Objects from Indigenous and World Cultures Working Group

The Objects from Indigenous and World Cultures Working Group is an international group that promotes the discussion and dissemination of information on ethical and technical issues concerning the conservation of ethnographic objects and collections. Indigenous objects represent particular challenges to the conservation professional: from a technical point of view, they are often made of a huge variety of organic and/or inorganic materials, which may be found exclusively in their place of origin; and from an ethical point of view, these objects are linked to a history of use and to the community from which they originated before they were collected by the museum – thus, their care and conservation is to be carried out in a way that is respectful of the object’s history and community of origin.