Traces

Looted art from the colonial era: provenance research, restitution and new approaches to museology.

Grace Ndiritu, A Quest For Meaning - AQFM VOL. 9 © Courtesy of the artist
Everything passes, except the past

Right there in the corpus delicti

An exhibition and online festival in the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut round off a cycle of events on the handling of colonial artefacts in European museums and archives. An article by Chistina Pawlata.
Restitution – An exhibition room of the permanent exhibition “Where is Africa” in the Linden-Museum. At a press conference in February 2020 the Linden-Museum Stuttgart presented perspectives and ideas for an ethnological museum of the future. Photo (detail): Tom Weller © picture alliance/dpa
Decolonising research and knowledge production

New ethics for museums

The return of both human remains and cultural objects held in Western museums back to the communities of origin must be on the same agenda, says history professor Ciraj Rassool. He spoke to “Latitude” on new ethics for museums.
 
Colonial Era – Attack on the statue of General Storms in Brussels (Belgium), which reminds of the colonial past Photo (detail): Dursun Aydemir © picture alliance / Anadolu Agency
Colonial traces in the public space

And the statues really are alive

What should we do with colonial monuments and traces in the public space? Ever since the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent worldwide demonstrations in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the discussion about historic monuments has been rekindled. 
Colonial history – Masai, Tanzania Photo (detail): Rossi © picture alliance / Bildagentur-online
Participation and Social Inclusion

Sustainable cultural heritage tourism

Tourism contributes significantly to the conservation of cultural heritage. Noel Lwoga, Director-General of National Museum of Tanzania, highlights the importance of the close partnership between the museum and the local communities.

(de)colonial film archives

Historical tractor in front of the Phutha dikobo museum in Mochudi (Botswana), November 2000 Photo (detail): Juergen Sorges © picture alliance / akg
Collaboration, digitization and sociomuseology

Exploring new terrain

The concept of the museum increasingly coming into sharp focus globally. At the same time, faced critical questions about their contribution to the reappraisal of the colonial past. Winani Thebele, Chief Curator of the Botswana National Museum, explains which path Africa is taking.
Provenance: The Makonde mask was purchased by the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva in 1985 and was later identified as an item that had been stolen in Dar es Salaam and as a result, the mask was handed back to the National Museum of Tanzania in 2010. Photo (detail): Philippe Wojazer © picture alliance/REUTERS
Museum cooperation

From the vision to the practice of restitution

The discrepancy between the restitution debate and the actual implementation of resolutions passed - from the perspective of Flower Manase, curator at the Tanzanian National Museum.
Karin Guggeis (right), Project Manager of the Museum Five Continents Munich and Albert Gouaffo, Project Coordinator of the University of Dschang (Cameroon), next to the “Blue Rider Post” Photo (detail): Lino Mirgeler © dpa
Controversial collections

“Your own consciousness is the actual judge”

Several ethnological museums in Germany are currently researching their collections from the colonial era in cooperation with the societies of origin. In Munich the interests of Cameroon are represented by Albert Gouaffo, a professor of German literature and culture.
Restitution? From the North America Collection of the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich: Chilkat apron of the indigenous Tlingit from the northwest coast of America, period of origin: around 1800 to 1850 Photo (detail): Museum Five Continents Munich © MFK
Art from the colonial era

Towards restitution in seven-league boots?

At the moment there is lively debate about the return of cultural artefacts from colonial contexts to the origin societies. The discussion has given rise both to plausible solutions and new, even more complex questions, according to Uta Werlich, the director of the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich.
Aztec head of Xipe Totec (Our Lord, the oppressed), old Mexican spring god, dressed with a stripped human skin. Stone. Hamburg, Museum am Rothenbaum - Cultures and Arts of the World (MARKK). Photo (detail): Werner Forman © picture alliance/akg-images
Collaborative museology

Exploring new paths

Cooperative ventures between museums in the Global North and those in the Global South are likely to be structured quite differently in future, explains Barbara Plankensteiner, Director of the Museum am Rothenbaum World Cultures and Arts (MARKK) in Hamburg
Game of the Damara, Damara Living Museum in Twyfelfontein, Namibia. Together with the San, the Damara belong to the oldest ethnic groups in southern Africa. In the area of Twyfelfontein, where the museum village is located today, there are thousands of rock paintings from the stone age. Photo (detail): gsPhoto © picture alliance/imageBROKER
Museums in Namibia

Unity in diversity

Ethnographic museums in Germany are in possession of large collections of cultural objects that were taken from Namibia in colonial contexts. The Namibian curator Golda Ha-Eiros explains how the museums in her country compensate for the loss of heritage.
Joint viewing of the Max von Stetten Collection at the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich: Professor Albert Gouaffo, Project Manager Cameroon, with Yrine Matchinda (right), staff member for the francophone part of the collection and Karin Guggeis, General Project Manager Photo (detail): Stefan Eisenhofer © Museum Fünf Kontinente
Provenance research

Searching for traces collaboratively

The Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich has embarked on a collaborative venture with scientists and communities of origin in Cameroon to research its collection from colonial times.
Ekasa Masquerades Dancers performing at the palace 2016 Photo (detail): K. J Eweka
Nigeria's museum landscape

Public attraction even without art treasures

The evidence of the highly developed courtly art that flourished in the old kingdom of Benin has been preserved in European and North American collections since the British colonial period. This fact still forces Nigerian museums to preserve the cultural memory of its indigenous peoples in other ways.
 
Gnaoua World Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco, on June 13, 2014: Gnawa has been added to the UNESCO list of intangible heritage in 2019. It is a musical tradition of the Gnaoua Sufi Brotherhood from the times of the slave trade, composed of various secular-religious elements: musical events, performances, Sufi brotherhood practices and healing rituals. Photo (detail): Jalal Morchidi © picture alliance / Anadolu Agency
Constructive dialogue on equal terms

Who safeguards the intangible cultural heritage?

What opportunities and challenges arise with regard to the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in the global South? Who bears responsibility for safeguarding knowledge? An interview with Tiago de Oliveira Pinto.
Old colonial building in the Deutsche Straße (German Street) in Qingdao (Tsingtau), capital of the former German colony Kiautschou. Qingdao was the only German colony in the Far East. Even today, the Chinese metropolis of millions shows traces of the German colonial period. Photo (detail): Christoph Mohr © picture alliance
German colonialism in China

More Than Just Kiaochow Bay: a (nearly) forgotten story

Iltisstrasse, Berlin-Dahlem: In German, the word “Iltis” means “polecat”, evoking that little native carnivore from the marten family after which the road must surely have been named. But actually it wasn’t at all – to this day the street name commemorates a chapter in the history of German colonialism.
From the series of Tiago San’t Ana, entitled "Sugar Shoes" (2018). Performance in the old Freguesia sugar mill in Candeia Photo: Maiara Serqueira © Tiago San't Ana
Decolonial art

Black sugar

Fine art against forgetting: Tiago Sant' Ana keeps alive the memory of colonial architecture and artifacts in his native Brazil. He uses black and white contrasts particularly frequently.
Woman from the Herero people with typical headgear, Damaraland, Namibia Photo (detail): Frauke Scholz © picture alliance / imageBROKER
For a new kind of memory culture

“Let’s have tea and sing love songs!”

In the examination of power structures that have continued in Namibia since German colonialism and apartheid, the Namibian performer, author and lecturer Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja sees an opportunity to narrate history beyond ethnocentric interpretations. 
Under construction: the Lesotho National Museum, to be opened in 2021. © Jon Weinberg
Breaking Museum Stereotypes

Out of the Glass Box into the Open

“So that people can tell their own story”: Chief planner Jon Weinberg on designing the new National Museum of Lesotho, which opens in 2021, with local communities in mind.
Museum Forum der Völker, Ethnological Museum of the Franciscans, Werl; Benedictine monks maintain a training school for art carvers in southern Tanzania, the commissions mainly focus on Christian motifs Photo (detail): Uta Poss © picture alliance/Presse-Bild-Poss
On participation and collaboration in museums

Don’t do it for me without me!

How museums in Africa with their urgently needed reorientation can at the same time take into account the traditions and expectations of their audience, explains George Abungu, archaeologist and former director of the National Museum of Kenya.
The District Six Museum in Cape Town, which documents the history of the District Six district. The museum is housed in a former Methodist church that was a meeting place for apartheid opponents in the 1980s. Photo (detail): Andreas Gebert © dpa-Report
Participatory museology

The District Six Museum

How can museums work together with local communities to redefine and reshape their role in those communities? Mandy Sanger, the Head of Education at the District Six Museum in Cape Town, sheds light on a participatory pedagogical approach.
Memorial plaque for the fallen of the German Schutztruppe in the courtyard of the Alte Feste, Windhoek, Namibia Photo (detail): Fabian von Poser © picture alliance/imageBROKER
Authorised Heritage Discourse

Interrogating the German colonial narrative in Namibia

The memory and heritage landscape in Namibia today visibly recalls the German colonial era, with many of its prominent monuments and buildings safeguarded by National Monument status.
Historical doors from an African royal palace in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris - one of the objects to be restituted Photo (detail): Michel Euler © picture alliance / AP Photo
Museum cooperation

Rethinking the colonial legacy

Returning artefacts and cultural assets from the colonial era to their countries of origin in Africa has been a subject of New approaches to working with museums debate in various forums for a long time. However it increasingly appears that these discussions are not leading to a specific outcome.
Scientist Ndzodo Awono shows a pipe from Cameroon in the foam magazine of the Überseemuseum Bremen Photo (detail): Carmen Jaspersen © picture alliance
Colonial loot

Controversial collections

How are German museums supposed to cope with the large volume of artefacts from the colonial era? The debate is focused on giving them back. But actually there’s something else that’s far more important.
South African National Gallery Photo (detail): ImageBROKER © picture alliance
Museums in South Africa

Laboratories of Social Transformation

Which transformations were necessary to free museums from the shackles of colonialism? Ciraj Rassool highlights the developments in South African museums since the mid-nineties.
As of 2019, the collection of objects of non-European origin will be on display in the reconstructed Berlin palace. Photo (detail): picture alliance/dpa/Stefan Jaitner
Provenance research

The long arm of colonialism

Scheduled to open in 2020, the Humboldt Forum with its collection of objects of non-European origin was conceived as a space of cultural encounter and understanding. But serious questions have arisen about how German and European cultural institutions are responding to critical questions about the restitution of artefacts brought in by colonialism.
Installation “¿Dónde ahora? ¿Cuándo ahora? ¿Quién ahora?” by Liliana Sánchez © Liliana Sánchez
Debris as metaphor

“We need to return to spaces of uncertainty”

The Colombian artist Liliana Sanchez called for a positioning of exhibitions in relation to the state of things on the occasion of the event “250 Years Young” at the Humboldt Forum Berlin.
José Alejandro Restrepos work "The crocodile of Humboldt is not the crocodile of Hegel" in the exhibition "The Nature of Things", Humboldt Forum Berlin, 2019 Photo: David von Becker
Invisible traces of colonization

“Geography is a weapon for war”

For the artist José Alejandro Restrepo, the forces of colonization are visible not only in physical violence and devastation. There are also silent struggles that have focused on the world of perception and ways of representing. 
Coding da Vinci participants roll out their ideas in the six-week project phase. Photo (detail): © Coding da Vinci
Coding da Vinci

The digitalisation of culture

Visitors to museums and archives usually interact with exhibits locked in display cases in darkened rooms. Yet modern technology has given us ways to more directly experience art and cultural artefacts. Coding da Vinci is an open, cultural data hackathon that digitally brings museum pieces to life.  
An exhibition in the German History Museum Photo (detail): © Marcel Runge
Recollecting colonial history

A Journey through Postcolonial Berlin

This project initiated by the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg aimed for participants from different African countries and Germany to face their common history. Here is what three participants experienced on their journey.
Namibian national hero Hendrik Witbooi probably never dreamed that his whip and bible would one day be the stuff of international controversy. Photo (detail): akg-images © picture alliance
Repatriation debate

The restitution of colonial artefacts is going slowly

Where do they belong? Ownership claims to cultural assets from the colonial period are often controversial and negotiating possible restitution is frequently a fraught and drawn-out process. Germany is taking some initial steps towards a resolution.

Projects on the subject traces

All Projects