Conference organiser: Chantal Knowles

By accepting the multiple meanings of ethnographic objects and their ‘ownership’ by several communities and audiences, museums are beginning to create new dialogues, networks and identities around objects. This conference explored how these layered meanings are made available to museum audiences whether through gallery exhibition, public programming or online, and explored the use of text, image and multimedia as strategies of interpretation. In doing so we examined how meaning is negotiated in a multicultural world, where cultural encounters are facilitated through local and international community engagement. How are these multiple meanings given voice in the museum?