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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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Bansoa Sigam
10/05/21
Collecting on Women in Gabon during the Colonial Period:
The Case of the Akure Metal Necklaces
Ethnographic collections are seldom analyzed in terms of gender, yet this prism of analysis allows for a renewed consideration of collections that have often been viewed almost exclusively in masculine terms. By focusing on a corpus of metal necklaces, often referred to as torque[1] in the inventories, this paper sheds light on a particular aspect […]
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Victoria Phiri Chitungu
10/05/21
From the Cave Man to Craftsmanship; a gendered conversation:
The case of ethnographic displays in Zambian Museums
Zambia, like most African countries in Southern Africa, was under British colonial rule for 74 years, during which time the British promoted and imposed their way of seeing the world.[1] Museums as public forums were one of the platforms through which the colonialists peddled this imposition.[2] The histories of ethnographic collections bear the brunt of […]
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Viola König
10/05/21
Invisible.
Female Collectors in colonial and postcolonial North and Central America
Ethnographic collections from the 19th and early 20th centuries were evidently almost exclusively made by men. But what about women? Were they not involved, or were they just not explicitly mentioned in the inventories? In fact, women created their own collections. However, the inventories do not necessarily reflect their names, even less their specific roles. […]
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Godwin Kornes
10/05/21
The ambivalence of gender:
The collector, ethnographer and colonial women’s movement activist, Antonie Brandeis
Several museums in Germany and the USA hold collections of material culture and photography from Micronesia, gathered by Antonie Thawka Brandeis née Ruete (1868–1945) during her stay on the Marshall Islands in the years 1898–1904.[1] She accompanied her husband, Eugen Brandeis, who served as imperial governor of the Marshall Islands for two terms from 1898–1906. […]
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Richard Hölzl
10/05/21
Gendered Objects – Gendered Collecting:
How Colonial Missionary Masculinity Has Structured Ethnographic Collecting
Missionaries were prolific collectors of ethnographic objects for Western museums. Yet the characteristics of missionaries’ collecting and knowledge are rarely given sufficient scrutiny. My aim is to demonstrate why examining missions and their characteristic masculinities is important for understanding colonial ethnographic collecting. These masculinities inscribed themselves into collecting and collections. Why masculinities? Because the religiously […]
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Ella Finney
10/05/21
Domesticity and the Practice of Anthropology:
Cara David’s ‘Ethnographic’ Collections from the Funafuti Coral Reef Boring Expedition of the Royal Society, 1897
Histories of ‘ethnographic’ collecting often focus on the transactional relationship between collector and subject, ignoring gender and how it shapes knowledge-making projects. In June 1897, Cara (Caroline) David accompanied her husband Tannatt William Edgeworth David, Professor of geology at the University of Sydney, on the second of three ambitious geological expeditions to the atoll of […]
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Michi KnechtMiM Workshop SeriesHelen Verran
04/05/21
To ‘Decenter’, You Need an Ethics of Dissensus
What does the idea of “decentering” ethnographic museums entail from the perspective of an empirical philosopher, STS-researcher and postcolonial knowledge worker? Helen Verran talks with Michi Knecht about acknowledging incompatibilities beyond universalist claims and “objects before classification” as starting points. Museums, as potential sites of the multiverse, need to seriously cultivate a culture of dissent […]
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Bénédicte SavoyNanette Snoep
23/04/21
Africa’s Fight for Its Art
A Conversation between Bénédicte Savoy and Nanette Snoep.
In her latest book “Africa’s Fight for its Art. Geschichte einer Postkolonialen Niederlage” (History of a Post-Colonial Defeat), Bénédicte Savoy, the French art historian and expert in the field of restitution, traces the struggle of African states for the return of their artworks stolen by the European colonial rulers, which has now lasted over 50 […]
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Dan HicksCiraj RassoolMiM Workshop Series
30/03/21
Towards the Anticolonial Museum
Dan Hicks and Ciraj Rassool talk about the failure of ethnographic museums in the Global North and the need to rethink them in anticolonial terms. Together with Nanette Snoep and Nina Möntmann, they explore the notions of white infrastructures and necrographies that Dan emphasizes in his latest book, The Brutish Museums. This interview is part […]
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Kwame Opoku
23/03/21
Will Provenance Research Delay Restitution of Looted African Artefacts?
There have been in recent months many references to provenance research whenever there have been discussions on restitution of looted African artefacts that are in Western museums and institutions. The impression often arises as if provenance research and restitution were inextricably linked. However, some supporters of provenance research make it clear that the two are […]
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