Memory Bank: Focus Ethiopia

The Memory Bank project, based on the concept of a bank as a place for safekeeping, was designed to show a means of producing an exhibit whose objective was to enable and facilitate the sharing and preserving of knowledge about a transplanted ethnic group. Both the importance and necessity of cultural preservation as well as the methodology for soliciting input from a focus group with the content of the exhibit dictated by and archived for the community's members was validated by research. Memory Bank: Focus Ethiopia was focused for the purposes of demonstration on the Ethiopian community in Washington, DC. Personal accounts, photographs and memorabilia were used to reflect on where this ethnic group originated and where it has come to be. The "memory" stories, pictures and objects relating to individuals, families and their traditions and communities were used to describe the Ethiopian heritage as it was remembered in the old country and as it is experienced in the new place. These memory "objects" solicited from members of the local Ethiopian community were designed to array what best represented those aspects of their culture that they felt should be preserved and shared by way of an organized exhibition and in post-exhibit archives. Memory Bank: Focus Ethiopia was primarily divided into two sections, the "There/Then" and "Here/Now" galleries. The "There/Then" space offered an informational core to serve as a historical and cultural backdrop against which the personal memorabilia was displayed; the "Here/Now" area was focused on these same kinds of personal experiences to describe the Ethiopian heritage as it has emerged and developed in the local Washington, DC landscape. The exhibition was set out to raise awareness and pride within the local Ethiopian community as well as to inform other non-Ethiopian participants. With this project, a model was developed that could be used for other ethnic groups or interest-based communities as a guide to appreciating and preserving their heritage. An exhibition could become a vehicle to provide a better understanding about a particular cultural group; it could also serve as an enabling factor for the preservation of that group's heritage with presentation and archiving, demonstrating that this method of creating an exhibit could be translatable to any community with a view towards preserving its heritage.

Author

• Rosenfeld, Beth

Language

• en

Date created

• 2010

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Interior Design

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Jones, Cybelle
• Coss, Gretchen

Committee Member(s)

• Armour, Catherine
• Schmidt, Lorraine

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/z029p4914