Articles

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H. Glenn Penny
18/09/18
Ethnological Collections and Municipal Displays
On September 14, 2018, Manuela Andreoni and Ernesto Londoño published an essay in the New York Times on the recent destruction of artifacts and records at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. They titled it: “Loss from Brazil fire felt like a ‘new Genocide’.” Their first major point was that this museum had housed […]
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Silvy Chakkalakal
24/07/18
Unbearable simultaneity
On the correlation between mobile objects and people*
*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. […]
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Faruzan AbulimitiArmin BestvaterKatharina FunkTobias GaschlerLea-Elisa JakobVanessa JüttnerCan KapcikAaron KlingerFelix LeikaufMarvin MarcksGesa MarxsenYosé-Gré ReendersKatharina SchrammCheyenne Thiel
10/07/18
Durch den Tunnel der Kritik zum Weitblick
Currently, this contribution exists only in the German version, translation under way.
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Sarah van Beurden
19/06/18
The pitfalls of ‘shared heritage’
As a historian of museum institutions on the African continent, and as someone who has chronicled the histories of earlier disputes around restitution, I have been following the growing debates around the reinstallation of European museums with great interest. They are, at least in part, responsible for the recent revival of debates around the western […]
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Andrea Scholz
29/05/18
Das Wissen der Anderen in der Provenienzforschung
Currently, this contribution exists only in the
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Fritz W. Kramer
22/05/18
Anthropological Collections
Not an apology but an amendment
Sometimes it needs a sensation to draw public and media attention to a problem that otherwise only experts are concerned with. Emmanuel Macron succeeded in doing so when on November 27th 2017 in Ouagadoudou he declared his intention to create “the conditions for a temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa within the […]
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Leonor Faber-Jonker
15/05/18
Touching history
Objects as witnesses, witnesses of objects
In Berlin, history is tangible. It strikes me every time I visit the city. Empty plots, fading shop signs, and crumbling facades bear witness to the city’s tumultuous past. Monuments bear scars. The bronze reliefs of the Siegessäule (moved to its current location by the Nazis) are pockmarked with 1945 bullet holes. After Germany’s reunification, […]
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Christian Kravagna
08/05/18
The museum of liberation
An excursion into the early history of reconquest
“Nothing is more galvanizing than the sense of a cultural past. This at least the intelligent presentation of African Art will supply to us.” – Alain Locke, A Note on African Art, Opportunity, May 2, 1924 In his forward to the catalogue for the exhibition Blondiau – Theatre Arts Collection of Primitive African Art, which was […]
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Monica Juneja
01/05/18
What do we know when we see?
Or how can museums of “the world” renew cultural geographies? A view from the State Museums of Dresden
Museums that have built collections of “world cultures”, known to us today as either ethnological or the more encompassing, encyclopedic museums, have not ceased to be the subject of impassioned debates. Even a cursory glance through the diverse and insightful contributions to this blog give us a sense of the poles along which deliberations over […]
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Rainer Hatoum
17/04/18
“Dialogue” and “Collaboration” with “Source Communities”
Personal reflections on the theme of "common heritage"*
*Translated by Jonathan DeVore and Julian Schmischke Ethnological museums and collections occupy a special position within the museum landscape. One of the reasons for this is that many contemporary descendants of the communities from which the collections originate seek feedback from these collections. In this respect, these institutions have a new, particular user group, the […]
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