From military museum to remembrance museum - Finding a balance (original) (raw)
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The representation of Suriname and Surinamese people in Dutch ethnological museums
The aim of the present work is to present how have Dutch curators dealt with the representation of Suriname’s multiplicity in the ethnological museums of the Netherlands.Through museums’ modes of representation, particular constructions are created of image making and concepts developing. Ethnological museums are imagined as spaces that represent the life of groups of people inhabiting specific areas. The history of Suriname and the cultures of its people are a fixture in Dutch museums of ethnology, due to the historical colonial link between the two countries of Suriname and the Netherlands. How do Dutch museums of ethnology represent the ‘otherness‘ of Suriname and Surinamese people? In order to answer this question, two major museums of ethnology in the Netherlands, the Volkenkunde and Tropen museums, are investigated as case studies of how Suriname’s history, culture and various ethnic groups are today represented in the museological institutions of Suriname’s former colonizer. In the analysis of these exhibitions I will concentrate on matters regarding the authority of the museum, the presentation of decolonization, the vocalization of the narratives, the concept of exclusion, and the involvement of source communities in curatorial processes. Through this analysis, this paper seeks to determine what types of narratives dominate the representation of Suriname in Dutch museums and the vision of Suriname and Surinamers offered to the public in these exhibitions. In addition, the case studies presented will investigate which histories are unspeakable and which are not, how museums suggest their authority on the subjects they present, and the extent to which the intellectual framework to which a museum is bonded influences its displays, and which is the period we are going through nowadays and how have the museums been adjusted accordingly. In discussing these aspects of museological representation, this research hopes to add to the discussion of how museums can best produce ethical representations.
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The intention of this paper is to explain the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde's (RMV) department of Conservation and Restoration's attempt to establish a policy for the storage, treatment and use of our collections which, in a practical way, respects the wishes of the communities from which the collections came. It will describe briefly the history of the collections and the way in which they were acquired, cared for and used. Current policies and practices relating to collection care and access will be discussed and compared with those of museums in countries with indigenous populations. The concerns raised by curators and others in the RMV about a policy for culturally sensitive objects have included the problem of repatriation and fear of the loss of substantial parts of the collection, the amount of work involved in identifying 'problem' objects, and the fact that there is little political or community pressure for such a policy. The issue of how to handle culturally sensitive material may be considered less of a priority in European ethnographic museums for a number of reasons but international communication and travel is increasingly frequent and external political pressure for a change in attitudes may eventually be felt. The Conservation and Restoration department wishes to bring about change within our own museum since we are directly concerned with the storage, treatment and display of sensitive as well as non-sensitive material and we feel an obligation to respect more than simply the physical form of objects under our care.
Decolonizing the Amsterdam Museum: A Work-in-Progress to Becoming a More Inclusive City Museum
ECHOES: European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities, 2019
This report was developed within the Horizon2020 project ECHOES: European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities as part of its work package 3 on ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ This work package conducts in-depth, qualitative, comparative analyses of three city museums, each representing distinct positions within colonial history. The Amsterdam Museum forms one of these three case studies. The aim of this second report on the Amsterdam Museum is twofold: to test the ECHOES modalities for practicing colonial heritage, and in doing so to identify how the Amsterdam Museum is practicing colonial heritage in an effort to decolonize. Thus, this report provides a case study of the Amsterdam Museum in order to discuss recent or current (de)colonial practices in the museum and to understand how these processes for change have taken and are taking place. Effectively, the report aims to illuminate decolonization as it is internally thought and worked through, as well as the externally visible results.
War Museums as Agonistic Spaces: Possibilities, Opportunities and Constraints
of the Director, Manuel Borja-Villel, in establishing 'a new model of what a museum should be' (102), yet a Director is only one actor in a wide array of stakeholders with a direct interest in and decision-making power over museums. Furthermore, Mouffe suggests that a museum has traditionally had an educational function -admittedly, for the 'construction of bourgeois hegemony' (101) -which has been supplemented by a consumerist function but which can nevertheless be re-established in a new counter-hegemonic guise. However, museums engage in a much wider range of functions than just as educators and entertainers. For instance, they participate in processes of memorialisation and reconciliation (Apsel 2016). They also often attempt to negotiate divisive memories of the past, both at the national and international levels. As Sharon Macdonald remarked, we are witnessing 'an internationalisation of how memory is performed ' (2016, 19). Museums also play a role in states' cultural diplomacy and soft power, an area where supranational institutions like the EU have started to become involved (Clarke, Cento Bull and Deganutti, 2017).
DECONSTRUCTING MUSEUMS AND MEMORIALS IN PRE- AND POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
This study examines the ways in which museums and memorials within South African society commemorate events of the past. Various examples of museums and memorials are chosen and identified according to the ways in which they embody postmodern or modern thought. Postmodern and modern museums are deconstructed according to various post-structural tenets so as to arrive at a broader understanding on how they are able to remain a continuously relevant and vital part of contemporary society.
2012
Results of the research programme ‘National Museums and National Identity, seen from an International and Comparative Perspective, c. 1780-1918’. Report of the two conferences held. The project was concluded with an international workshop in the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Wassenaar, Sept. 28- Oct. 2, 2011. Findings so far, conclusions and proposals for further research.
Open Cultural Studies
The study of colonialism and its legacies have mostly left the category of memory studies. However, for the colonised subject, what they experienced in the past inevitably forms their present and future discourse. This study focuses on how the museum’s visual order articulates colonial memory. By looking at the work of representation, in this context museum’s visual order, this study investigates how memory lives on through the circulation of colonial memory that the museum simulates. Museum’s visual order translates how colonial memory should be remembered and celebrated as public knowledge. Although research on how museums affect society knowledge have been part of both memory and museum studies, those two studies barely touch upon museums’ role in translating colonial memory in the postcolonial nation. Memory lives on through its circulation in media forms. However, premeditation and mediation are made possible through articulating social and cultural sites, in this case, museums...