The Baguia Collection

The Baguia Collection

The Baguia Collection website showcases a database that contains records for the Baguia Collection objects acquired and photographs taken by Swiss ethnographer Dr Alfred Bühler in 1935, from Baguia, Portuguese Timor (now Timor-Leste). It also includes film footage taken by his expedition companion, Dr Wilhelm L. Meyer. The Baguia Collection is part of the permanent collection of the Museum der Kulturen Basel, Switzerland. 

The database content was compiled by Dr. Joanna Barrkman whose doctoral thesis, Return to Baguia: an ethnographic museum collection on the edge of living memory [http://hdl.handle.net/1885/143956], documented in the Baguia Collection. As part of her research, she digitally returned images of the Baguia Collection to the Makasae and Naueti-speaking residents of Baguia District, Timor-Leste, in 2014. Comments about the objects, provided by Baguia residents, are annotated in this database, together with images of each object and expedition photographs. Museum accession cards, hand-written by Dr Alfred Bühler, are also included.