The Museum as inhabited object.

To say that an artifact in a museum plays a different role from the one it held in the culture of production may appear to be stating the obvious and inevitable. Less obvious, however, is to consider the museum itself as the context in which the "exotic" artifact was produced or where it originated. What this essay intends to emphasize is that every artifact is always placed (neither delocalized nor relocated) within its own context, regardless of the environment it occupies. Museum studies often proceed theoretically, offering a perspective that fails to examine concrete situations. Their interest focuses on various interpretive theories rather than on praxis. This essay, instead, presents a phenomenological reading of the artifact based on a participated ethnography and carried out by sharing with the public some display experiments within an ethnographic museum. It is by accessing concrete situations, tied to local everyday environments, that one can document the effect and the role played by the object placed within its actual context.