Fragments

The collections of ethnographic museums contain numerous fragments that bear witness to practices of sharing and connecting. They include fragments from history, remnants of destruction, and once powerful objects made up of single parts. This publication shows how these things were handled in the past, and still are today. It sheds light on what it means to divide, repair, reassemble, even to let something fall apart. In each instance, it is always a matter of (re)storing or creating a new order. Instead of seeing fragments exclusively as signs of loss or as witnesses to the inexorable passage of time, the authors focus on the power of connecting, the art of separating, and the force of destruction in the pieces presented.