Moderator: Udomluck Hoontrakul
Date: 17 August 2026
Time: 13.00 – 14.00
Room: Auditorium 1
——————————————
Framing Rice Heritage in Philippine Museums: Preliminary Observations and Opening Questions
Floper Gershwin E. Manuel
(Ph.D. student, Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, Thammasat University)
Rice is not merely a staple crop in the Philippines. It is a carrier of cultural memory, identity, and community practice across diverse regional and ethnic contexts. However, how rice heritage is represented in Philippine museums remains largely unexamined. This paper presents preliminary observations from an ongoing study of rice and agriculture-related exhibitions from various cultural institutions or museums in the Philippines including the National Museum of the Philippines and the Rice Science Museum of the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
Initial observations suggest that each institution frames rice heritage in distinct ways shaped by its institutional mandate and intended audience. The National Museum foregrounds archaeological and ethnographic dimensions, with significant emphasis on Cordillera rice culture and traditional rice cultivation implements. Meanwhile, the Rice Science Museum prioritizes scientific advancement and agricultural modernization, reflecting its position within a research institute oriented toward farmer audiences.
These preliminary findings raise a set of questions that will guide the next phases of this research. First, whose rice cultures are being told — and whose are absent? Second, how do institutional contexts shape the narratives museums construct around agricultural heritage? Third, what role might museums play in sustaining rice culture as living heritage rather than historical artifact? By examining how framing choices reflect broader institutional priorities, this paper hopes to open a conversation about the gaps and possibilities in the museological treatment of rice heritage in the Philippines.
Keywords: museums, heritage, agricultural museums, rice culture
——————————————
Ancient Ceramics, Local Beliefs, and Competing Meanings in Colonial Myanmar
Saw Tun Lin
(Consultant, SEAMEO SPAFA)
Ancient ceramics recovered from the Tenasserim region of Myanmar during the colonial period have been studied primarily as objects of trade, dynastic attribution, private collecting and museum acquisition. This paper argues that such approaches are fundamentally incomplete. Drawing on the ethnographic observations of British colonial administrator Maurice Collis in his memoir Into Hidden Burma (1953), it demonstrates that local communities in the Mergui-Tenasserim area understood and engaged with ancient Chinese ceramics through a distinct set of spiritual beliefs, healing practices, and cosmological relationships that rendered these objects socially active long after their original production and commercial exchange. The paper traces four domains of local ceramic meaning such as spirit inhabitation rooted in Burmese Nat belief, the animist-Buddhist interface of Mon cultural landscape in Lower Myanmar, healing and divinatory practices associated with ancient objects, and the institutional management of spiritually charged objects through Theravada Buddhist monasticism, and contrasts them with colonial practices of collecting and museum acquisition. This paper argues that ancient ceramics possessed multiple and competing meanings that challenge conventional museum interpretations of material culture. Recovering these competing meanings is not merely a matter of historical interest but a prerequisite for any heritage practice that takes seriously the communities from which these objects were removed.
Keywords: Ceramics, Burmese supernaturalism, colonial collecting, Maurice Collis, museum interpretation
——————————————
Rehousing and Exhibiting the Sacred: Museum Practices and the Transformation of Object Meaning
Theint Theint Aung
(The researcher, Thammasat Museum of Anthropology)
This paper examines how museum practices shape the meanings of sacred objects as they move from ritual use into institutional care. While museums often position their work as preserving both material integrity and cultural significance, this study argues that practices such as object-based research, rehousing, cataloguing, and exhibition also function as forms of interpretation that actively transform how objects are understood.
Drawing on experience at the Smithsonian Institution and ongoing work with sacred collections, including medicine Buddha images at the Thammasat University Museum of Anthropology, the paper combines collection-based research with an ethnographic perspective.
By foregrounding routine museum practices, the study highlights museums as active sites of knowledge production, where meanings are not only preserved but continuously reinterpreted. It calls for more reflexive approaches to engaging with sacred objects across different contexts.