Discomforting Heritage: Practices and discourses of dealing with objects from colonial contexts in anthropological museums

Anthropological museums find themselves in a state of crisis – for the last few years, they are faced with numerous urging challenges: On the one hand they see themselves confronted with an increasing number of claims for restitution of specific objects as well as with the need to clarify provenance of specific objects and their entire collections. On the other hand the poetics and politics of the representation of the „cultural other“ and its aesthetic practices become a target of multifaceted criticism.

As the locale for the representation of the “cultural other”, museums however, play a specific and crucial role in cultural and educational policy and thus are to be seen as central actors in the debates on participation in multicultural/transnational societies, racism, integration, and the politics of recognition.

A wide array of postcolonial criticism of anthropological museums is voiced by civic groups demanding a reappraisal of colonial history, the ethical treatment of objects from colonial contexts in museum collections, as well as critical reflection of prevalent colonialist epistemologies embedded in the structures of contemporary society.

The pilot study aims at a productive linkage of two different fields: application-oriented workshops and working groups facing the polyphony of the debate and processing the actual problems of collections, exhibition concepts, and the realization of the museums’ educational mandate, will be complemented by a theoretical and epistemological discussion and reflection of these discourses and practices. Separately, neither museum practice nor academic discourse in museum studies and social/cultural anthropology can adequately comprehend the subject matter. Furthermore, the topic necessitates a consolidation of museum and university. Therefore, the research questions are conceptualized in a wide-ranging manner to account for the extent and complexity of the subject matter.

The pilot study will facilitate initial results of research for further inquiry into the topic and will bring the disciplines and institutions involved into communication. This will allow for the multifaceted discussion of the topic and the reflection of its interrelations necessary to profoundly structure and focus the research questions, on the base of which an innovative funding application for a cooperative research project will be formulated.

To this end, two intertwined strands of interest are discerned:

1. Collections and objects: The challenge of provenance and collection-biography.
2. Heritage and missions of museums: The challenge of museums as depositories and mediators of knowledge against the background of the diversification of society.

The cooperation between academics from both University of Tübingen and Lindenmuseum Stuttgart will result in academic as well as application-oriented findings.

Further links:

http://www.lindenmuseum.de/service-menue/presse/schwieriges-erbe/