Author:

Keywords:

AfricaMuseum, colonial collections, colonial past, museology, restitution, Royal Museum for Central Africa

Abstract:

The underexposed ethnographic collections of Western-European national museums of world cultures are at the forefront of public debate. Most of the ethnographic objects of colonial collections are accessioned more than a century ago in former ethnographic museums, now referred to as museums of world cultures. By unifying their universal claims with relativistic curatorial approaches, museums of world cultures, firstly, aim at building bridges with heritage communities in former metropoles, and in some cases with source communities. Secondly, they play, in light of the growing decolonization debates, into current restitution claims with the development of juridical inspired guidelines for claims of ethnographic objects from colonial collections. This presentation seeks to outline this twofold practice of national museums of world cultures with a focus on the Royal Museum of Central-Africa, currently known as the Africamuseum. These practices reveal a continuing and underlining object-oriented politics within museums of world cultures. Can this object-driven approach be challenged by current restitution debates? Beyond new collection taxonomies, digitized collections, long-term loanings, travelling exhibitions, juridical principles on collections, the object-oriented approach in the Africamuseum is challenged by looking at de-materialized heritage production.