MuseumFutures – change in African museums

Vumile Mavumengwana © Goethe-Institut The pan-African project “MuseumFutures Africa” promoted a conceptual change – away from European museology, with its partially colonial approach.

The project was managed by an African team with practical skills in the arts and museum sector, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. The central tenet of “MuseumFutures: Africa” was to support and network museums that were keen to implement change in their own institutions, in order to promote peer-to-peer learning at local level. This model of knowledge sharing allowed identification of specific local challenges, which could then be addressed in intensive self-led study groups.

The study groups aimed to find new ways to approach collection, research, mediation and society involvement, and were addressing self-defined questions such as “What do we want to exhibit and how can we do that?”, “How do we want to work together?” and “Who is our museum for?” over a twelve-month period. The study groups were given a curriculum designed by African experts, which they could implement flexibly.

Participating museums were the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, Senegal; the Musée Théodore Monod IFAN Université Cheikh Anta Diop; the National Museums of Kenya, Kenya; the Steve Biko Foundation, South Africa; the Uganda Museum, Uganda and the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Lekki, Nigeria.