Rapture and reality: Drug use in cross-cultural perspective: Variations of emphasis and acceptance of an exhibition on drugs in a West German and a Dutch ethnographic museum

Abstract

Before discussing the exhibition Rapture and Reality it is useful to furnish a brief account of the outside factors which provided the framework for the exhibition organized by the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne. The city’s Ethnographic Museum, it is one of a total of nine ethnographic museums’ in the Federal Republic of Germany and the only one in North Rhine-Westphalia. North Rhine-Westphalia has some 17 million inhabitants, which makes it the most populous state in the Federal Republic of Germany. The City of Cologne has a population of about one million, making it the largest in North Rhine-Westphalia and the fourth largest in the Federal Republic. In addition to its Ethnographic Museum, Cologne has seven other museums,’ as well as the Kunsthalle (an art gallery for temporary exhibitions). All of these facilities are municipal institutions. They belong to the City of Cologne and are financed 100 per cent by the City of Cologne. For all the museums there is a joint budget which is approved by the city council and administered by a directorate-general. Every year, the various institutions submit detailed estimates, and their share in the budget is fixed accordingly. Within such a system our Ethnographic Museum must endeavour to present-indeed ‘sell’-its cultural anthropology in such a way that the general public enjoy coming to the Museum and bring along guests to show them the Ethnographic Museum and not just the Roman-Germanic Museum, which is so very popular in Cologne, and so fortunate in being located right next to the Cathedral and the Station that every visitor to the city is shown it anyway.