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Wie weiter mit Humboldts Erbe?

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Month: July 2018

Unbearable simultaneity On the correlation between mobile objects and people*

24. July 2018

by Silvy Chakkalakal

*Translated from the German by Jane Yager

On Sunday afternoon, 27 May 2018, I am watching the podium and listening to Tom Holert introduce the second day of the conference “Deep Time and Crisis, ca.1930”, which is taking place at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin as part of the exhibition “Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, ca. 1930”. The exhibition, jointly curated by Holert and Anselm Franke, engages with the feeling of the unbearability of the present, following the work of Carl Einstein, which is contextualised in a dense composition of texts and artworks.

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From the brothers Humboldt to Jacques Chirac and back… A report from the three-day work shop: Exchanging perspectives: anthropologies, museum collections and colonial legacies between Paris and Berlin (June 6-8, 2018) held at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) and at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)

17. July 2018

by Felicity Bodenstein, Margareta von Oswald & Callum Fisher

It was at the recently renamed ethnography museum in Hamburg (formerly Museum für Völkerkunde, today Museum am Rothenbaum, Kulturen und Künste der Welt) that a meeting was organized on the 18th of May, 2018 by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Goethe Institut with the rather long and awkward title: From “Frosty Deposits of White Thirst for Knowledge” Towards Things and Wisdom without frontiers. Taken from an expression used by the German intellectual Carl Einstein in 1926 (“Das Berliner Völkerkunde-Museum. Anläßlich der Neuordnung”, published in Der Querschnitt), it refers to an early critique of Berlin’s ethnographic collections as trophies of white greed and it was published shortly before the author moved to Paris where he was to be famously part of the unique intellectual enterprise of George Bataille’s Documents. A policy meeting referencing transgressive critical thinking, may in itself be remarkable, but it was also designed to examine how German institutions might react to African claims for restitution by bringing together major actors from the German institutional landscape with African museum professionals mainly though not exclusively from former German colonies. It was clearly framed in the opening remarks as an effort to react to the November 2017 speech, made in Ouagadougou by French president, Emmanuel Macron and his self-imposed challenge to provide the conditions for a restitution of African heritage from French and even European museums. Invited but not present at the meeting in Hamburg was the French art historian, Bénédicte Savoy, who has spent most of her career teaching at the Technische Universität in Berlin, and who together with Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr has been mandated with producing a report to engage this initiative in France. After providing fuel for the lively debate on the state of provenance research in Germany’s ethnographic collections and in particular in provision of the establishment of the Humboldt Forum, her nomination by Macron is exemplary of transnational emulation and mirroring, where individual actors move between national contexts of policy making and contribute to rhizomatic resurgences of critical discourses. Such constellations also exemplify the context that the authors of this report wanted to address by organizing the workshop discussed here. By bringing together several research groups involved in considering the implications and differences in how colonial legacies are dealt with in Paris and Berlin, between the creation of Jacque Chirac’s Musée du Quai Branly (opened in 2006) and the debates concerning the Humboldt Forum (set to open in 2019), the focus was particularly but not exclusively on ethnographic collections and anthropological knowledge production.

more “From the brothers Humboldt to Jacques Chirac and back… A report from the three-day work shop: Exchanging perspectives: anthropologies, museum collections and colonial legacies between Paris and Berlin (June 6-8, 2018) held at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) and at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)“

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[translation underway]

10. July 2018

The contribution “Durch den Tunnel der Kritik zum Weitblick” by Faruzan Abulimiti, Armin Bestvater, Katharina Funk, Tobias Gaschler, Lea-Elisa Jakob, Vanessa Jüttner, Can Kapcik, Aaron Klinger, Felix Leikauf, Marvin Marcks, Gesa Marxsen, Yosé-Gré Reenders, Katharina Schramm and Cheyenne Thiel is currently being translated. Please check back in a few days.

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Imagine decolonizing the law – what would happen?*

3. July 2018

by Souad Zeineddine

*Translated by Jonathan DeVore and Julian Schmischke

7 June 2018: In the Schlüter courtyard of the German Historical Museum (DHM), I am waiting for interdisciplinary symposium “The Stone Cross from Cape Cross – Colonial Objects and Historical Justice,” to begin. I start to imagine what would happen if N’Jadaka, one of the main protagonists of the  Afrofuturist Hollywood blockbuster, ‘Black Panther’ (2018), climbed through the glass dome of the courtyard. The target of his operation: the return of the Cape Cross pillar.[1] After the (fictitious) repatriation of the Vibranium Axe, from the (fictional) “British Museum” (jhuexhibtionist 2018) to Wakanda, this would be his second ‘illegal’ repatriation. On the one hand, I am amused by the idea of looking into the faces of the 350 national and international guests (DHM 2018), whose expressions range from shocked to horrified. On the other hand, considering the symposium’s program, I start thinking about possibilities for decolonizing national and international law.

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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
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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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