Ethnomuseology is the study ofmuseums and museum curation in the context of the culture and cultural traditions of its collections. It is an interdisciplinary field combiningmuseum studies,anthropology,ethnography, and often variousfine arts.^[1]

As stated by Moira Simpson, "Ethnomuseology is the field of scholarship concerning culturally appropriate museum curation and conservation of ethnographic materials using methods that reflect social, cultural, spiritual, or religious aspects of objects."^{[citation needed]} A museum subscribing the principles of ethnomuseology will often maintain and present artifacts and collections in the traditional manner of their ethnological origins, combining the museum with the rituals and community of its theme.^[2] This can be in addition to conventional Western museum practices, which often focuses on object materiality. As well, ethnomuseology often involves a continued dialog between museum administrators and members of represented cultures in collections. TheEncyclopedia of Global Archaeology considers ethnomuseology to be a "more holistic" approach toheritage interpretation.^[3]

The term "ethnomuseology" is first seen in Romania and Czechoslovakia in the 1980s, where it described the use of artifacts from rural life to "[provide] evidence of authentic forms of culture". A variant, "etnomuseologia", was used in 1994 by the Romanian anthropologist Bert G. Ribeiro to describe the work of theMuseu Paraense Emílio Goeldi inBelem, Brazil.^[4] In Belem, curators had been working directly with Amazonian Indians in a continued dialog to create exhibits informed by the very culture they documented.^[5]

Today, a number of museums are considered to be followers the ethnomuseological method, including theNational Museum of the American Indian at theSmithsonian Institution, theAlutiiq Museum inKodiak, Alaska, and the Department of Ethnology at theMuseum of Macedonia inSkopje, Macedonia.^[6][7] Since 2008,Masaryk University inBrno, Czech Republic has offered a course in ethnomuseology titled "MUII165 Practice in museology and ethnography".^[8]

• Museology
• Ethnography
• Ethnohistory
• Anthropology of institutions

• Bucur, Corneliu (August 2004)."From Tradition To Avant-Garde... And From Washington To Dumbrava Sibiului" (Interview). Interviewed by Mirela Creţu and Cătălin Sturza. Bucharest. Retrieved16 October 2015.
• "MUII165 Practice in museology and ethnography".Course Information. Masaryk University. n.d. Retrieved15 October 2015.
• Namicev, Peter (1994). "Ethnomuseology in Macedonia".Anales del Museo Nacional de Antropología (1):179–184.ISSN 1135-1853.
• Shepard, Glenn (15–20 July 2012).9784 - Ethnomuseology at the Goeldi Museum of Brazil. 54 International Congress of Americanists. Vienna. Retrieved16 October 2015.
• Simpson, Moira, G. (2007). "Charting the Boundaries". In Knell, Simon J.; MacLeod, Suzanne; Watson, Sheila (eds.).Museum Revolutions: How museums change and are changed (1st ed.). Routledge. pp. 157.ISBN 978-0-4154-4467-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Simpson, Moira, G. (2014). "Ethnomuseology". In Smith, Claire (ed.).Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer-Verlag New York. pp. 2549–2553.doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2.ISBN 978-1-4419-0465-2.S2CID 220616743.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

• Museology
• Museum education
• Anthropology
• Ethnography

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