Collaborative Practice in the Work of Ethnographic Museums is a bi-national conference exploring the ways in which collaboration both underpins and enriches the work of museums that are focused on questions of cultural diversity. Ethnographic museum practice has changed in significant ways in the past half-century, with movement away from creating knowledge about others shifting towards practices of creating knowledge with others. Through a series of formal papers and guided conversations, these changes—and how they have been incompletely realized in both China and the United States—will be explored. This conference is part of a larger set of projects led by the American Folklore Society (based at IU) and the China Folklore Society and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. This broad project aims to understand the state of intangible cultural heritage policy in relation to the practice of folklore studies in both countries. This conference is part of a museums-focused sub-project underway since 2013. Connecting a large range of museum partners, the current phase of work is led by the Anthropological Museum of Guangxi and Indiana University's Mathers Museum of World Cultures.
