Statements

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Matthew Vollgraff
17/03/21
A Response to Horst Bredekamp
In an op-ed entitled “Fanatics of Purity”, published on March 8 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the prominent art historian Horst Bredekamp — a founding director of the Humboldt Forum, and a director of the international research group of which I am a member – declares “postcolonialism” and “political correctness” to be nothing less […]
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09/07/19
“Stolen from Africa?”: Statement by the Basel Workshop on Namibian Cultural Heritage in Switzerland
by the Basel Workshop „Stolen from Africa? Restitution of Namibian Cultural Heritage in Switzerland“, 8 May 2019, organised by the Centre of African Studies of the University of Basel and the Basler Afrika Bibliographien in collaboration with the Swiss Society of African Studies and the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences Colonial heritage and, […]
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06/05/19
Decolonising requires dialogue, expertise and support
The Heidelberg Statement
Statement approved on the occasion of the 2019 Annual Conference of the Directors of Ethnographic Museums in German Speaking Countries, in Heidelberg: Within the German speaking area, more than twenty public ethnographic and world cultures museums, university museums and collections, as well as the ethnography departments of composite museums, conserve a substantial number of collections […]
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Larissa Förster
23/10/18
Call for reviews of the “Guidelines on Dealing with Collections from Colonial Contexts” issued by the German Museums Association in May 2018
The colonial legacies of German museums have been discussed intensely over the past few years – also in this blog. In September 2016 the German Museums Association established a working group that is looking into the issue of “collections from colonial contexts” and developing guidelines for the care of such collections. In May 2018 the […]
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Anna BrusLarissa FörsterMichi KnechtVerena RodatusEhler VossMartin Zillinger
03/10/17
How to move on with Humboldt’s legacy?
Re-thinking ethnographic collections
The Humboldt Forum, which is currently being built in the middle of Berlin within the walls of the reconstructed Prussian Berlin Palace and will be hosting the collections of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin from 2018, has become a focal point for debates on these matters in Germany. With the withdrawal of art historian Bénédicte Savoy […]
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