Traces

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

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.

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 Tsingtau (Qingdao), 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.

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

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

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.

Breaking Museum Stereotypes

Out of the Glass Box into the Open

"So that people can tell their own story": Chief planner Jon Weinberg on the new National Museum of Lesotho, which opens in 2021.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.