South African Family Stories : Reflections on an Experiment in Exhibition Making

This fascinating Bulletin reviews the special exhibition "Family Stories from South Africa", which opened in 2002 in the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, and was shown in the National Cultural History Museum in Pretoria between 2003 and 2007. South African artists, photographers, designers and researchers worked with nine families to create this imaginative presentation. Tropenmuseum curator Paul Faber looks back at the making of the exhibition, and Ciraj Rassool and Leslie Witz, Cape Town, discuss the resulting exhibition in the Netherlands. Reviews and reactions to the exhibition in Pretoria are included. As with many of the Royal Bulletins, each contribution provides stimulating ideas on a broad range of questions concerning exhibition development, covering presentation, self presentation, identity, multiculturalism and dealing with apartheid experiences in the contemporary museum context.

Ciraj Rassool is an Associate Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape where he is also director of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies and Acting Co-director of the Centre for Humanities Research.