Etta Becker-Donner (1911-1975)

Between 1955 and 1975, Etta Becker-Donner (1911 - 1975) was the director of the Museum of Ethnology Vienna. She was a major driving force behind the foundations and the enlargement of the present collection. In the 1930’s she was the first ethnologist to undertake field studies in Africa. In the 1950’s she travelled to remote areas of the Amazon rainforest. In the 1960’s her main focus of research shifted to Latin America, especially Guatemala and Costa Rica, where she assembled extensive collections of popular culture. It was on her initiative that the Österreichisches Lateinamerika Institut was founded in 1965, and she served as its president for a long time. The first (and for a long time the only) female director of an Austrian museum, she was a prominent figure in the Austrian as well as the international museum landscape.

The exhibition marks the centenary of the birth of Etta Becker-Donner and presents an impressive selection from the collections she assembled in Liberia, Brazil and Latin America that are now in the holdings of the Museum of Ethnology. The objects assembled by her in these regions number 2.865 objects.