La museología de la ruptura en las exposiciones de Fernando Estévez González

In response to a traditional museology that considered ethnological and anthropological museums as mere storage warehouses for objects from the colonial era, a new form of museology emerged, focusing more on people than objects, with a component of social commitment and dialogue with other communities, and with strong criticism of official institutions. It was Jacques Hainard (1943-), director of the Museum of Ethnology in Neuchâtel (Switzerland), who initiated this critical movement with his proposal of museology of rupture, particularly significant in the way exhibitions were conceived. This article aims to focus on Fernando Estévez González (1953-2016), professor of Anthropology at the University of La Laguna (Spain), considered the main representative of this museology in Spain, though he has not been widely recognised and valued by Spanish museologists. Starting from the same ethnographic philosophy of rupture that Hainard used in Neuchâtel, Estévez set out to apply it to the Anthropological Museum of History of Tenerife, organising a series of exhibitions in which he attempted to analyse tourism and its interaction with natives through souvenirs, delved into dialogue with contemporary art and his commitment as an ethnographer to break with scientific neutrality, and championed narrating and defending the memory of social minorities and indigenous cultures.