Hi Oarabile,

Expanding and enhancing connections and relations with museums (especially outstanding ones like the Apartheid Museum) here in South Africa is definitely on Wikimedia ZA's to do list.  I have not talked to that museum directly my self as I am located in Cape Town but I have talked to the Natural History Museum and they seem open to building a strong relationship with the local Wiki community.  I suspect the same would likely be true of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.  

I think there are two likely reasons why the Apartheid Museum is so sensitive about photographs.

1. Fear that too much flash photography by museum goers will damage exhibits
2. Unclear copyright policies of material hosted and/or owned by government departments (I think this is a lesser issue that largely sits at the back of peoples minds)

The first one is easy to get around if it is a group of Wikimedians coming in for a special behind the scenes GLAM event similar to the Ice Age event that the UK Chapter hosted.  The second one I think is a lesser problem that can be got around in the short term through simple relationship building and outreach.  In the long term it has deeper implications for access to data (for example) and other material from government departments that involves questions around open data and developing a clear government policy around copyright issues of its own material, this is more complex.  

Cheers,

Douglas.

On 6 June 2013 00:27, Oarabile Mudongo <mudongo.oarabile@gmail.com> wrote:

Greetings Fellow Wikipedians

I happened to visit the Apartheid Museum in South Africa this week and i must say it is one of the few museums Ii have visited in my life with so much vital asserts and information that the future generations of this world would really need for tomorrow.It is also one of the museums that are so emotional due to the documentaries you see playing on the screens and generally the pictures of how people lived during Apartheid time, because of the vast information found from within the Museum which i think from my own perspective my worry lies much in the issue of COPY RIGHT.

"The Apartheid Museum in South Africa is read through the lens of a condition of 'prepossession', where histories of trauma continue to haunt a site while manifesting effectively through spatial ambiguities, which lead to an experience of 'empathetic unsettledness'. Paradoxes concerning the provenance of the building and its location are discussed. An analysis follows of changing registers of spatiality through selected key areas of the complex, with reference to Henri Lefebvre's analysis of alternative experiences of space. His notion of 'lived' space is applicable to trauma architecture as discussed by concentration camp researcher Wolfgang Sofsky. It is argued that the building critically performs a content which exceeds the limits of representation, thus engendering a sense of embodied unease. Further complications include the appropriation of suffering in dialectical tension with a moving commemoration of apartheid iniquities".

I tried getting some photos of some of the things i thought they could benefit us a movement and share them on Wikimedia Commons maybe also for community engagement projects such as JoburgpediA,Wiki Loves Monuments and other GLAM projects but i was denied such an opportunity.I was seriously hurt and just let down.May i kindly recommend you to keep good partnership with the museum and try lobby for free copy right for easier sharing of their resources on Wikipedia and its sister projects. 

Kind Regards

--

Oarabile Joseph Mudongo

Cellphone: +26774899486 / +26774131307\

mudongo.oarabile@gmail.com

mudongo.oarabile@yahoo.com

Wikipedia Volunteer/Editor @ Wikimedia Foundation

 

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Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype:  douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 872

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