albeit not properly dressed for the occasion, I didn’t stop myself from enjoying it. The museum’s staff has so nicely welcomed us, and although it was a very tiring day, it ended up being truly gratifying.
