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14/09/20
 
About DCNtR:
DECOLONIZING COLLECTIONS – NETWORKING TOWARDS RELATIONALITY   Decolonizing – This blog is aimed at decentering the debate on colonial and ethnographic collections, archives, and museums. Its goal is to rethink colonial knowledges and dominant epistemic practices in an attempt to undo them. We seek to destabilize center-periphery divisions by providing a platform for diverse voices […]
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19/05/26
Debates
DCNtR Debates Series

Coming soon

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Anne Haeming
04/05/26
Imperial Lives: Biographic Approaches as Decolonial Practice
No. 5 of our boasblogs papers series has been published
We are happy to announce the publication of No. 5 of our boasblogs papers series, edited by Anne Haeming entitled Imperial Lives: Biographic Approaches as Decolonial Practice The publication is based on the international conference “Imperial Lives” which aimed to discuss new biographic approaches to research and storytelling as a part of decolonial practice for […]
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Punny Kabir
05/05/25
The Silent Strangers in the Eternal City
The Monumental Barrier Between Rome and Its Migrants
“I see the Colosseum daily on my way to work, but I’ve never been inside… I took some pictures of me with it in the background to send home, it is very old, very huge and beautiful with the lights in the evening… But I don’t know what it is about.” Dipu Sheikh (pseudonym). Dipu […]
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Ciraj RassoolBénédicte Savoy
05/12/23
2018–2023: 5 Years of Making and Debating Restitution
Cologne Crossroads Conversation No. 1 with Bénédicte Savoy (Berlin) and Ciraj Rassool (Cape Town)
The conversation will be bilingual (English/German). Watch it live on December 6, 2023 at 6pm here: For over 100 years, societies in the Global South have been fighting for the return of confiscated and looted cultural objects and human remains that are stored and researched in Europe. The speech by French President Emmanuel Macron in […]
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Bernard Mueller
12/10/23
The Astonishing Fate of Soliman al-Halabi (1777-1800)
Or the Request for Post-Mortem Naturalization of Kléber's Assassin Formulated by the Abounaddara Collective
The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on the restitution of looted property in a colonial context. As such, it is one of a series of articles on claims for restitution, the atypical nature of which sheds light on the symbolic dimension activated by these cases, whether involving human remains or […]
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24/01/23
Thinking About the Archive & Provenance Research
The Boasblogs Paper No. 4 is Now Available Online
In the debate about the colonial past of ethnographic museums in Western Europe, provenance research has emerged as a central method for researching colonial legacies and addressing museums’ need for decolonisation. Researchers have started to investigate colonial era collections systematically to create a sound basis for dealing with these collections in the future. As a […]
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Lindiwe Breuer
01/11/22
Der „erste deutsche Elefant“: eine Geschichte der Extraktion
Nicht nur ethnologische, medizinhistorische und geographische Logiken des „Sammelns“ unter kolonialen Bedingungen werden gegenwärtig neu untersucht und in ihrer scheinbaren „Normalität“ dezentriert. Auch die Sammlungen von Naturkundemuseen, Tierparks und Zoos werden kritisch befragt.[1] Im folgenden Beitrags wird die Geschichte eines Elefanten aus der damaligen deutschen Kolonie Kamerun skizziert, der auf Bestellung des damaligen Zoo-Direktors Ludwig […]
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Wan wo Layir
18/08/22
What I Have Learned from my Ban from the Humboldt Forum
First, let me attempt to explain why I received a museum ban. Indeed, a sensible decision that many have made has been to avoid going into museums completely, that is also a decision that I dabbled with for some time. Though to call it a decision would imply that my not going was a matter […]
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Carl Deußen
01/08/22
„Our Colonial Heritage”
An Exhibition Review of the Tropenmuseum´s New Permanent Exhibition
Entering the Tropenmuseum always fills me with a mixed feeling of awe and discomfort. The grandiose imperial architecture of its central hall has lost nothing of its power to instil these emotions in the visitor coming face to face with what was once the Koloniaal Museum of the Dutch Empire. Since then, the museum’s contents […]
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Lotte Arndt
05/07/22
The Invention of Pest Control in Museums
Book Review of Schädlingsbekämpfung in Museen. Wirkstoffe und Methoden am Beispiel des Ethnologischen Museums Berlin. 1887–1936 by Helene Tello.
  Helene Tello: Schädlingsbekämpfung in Museen. Wirkstoffe und Methoden am Beispiel des Ethnologischen Museums Berlin. 1887–1936, Köln Wien, Böhlau Verlag, 2022. ISBN Print: 9783412524609— ISBN E-Book: 9783412524616 Coming from cultural studies, I started to approach the chemical history of conservation in museum collections by looking at it as a cultural technique. I was intrigued by […]
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Anna Brus
18/06/22
Iconoclash in the GRASSI Museum
Seeking publicity for an international museum crisis by way of a damaged pedestal
The current debate surrounding colonial collections has unleashed a veritable feud in and around ethnological museums, which pits reformers and preservationists against one another, seemingly irreconcilably. In feuilletons, newsletters, and mailing lists, voices are growing ever shriller, and the means employed ever harsher, as peers and colleagues attack each another and seek to mobilize audiences […]
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