Interconnections: Folklore Studies and Anthropology at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures

Abstract

AC: So, tell me a little about your work and where you are located? JJ: The Mathers Museum is Indiana University’s Museum of World Cultures. It is one of three campus museums at Indiana University. Indiana University is located in Bloomington, Indiana about an hour south of Indianapolis. Our university also has a campus art museum and a historical house museum. While it has a prehistory, the Mathers Museum is officially a little over 50 years old (Indiana University 2013b).1 We grew out of museum interests shared by diverse faculty: anthropologists, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and historians. Unlike many university museums with anthropological interests, we are not a collection of archaeology. We have a separate archaeology research lab on our campus—the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, so we are a museum of ethnography and cultural history. Cultural anthropology, the field of folklore studies, and history have been central to our work since the beginning—prior to the Mathers’ family gift, our name reflected that in that we were once called the Indiana University Museum of History, Anthropology, and Folklore. Our collections predate the founding of the museum itself, going back to the earliest days of the University. They focus on objects from around the world, but there is also a special focus on objects representative of the early American settlement of Indiana, and these collections reflect the historical interests of early faculty. Those interests are carried forward most fully in the work of INTERCONNECTIONS: FOLKLORE STUDIES AND ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE MATHERS MUSEUM OF WORLD CULTURES