The Mazateca Project: Collaboration on Wilhelm Bauer’s ethnographic collection

The collector as a linguist and ethnographer

The Mazateca region covers parts of the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Veracruz. The collection arrived in Berlin in 1903 and 1908, and includes a number of ritual and everyday objects. These are made from various materials such as wicker, clay, gourds, wood, and, in the case of the numerous textiles, cotton in particular.

Bauer compiled and recorded a considerable amount of information on many objects, their uses, Mazateco terms, and oral traditions, and took dozens of photos. Given the wealth of information on their history, language and cultural practices, which have changed fundamentally since Bauer's visits, his collection is of great interest to the present-day Mazatec population.

Studying and presenting the Mazateca collection

After initial preparations in 2023, joint work on the collection began in June 2024 at the museum's depot in Berlin-Dahlem. A CoMuse fellowship enabled the Mazatec writer and librarian Gabriela García García to come to Berlin. The next step was to prepare the travelling exhibition “Mazatec Presence in Berlin: In the Footsteps of Wilhelm Bauer …”, which opened in 2025 in the city of Oaxaca and in Huautla in the Mazateca region and in Chilchotla in 2026. The exhibition will also be shown in other communities and digitally in order to make the results of the project accessible.

Thanks to the collaboration with our Mexican partners, important insights were gained, for example, about weaving techniques and the origin of materials, as well as about early research and collecting expeditions. Working together on the Mazateca collection in Berlin is a process of mutual learning.
 

Report by Gabriela García García, Sebastián van Doesburg and Alejandro de Ávila on our joint research in Berlin in June 2024  [ES]

Report on the opening of the exhibition in Huautla de Jiménez, Mazateca region  [ES]

CoMuse fellowship of Mazatec author and librarian Gabriela García García