Fulbright Scholar's work in Panama
initiates community of museum professionals
Return to Virginia Tech "On Campus" pageJanuary 15, 2001 -- Anna Fariello of Virginia Tech's Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, said her Fulbright stay in Panama was "frustrating beyond imagination, but rewarding beyond expectation."
Since August 2000, Fariello has been in Panama working with museum staffs to improve the state of the country's museums. Fariello taught two museology seminars and traveled across the Interior to visit a dozen museums to assess their conditions. Her final report, written for the National Institute of Culture, proposed solutions to persistent problems.
Fariello was a Fulbright senior professor. The United States Fulbright Program encourages the international exchange of scholars, placing U.S. professors in universities worldwide to foster shared knowledge across political boundaries. She applied for a post in Latin America because she spoke Spanish. Very few countries were looking for museum expertise, she said, so the Fulbright program placed her in Panama.
Her work in Panama was very satisfying, she said, "because the needs of the country were well beyond my expectations of the conditions of the museums."
On the surface, Panama appears to be modern -- with the hustle and bustle and high-rise buildings of its cities, she said. But, museum conditions were far below what she anticipated.
"In some museums, the roof was caving in and the rain was falling onto precious objects," she said. "I am not the most well-known expert in the United States, but I was teaching the basics to museum professionals," she said. And the university was so poor in resources, she decided to teach her seminars in museums that had collections for her students to study.
'Museums are about people. People of the past left art works and artifacts to those of us in the present. People of the present must share these precious things with others. People of the present also have the responsibility to ... tell our story to the people of the future.' While in Panama, Fariello taught two seminars, each co-sponsored by the University of Panama, the National Institute of Culture, and a host museum. Each seminar was attended by 50 students who were museum directors, museum staff, or students.
Fariello's first seminar was aimed at the management and care of museum collections, keeping records, and documenting specific information about objects as a basis for research and inventory. Because one participant drove from the Interior, two-and-a-half hours each way, to attend the seminar, Fariello structured the second seminar so staff from the countryside could more conveniently attend. This seminar, an advanced, intensive study covering all aspects of museum administration, drew museum staff from distant provinces in Panama. The course introduced various aspects of museum work -- exhibition, collection, organization -- and attempted to create a framework for a more successful museum.
Fariello encouraged those present to create an active community of museum professionals throughout Panama to meet, brainstorm, share ideas, and socialize -- in other words, "to build a vital museum community." While there, she saw them begin to develop a professional museum association and start planning their first meeting. One person volunteered transportation; another offered to bring a pig to roast, she said.
Fariello spent three weeks visiting museums in each province. "Panama has a rich and varied heritage of native cultures, a cultural bridge between Central and South America," she said. "But real challenges stand between Panama and its cultural image." Fariello's solutions are aimed at creating a more user-friendly environment for the visitor so that museums can better serve a broader audience.
She also presented two public lectures that stressed the role of museums as educational institutions, to an association of educators at a West Indian museum and at the University of Panama.
"Museums are unique as educational institutions," she said. "Museums are not schools with planned, linear courses. Museums are not books, which depend on words and verbal explanations." Things, collections, are what give a museum its reason for existence, she said. "Without a collection, you would not have a museum." Museums preserve the collection and provide access for the people.
"Museums are about people," she said. "People of the past left art works and artifacts to those of us in the present. People of the present must share these precious things with others. People of the present also have the responsibility to preserve. Through preservation of museum collections -- works of art, nature, and industry -- we will have a chance to tell our story to the people of the future."
At Virginia Tech, Fariello has taught a variety of courses that incorporate museology and material culture studies. She is also owner of Curatorial InSight, a consulting and collections management service for nonprofit museums and private collectors. As a consultant Fariello provides a variety of services, from grant writing to curating exhibitions to the registration of private collections.
She also served as curator for an exhibition for the Christiansburg Institute, a unique educational institute for African American students that closed in 1966. The methods for creating that exhibition and the need to present a diversity of views to the public interested the Panamanian museum staffs at the Afro-Antillian Museum.
Fariello is a former research fellow with the National Museum of American Art and Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., former events coordinator for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and former director of the museum at Radford University. She is curator of numerous exhibitions, author of many essays on material culture, and co-editor of the forthcoming book Objects & Meaning. She has been named to the most recent editions of Who's Who of American Women.
Working in Panama gave Fariello an unexpected perspective, she said. "We have it good."
She hopes the trip will result in internships and other exchanges between the United States and Panama and mentions collaborations that had already begun between Virginia Tech's forestry department and universities in Panama before her trip.
A long-term result of her work in Panama, she said, will be her thinking regarding the ethical considerations and possibilities of repatriation of the archeological artifacts excavated in Panama in the 1920s-1940s that are now in American museums.
"It was difficult to see the poor conditions of many Latin American museums," she said. "While people there are not starving, there's a lot of poverty among the educational and cultural institutions."
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PR CONTACT: Sally Harris, (540) 231-6759 slharris@vt.edu
Faculty member: Anna Fariello, fariello@vt.edu, (540) 231-9596
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