Collecting art and anthropology: controversies in the museums of Barcelona

Abstract This work aims to cover events that have surrounded museologists, anthropologists and art historians at least in the last five years in Barcelona. It tries to follow the after-effects of the reclassification of the “exotic art” Folch Collection and the consequences of its exhibition in two museums in town. The stories, facts, news, documents and decisions presented here were collected primarily from interviews with the professionals involved. They told in their own way the sequence of occurrences that triggered disputes around the concepts of “art” and “anthropology” when attributed to collections. We propose, therefore, to follow these events in order to discuss the recent changes in the field of ethnographic museums.