The ethnologist Lajos Boglár, who died in 2004, left behind a rare legacy for the Museum of Ethnography. He researched the objects and culture of Amazonian Indians for several decades and as the result of his efforts, the museum now has nearly 700 unique objects, hundreds of photographs and several films on anthropology. A memorial exhibition was held after Boglár died, but this time, a comprehensive show has been put on display including all of the items collected by him and his predecessors in the field. Predecessors include missionaries , whose collection the museum once put on display in 1896, and two doctors, János Baumgartner and János Halbohr, who gave objects to the museum they had collected from the Amazonian Indians between 1940 and 1960. The current exhibition also uses material originating from Hungarian scientists who researched the flora and fauna of the region, including the zoologist Gábor Molnár, who also wrote some popular adventure novels, József Hidas, who set up a world famous bird museum in Brazil, and the young researcher György Oláh, who currently studies parrots in Peru.
Everything that could be found in Hungary has been put together for this show. Curator Vilma Főzy made a good decision with her comprehensive approach and invitation to the Museum of Natural History to add some animals, insects and photos to bring the rainforest environment to life. As a result, visitors enter a silent zoo in the first room of the exhibition, which is an authentic approach to presenting the culture of the jungle and also manages to make you forget that you are in a museum environment. Moving further into the exhibition, traditional objects are displayed that were collected from tribes that existed until the middle of the 20th century. These include stylised huts, manioc presses, magical feather jewellery and shaman masks, separately presenting objects used for everyday activities by men and women. In a hidden corner, visitors find a display about shaman rituals, including clothing, musical instruments and accessories used for taking hallucinogens. It is refreshing that one does not have to look at awkward mannequins or clothes stuffed with hay as the textile and animal parts are displayed on hidden structures. No humans are shown anywhere, only the objects they used. Still, we get an overview of the entire culture, because Amazonian Indians were not separated from their natural environment and traditional tools for such a long time. The patterns used on utensils made from plant fibres, nets and textiles and the diverse shapes of their feather jewellery have survived and made a mark on contemporary design but their masks seem truly archaic. Up to this point, the exhibition is perfect, with an extreme diversity of objects presented in well-organised displays.
But then it loses perspective. From the mid-20th century, when the previously almost untouched living areas of the tribes started shrinking rapidly due to road construction and forestry, the lives of Amazonian Indians changed drastically. The exhibition should explain and present the new trends that started then (and still continue today) and how these influenced the Indians? lives. But the show loses its stamina at this point, when the large-scale destruction of the rainforests started, when Indians were forced to change and their ancient lifestyles became subjects of the tourism industry. The show hits the floor when it presents Shaman wellness, adventure tourism and other luxury crazes. Warnings by Greenpeace, displayed on monitors knee-high above the floor are hardly noticeable and recordings of the dramatic eradication of the rainforest are blandly displayed on a wall-sized cardboard, with a few warning messages in the corner. What saves the show is that visitors can only exit by reversing from the last room and therefore can once again spend some calming moments in the clear and harmonic atmosphere of the mock jungle.
Author: Eszter Götz
