Mapping – Retracing – Encountering. The Tibet Collections of Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter

In 1951, after seven years on the Tibetan Plateau, the agronomist and cartographer Peter Aufschnaiter and the geographer Heinrich Harrer left Lhasa; each with his personal collection of ethnographic everyday and ritual objects, numerous black and white photographs, hand-drawn maps and sketches, and hundreds of pages of diary entries and notes. This exhibition establishes links between the two collections and approaches the underlying skills and contexts starting with the objects they contain. By means of steel-flint kits, a slingshot, objects for communication in ritual constellations, coins or maps we provide multi-layered insights into local creation as well as ethnographic writing and documentation in a time and region in transition.