Museum der Völker, Ethnographic museum in Schwaz, Austria.
Museum der Völker is an ethnographic museum in Schwaz displaying objects collected from many regions around the world. The exhibition spans three floors with Khmer sculptures, Buddha statues, African terracotta figures, and contemporary Voodoo items.
Gert Chesi founded the museum in 1995 as the cultural association Haus der Völker, drawing on fifty years of collecting West African and Southeast Asian objects. In 2008 a large part of the collection was sold to the Hanns Schell Collection in Graz. After rebuilding, it reopened on 12 April 2013 as Museum der Völker with about 1,000 m² of exhibition space. In 2016 Chesi donated around 1,000 objects to the city of Schwaz and withdrew from running the museum.
The name means "museum of the peoples". The cultural association of the same name, founded by Gert Chesi, runs the house and also organises readings, documentary screenings and intercultural discussions. The permanent Asia hall "Zwischen Himmel und Erde" links Buddhism and Hinduism to Western interest in Far Eastern meditation practices.
The museum occupies a rebuilt and extended building with about 1,000 m² of exhibition space across three levels: the permanent Asia hall "Between Heaven and Earth" on the ground floor, special exhibitions on the two upper floors, changed every six months. The cultural association also runs readings, film screenings and intercultural discussions alongside the displays.
The collection came together through fifty years of personal travels and includes more than one thousand objects from the most remote corners of the world. This extended collecting effort gives the exhibition a depth that quick acquisitions could never achieve.
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