Kamoro-masks The Mimika-project

The Mimika project has six main bases:
(a) the world-famous collection in the RMV;
(b) our knowledge of Mimika culture dating from approximately fifty years ago (Pouwer 1955);
(c) Kooijman's museum study of Mimika art, together with the contextual information available (1987);
(d) up-to-date information based on recent fieldwork carried out by the American anthropologist, Todd Harple;
(e) the Belgian scholar Karen Jacobs' current research on Mimika art;
(f) the cooperation between the organisers of the Kamoro Arts Festival, and those taking part in it.

International cooperative links
Activities in connection with the Mimika Project are carried out within the context of international cooperation.

Participants;
Dirk Smidt, curator, Oceania department, National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden (RMV);

Todd S. Harple, American anthropologist (M.A. in Museum Studies and Anthropology, University of Kansan); at present he is writing a doctoral thesis on the Mimika, to be presented at the Australian National University,Canberra;

Karen Jacobs, who took her degree in art from the University of Ghent. She is currently preparing a doctoral thesis on the 'The changing role of male and female artists in Mimika society' at the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich;

Enos Rumansara, director of the museum at the Universitas Cenderawasih, Jayapura.


Consultants:
Dr. Simon Kooijman
Dr. Jan Pouwer

Results
The Mimika Project has resulted in:

an exhibition mounted in the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden (RMV), open in February 2003;

a publication edited by Smidt and Harple, with contributions from various experts;

a number of digital publications on the the Mimika collection held in the National Museum of Ethnology.



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