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Diorama The well known San/Bushman diorama at the South African Museum, an exhibition of Bushman models, posed in positions of hunting and gathering has been controversially closed. This exhibition has created dispute and controversy for some time. The models were created in 1910 by J.Drury from casts taken from living San. Even prior to the end of apartheid some anthropologists and archaeologists had argued that the exhibition was dehumanising in that it presented the San as equivalent to stuffed animals. After the end of apartheid, the debate became more heated while the exhibition remained incredibly popular with visitors and tourists and was probably the most visited exhibit in the museum. Now the diorama has been closed while debate takes place as to its future. The museum maintains that consultation needs to take place with representatives of the San. However this might be extremely difficult with various individuals arguing that they speak for the San people. Members of the San Cultural Heritage Committee which recently met in Windhoek indicated that the exhibition served a valuable purpose in demonstrating aspects of the San way of life which are all but extinct. Professor Pippa Skotnes, professor of Fine Art and director of the Museum Workshop at the University of Cape Town, argues that the closing of the diaroma is to unmake the history of the San. Rather in its presentation of this diaroma the museum could "create a space that reinvests the drama with history, with events in the San war against colonialism and celebrates individual stories of misery and heroism that were being played out at the time the diorama was set." ©Copyright Prime Origins 2001 CONTACT BRETT HILTON-BARBER primeorigins.co.za is an iafrica.com Private Label site