Museum of World Culture, Gothenburg

The museum interprets the concept of world culture in a dynamic and open-ended manner. The museum has a comprehensive programme of experimental music, dance and theatre. A sceptical approach when arranging public discussions and lectures ensures that many voices are heard and multifaceted, contentious issues are probed. The themes that the programme explores generally take their cue from the exhibitions. Among additional topics are current events and the architecture of the building.

The museum owns a wide variety of objects and archived material, particularly from Latin America. The museum’s storehouse south of central Stockholm contains some 100,000 objects. The library and archive have original documents, diaries, manuscripts and a large assortment of books, and over 20,000 negatives, glass plates and slides. The objects were painstakingly moved over the course of a year after the Ethnographic Museum of Göteborg closed in September 2000. 

The museum’s objects are available for use by researchers and students; digital versions are available on the museum’s website.

The museum library contains over 30,000 books, as well as some 900 periodicals and annuals. Most of the books are in the area of ethnography, social and cultural anthropology, history and sociology. A few of them are travelogues, biographies, bibliographies, manuals and lexicons. Mirroring the museum’s collections and traditional focus, publications related to South and Central America – along with Indonesia – are the most numerous.