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Month: January 2018

The Beauty of the Transient A Plea for More ‘Concept’, Experiment and Fragility in the Museum

30. January 2018

by Friedrich von Bose

The times of rupture which ethnological museums are currently undergoing raise a number of issues at the same time: pleas for conceptual renewal as well as resistance against it; the question of how to deal with the colonial provenance of collections, which is followed by the debates about restitution. Many of these questions would have hardly received this much attention in the debates on cultural politics without the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace. However, elsewhere within the German-speaking world of ethnological museums, we can also detect quite some activity in this regard. Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden, Basel, Frankfurt, Vienna, Stuttgart – just to name the most prominent at the moment. Looking at them, somehow, gives the impression that the potential to question the own collections and exhibition practices is greater in those places which are less in the spotlight.

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More Ethnology – or rather Social and Cultural Anthropology? – in the Humboldt Forum! Time for an Intervention

23. January 2018

by Hansjörg Dilger

Time is moving on: in 2019, the Humboldt Forum, currently the “biggest and financially most ambitious project of German federal cultural policy”, will open in the heart of Germany’s capital. In the view of the organizers, it will/should become a site of encounter, in which “cultures engage in dialog as equals”, in order to “acknowledge their diversity“.

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„lookingBACK“ and the question of gaze A Review of the Permanent Exhibition at the Berlin Museum Treptow

16. January 2018

by Anujah Fernando

In October 2017, in the midst of the scuffle over Humboldt’s legacy, a permanent exhibition with the cautious title „zurückGESCHAUT” (lookingBACK) opened in Berlin’s outer district of Treptow. With this exhibition, the Museum of Local History critically engages with the First German Colonial Exhibition, which took place in 1896 on the grounds of the Treptower Park in Berlin and looks back, in particular, at the stories of the performing participants of that exhibition from Africa and Oceania. This review takes the title of the exhibition as an opportunity to examine how this exhibition deals with different forms of gaze and which practices of looking it encourages.

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Basket, Earthenware Jug, Cross

9. January 2018

by Mark Münzel

The baskets rebelled: “‘Humans deal with us very poorly. When they no longer need us, they throw us away. Animals step all over us, the pigs and dogs. Then they throw us in the fire and burn us. I propose that we hide from the humans.’ […] They emptied themselves and left the house. After a time, the woman of the house came from the plantation with manioc and bananas. The baskets had not moved far away. They heard how the woman said, ‘Who took away my baskets? Where should I store everything?’ The baskets laughed, but then they returned, because the disorder in the house was too great without them. ‘And who threw away everything that was in you?’ asked the woman. ‘We did it, and it was right,’ said the baskets.”

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Museum Collections in Motion – Programm

Museum Collections in Motion – Programm

Ein Artikel der digitalen Ausgabe der Süddeutschen Zeitung vom 09.07.2019

Museum Collections in Motion

Museum Collections in Motion

Museum Collections in Motion: Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters

International conference
July 15-17, 2019

A cooperation of
University of Cologne, Bremen University, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne and boasblogs

Venue: Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne

Thematic Outline

The growing public awareness of colonial violence and historical injustice has put ethnographic collections into the spotlight of social and political debates. Museums are increasingly confronted with the challenge to decolonize their exhibition practices and examine their collection history for looted art, colonial entanglements, and systematic exclusions. The recent initiative of French President Macron to explore the modalities for restituting African objects from French collections has opened a new chapter in the debate on restitution and repatriation. While its actual implementation remains to be seen, the report by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy has set a world-wide agenda for decolonizing museum collections and academic research in the coming years.
In order to envision alternative futures for these collections and new forms of co-operation, this conference brings together activists, curators, experts, young researchers and scholars from around the world. Over three days we will re-visit museum collections and the debates and practices that have evolved around them, discuss ongoing work in the longue durée of colonial and postcolonial encounters and bring views from the Global North and South into intensive dialogue.
Convenors: Anna Brus, Larissa Förster, Michi Knecht, Ulrike Lindner, Nanette Snoep, Martin Zillinger

© Jonathan Fine

Our Authors

Jonas Bens
Felicity Bodenstein
Rainer F. Buschmann
Silvy Chakkalakal
Claus Deimel
Steffi de Jong
Johanna Di Blasi
Hansjörg Dilger
Knut Ebeling
Elizabeth Edwards
Ethnologie-Studierende der Uni Bayreuth
Leonor Faber-Jonker
Christian Feest
Anujah Fernando
Callum Fisher
Larissa Förster
Sarah Fründt
Lilli Hasche
Rainer Hatoum
Paola Ivanov
Monica Juneja
Claudia Jürgens
Michi Knecht
Karl-Heinz Kohl
Viola König
Fritz W. Kramer
Christian Kravagna
Ingrid Kummels
Oliver Lueb
Barpougouni Mardjoua
Achille Mbembe
Mark Münzel
Kwame Tua Opoku
Glenn Penny (1) (2)
Martin Porr
Andrea Scholz
Philipp Schorch
Erhard Schüttpelz (1) (2) (3)
Sven Schütze
Anna Seiderer
Bernhard Streck
Z. S. Strother
Luísa Valentini
Sarah van Beurden
Ulrich van Loyen
Friedrich von Bose
Margareta von Oswald (1) (2)
Cordula Weißköppel (1) (2)
Souad Zeineddine (1) (2)

Recent Posts

  • Relocating of the Blog 5. August 2019
  • “Bringing home our Gods” 14. July 2019
  • Palace Museums in the Cameroon Grassfields: Sites of Inclusion, Exclusion, and Alienation 14. July 2019
  • Challenges of rewriting the Khomani San/Bushman archive at Iziko Museums of South Africa 13. July 2019
  • The Crisis of Anthropological Museums from the Perspective of an Anthropology of Museums, and some Remarks on the Agency of Restitution Conceived as a Restitution of Agency 13. July 2019

Selected Media Reports

For a detailed documentation of the media coverage please visit the CARMAH Media Review on Museums
–––

Melissa Stern: An Exhibition About a Book That Rejuvenated an Indigenous Culture
(Hyperallergic, 14.03.2019)
Gedenkraum für koloniales Unrecht im Humboldt Forum gefordert
(Monopol, 03.01.2019)
Unterm Strich: Die Debatte um geraubte Kulturgüter aus der Kolonialzeit nimmtweiter Fahrt auf.
Interviewausschnitte mit M. Grütters
(taz.de, 03.01.2019)
Jason Farago: Artwork Taken From Africa, Returning to a Home Transformed
(NYTimes.com, 03.01.2019)
Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin: Alles aus Frankreich muss zurück nach Afrika
(NZZ.ch, 31.12.2018)
Werner Bloch: „Wir wollenkeine Almosen“
(ZEIT.de, 27.12.2018)
„Gegen jeglichen Verkauf“. Die Ethnologin Viola König kritisiert den kulturellen Mißbrauch indigener Objekte.
Interview von Tobias Timm
(ZEIT.de, 18.12.2018)
Sebastian Frenzel: 265.000 Objekte, 0 Provenienzforscher.
Interview mit Barbara Plankensteiner
(Monopol, 18.12.2018)
Alexander Herman: The eye of the beholder: How we return art to its rightful place.
(The Globe and Mail, 30.11.2018)
Should looted colonial art be returned?
(Podcast, theartnewspaper.com, 14.12.2018)
Rebekka Habermas: Was schuldenwirkolonialen Objekten?
(Vortrag, Einsteinforum, 29.11.2018)
Alexander Herman: The eye of the beholder: How we return art to its rightful place.
(The Globe and Mail, 30.11.2018)
Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy: The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics
Tristram Hunt, Hartmut Dorgerloh, Nicholas Thomas: Restitution Report: Museum directors respond
(The Art Newspaper, 27.11.2018)
BeninDialogueGroup: Museum für Kunst aus Benin geplant
(Stiftung Preussicher Kulturbesitz, 22.10.2018)
Catherine Hickley: Berlin’s Humboldt Forum: how its director plans to confront German colonial past
(The Art Newspaper, 17.10.2018)
Peer Teuwsen: Wir müssen nicht auf den nächsten Krieg warten, wir können die Sachen jetzt zurückgeben“. Interview with Bénédicte Savoy
(NZZ.de, 15.10.2018)
Peter Burghardt: ‚Zweckfrei fördern’.
(sueddeutsche.de, 14.10.2018)
Haroon Siddique: Not everything was looted’: British Museum to fight critics
(TheGuardian.com, 12.10.2018)
Graham Bowley: A new museum opens old wounds in Germany
(NewYorkTimes.com, 12.10.2018)
Jörg Häntzschel und Andreas Zielcke: Eine Räuberbande will Beweise. An interview with the lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck about the legal aspects of restitution.
(sueddeutsche.de, 11.10.2018)
Achilles Mbembe: Restitution ist nicht genug.
(FAZ.net, 09.10.2018)
Jörg Häntzschel: Aufbruch vertagt
(Süddeutsche.de, 21.09.2018)
Andreas Kilb: Wie kolonialistisch sind Naturkundemuseen?
(FAZ.net, 13.09.2018)
John Eligon: The Big Hole in Germany’s Nazi Reckoning? Its Colonial History
(NewYorkTimes.com, 11.09.2018)
Richard Dören: Wem gehört die Bibel von Hendrik Witbooi?
(FAZ.net, 06.09.2018)
Christoph Schmälzle: Ist das Kunst, oder muss das wieder weg?
(FAZ.net, 16.08.2018)
Karl-Heinz Kohl: So schnell restituieren die Preußen nicht
(FAZ.net, 17.05.2018)
Viola König: Zeigt endlich alles! Warum nur ein radikales Konzept das Humboldt Forum noch retten kann
(Zeit.de, 25.04.2018)
Jörg Häntzschel: Wie ein ethnologischer Kindergarten

(Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21.03.2018)
Cody Delistraty: The Fraught Future of the Ethnographic Museum
(frieze.com, 28.02.2018)
Casey Haughin: Why museum professionals need to talk about Black Panther
(The Hopkins Exhibitionist, 22.02.2018)
Nicola Kuhn: Berlins verfluchte Schätze

(Tagesspiegel.de, 13.02.2018)

Archives

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