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How an ethnographic collection is received depends entirely on the narrative that accompanies the individual objects. Digging into the origins, making the diversity of cultural perspectives visible – this was the goal of “Object Biographies.” Taking three objects from the Africa collection as case studies, this collaboration between African and European scholars found new ways to tell the objects’ story, travelling back to their origins to bring them closer to Berlin’s museum-going public.
Museum worlds. Advances in Research
Decolonizing Research, Cosmo-optimistic Collaboration? Making Object Biographies2017 •
In Germany, the new cultural center Humboldt Forum (to open in 2019) has become a major site of debate. It will include the contested collections of both the Ethno-logical Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, which contributed to the negotiation of the role of colonial legacies and their reverberances on contemporary Germany. We took those contestations as a point of departure for the exhibition Object Biographies (2015), part of the program Humboldt Lab Dahlem designed to experiment with innovative displays for the Humboldt Forum. Here we reexamine our research collaboration with the Beninese art historian Romuald Tchibozo that was part of the exhibition. His call for the "decolonization of research" was the central guideline in our museum practice aiming for cosmo-optimistic futures. We argue that focusing on processes and questions engaged by the exhibition project can transform contested museum spaces to enable negotiations on ownership, representation, and memory politics.
Die Rezeption einer ethnologischen Sammlung hängt unmittelbar von dem Narrativ ab, das die einzelnen Objekte begleitet. Die Provenienz zu ermitteln und die Vielfalt der kulturellen Zugriffe sichtbar zu machen, war das Ziel von „Objektbiografien“. Anhand von drei Objektbeispielen aus der Afrika-Sammlung wurden in Zusammenarbeit mit afrikanischen und europäischen WissenschaftlerInnen sowie durch Recherchen in den Herkunftsländern andere Möglichkeiten der Erzählung aufgezeigt und dem Berliner Museumspublikum beispielhaft nahegebracht.
Documentation of the exhibition "Object Biographies" - Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, March - October 2015
Dossier on the collaboration project and experimental exhibit „Sharing Knowledge” curated by Dr. Andrea Scholz, for the Humboldt Lab Dahlem, Berlin, including a comment by Wolfgang Kapfhammer, LMU Munich
English Translation of "Der Lange Weg", Part 2 in Baessler Archiv 59: 113-192 (2012). Edited by Viola König et al.
Martina Griesser, Christine Haupt-Stummer, Renate Höllwart, Beatrice Jaschke, Monika Sommer, Nora Sternfeld, Luisa Ziaja (Hg.): Gegen den Stand der Dinge. Objekte in Museen und Ausstellungen. De Gruyter
Die Macht der Dinge. Zur Beharrlichkeit musealer Ordnungen2016 •
Kaum ein anderer Museumstyp ist in den letzten Jahren so sehr im Umbruch wie das ethnologische Museum. So oder ähnlich zumindest lautet das Motto von Tagungen, Sammelbänden oder Aufsätzen, die sich mit ethnologischen Museen beschäftigen. In der Tat zeigt die mittlerweile Jahrzehnte währende Diskussion über das enge Verhältnis zwischen völkerkundlicher Museumspraxis und Kolonialismus auch im deutschsprachigen Raum Effekte. Wenn die kanadische Museumstheoretikerin Ruth B. Philipps in ihrer Analyse zweier nordamerikanischer Museen von einem »global movement toward a post-colonial museology powered by the anticolonial activism of Indigenous peoples in informal alliance with academic poststructuralist critics of museum representation« spricht, dann gilt dies mindestens auch insofern für hiesige Kontexte, als sich Museen zunehmend an diesen internationalen Debatten und Entwicklungen messen lassen müssen. Die Neueröffnungen der letzten Jahre zeigen, wenn auch auf sehr unterschiedliche Weise, wie stark das Reformbedurfnis auch aufseiten der Institutionen selbst ist.
In: Museum & Society, Vol. 17 (3), Nov 2019, 533-35.
Exhibition Review: Beyond Compare - Art from Africa in the Bode Museum, Berlin.2019 •
Objects from Indigenous and World Cultures: Conservation Newsletter N3
Interdisciplinary research on material culture and heritage of the Camëntsá PeopleThe collection of the Museum of Sibundoy (Colombia) consists mostly of objects that belong to the Camëntsá people. However, the exhibition reflects a great lack of knowledge and understanding of its culture and worldview. Likewise, in the same building, the archive contains a large variety of documents, books and photographs related to the Camëntsás. Yet, its potential has not been exploited. Therefore, we considered these two places to form the basis of our interdisciplinary research. For too long, indigenous peoples have been represented and addressed from a colonial perspective. Their art is primitive and exotic craftsmanship. In museums, they are exhibited as trophies, decontextualized and desacralized. Archaeology detached them from history and claimed their property. Not surprisingly, despite the country’s cultural and ethnic diversity, heritage management mechanisms in Colombia reflect western and colonial notions that exclude indigenous peoples. These mechanisms function as a tool that disengages communities from protecting and managing their own heritage, disrespecting their human and collective rights and disempowering them...
The Humboldt-Forum in the Berliner Schloss: Planning, Processes, Perspectives
Worlds in Motion. The Ethnologisches Museum Berlin at the Humboldt- Forum2013 •
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Wie weiter mit Humboldts Erbe? Ethnographische Sammlungen neu denken
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Conference Publication „Museum of Cultures, Wereldmuseum, Världskulturmuseet,… What else? – Positioning Ethnological Museums in the 21st Century“
Renaming ethnographic museums. Implications and strategies for the presentation of the collections: the example of the Humboldt Forum in BerlinWie weiter mit Humboldts Erbe? Ethnographische Sammlungen neu denken
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