The Museum Commission of the Swiss Ethnological Society comprises 11 institutions and about 12 members.
In 2012, the commission will continue to collect historical ethnographic photographs. Together with foto.CH, an encyclopaedia and repertory for the field of historical photographs in Switzerland, the photographic holdings of ethnographic museums and collections in Switzerland, which were compiled in the 1997 publication EH 20 " L' objectif subjectif - Das subjektive Objektiv", are to be made more accessible and, above all, updated. The encyclopaedia is primarily concerned with image authors, the repertory with the proof of data of the holdings. Not only newer indexing data on authors will be included, but with the update, the individual member institutions are also requested to compile newer data and information on their historical-ethnographic photographic holdings for an overview.
Fortunately, individual institutions in Switzerland have presented their historical-ethnographic photo collections to an international specialist readership in the newsletter of the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden:
Newsletter IIAS, pull-out supplement the FOCUS, "Swiss Photographic Collections on Asia", September 2012, Leiden. The newsletter contains contributions from
- Bibliotheca Afghanica and Swiss Afghanistan Institute - Swiss Federal Office of Culture
- St. Gallen Museum Foundation
- Basel Mission Archives
- Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich
- Berne Historical Museum, Department of Ethnography