Cooperation with the Museo Comunitario Yalambojoch

Plaster casts of missing objects

The replicas are plaster casts of two sandstone artefacts dating back to around 800 – 900 CE: a sun stone from the so-called Temple of the Sun and an ancestral figure adorned with decorative neckwear. While on site in Guatemala, Eduard Georg Seler, scholar of pre-Columbian America and former director of the American Department of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde (today Ethnologisches Museum), made so-called “paper casts” – negative moulds made from paper – of the two stone objects, from which plaster casts were later created in Berlin. Using these casts as a basis, the Gipsformerei produced long-lasting plaster moulds that are still used to create replicas in the workshop today. The handover of the two replicas is one of the first “restitutions” carried out by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin to involve plaster casts, thereby illustrating their immense significance within the broader context of our shared cultural heritage.

Cooperation in museum work

In addition to the replicas, the long-term cooperation project between the Ethnologisches Museum and the Associación Awum Te as the operator of the local community centre also comprises the implementation of an exhibition concept for the museum in Yalambojoch, incorporating conservational expertise from the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. This partnership seeks to foster exchange on cultural traditions in Yalambojoch and the wider region by involving, for example, the local school in a corresponding museum programme for education and outreach.