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Working Through Colonial Collections: An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin
In this Book
Additional Information
Working Through Colonial Collections: An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin
Book
Margareta von Oswald
2022
Published by:
Leuven University Press
Table of Contents
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
summary
Reckoning with colonial legacies in Western museum collections
What are the possibilities and limits of engaging with colonialism in ethnological museums? This book addresses this question from within the Africa department of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. It captures the Museum at a moment of substantial transformation, as it prepared the move of its exhibition to the Humboldt Forum, a newly built and contested cultural centre on Berlin’s Museum Island. The book discusses almost a decade of debate in which German colonialism was negotiated, and further recognised, through conflicts over colonial museum collections.
Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork examining the Museum’s various work practices, this book highlights the Museum’s embeddedness in colonial logics and shows how these unfold in the Museum’s everyday activity. It addresses the diverse areas of expertise in the Ethnological Museum – the preservation, storage, curation, and research of collections – and also draws on archival research and oral history interviews with current and former employees.
Working through Colonial Collections
unravels the ongoing and laborious processes of reckoning with colonialism in the Ethnological Museum’s present – processes from which other ethnological museums, as well as Western museums more generally, can learn.
With a preface by Sharon Macdonald.
Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Table of Contents
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Cover
pp. 1
Half title
pp. 2-3
Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
pp. 4-7
A visual introduction
pp. 8-43
Acknowledgements
pp. 44-45
Foreword Sharon Macdonald
pp. 46-47
Introduction
pp. 48-75
Chapter One. Learning about German colonialism: On memory, activism, and the Humboldt Forum
pp. 76-89
Chapter Two. Being affected: A methodological approach to working through colonial collections
pp. 90-113
Chapter Three. Expanding collection histories: The\xE2\x80\xAFmuseum as peopled organisation
pp. 114-155
Chapter Four. Troubling epistemologies: On the endurance of colonial discrimination
pp. 156-181
Chapter Five. Managing plethora: Caring for colonial collections
pp. 182-199
Chapter Six. Researching provenance: The\xE2\x80\xAFpolitics of writing history
pp. 200-217
Chapter Seven. Probing materiality: Collections as amalgams of their histories
pp. 218-235
Chapter Eight. Repairing representations: Curatorial cultures and change in the Ethnological Museum
pp. 236-321
Additional Information
ISBN
9789461664242
Related ISBN(s)
9789461664259, 9789462703100
DOI
10.1353/book.103603
MARC Record
OCLC
1348922413
Launched on MUSE
2022-10-28
Language
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY
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