Decolonizing the Museum: Germany and Beyond

Catalog description

This course addresses the intersections of colonialism, archaeology, and museums with a particular focus on Berlin collections. Even though the nineteenth-century German Empire did not act as a colonial power on the same scale as the United Kingdom and France, traces of colonialism appear throughout museum collections. Entanglements between Germany under Empire Wilhelm II (r. 1888- 1918) and the Ottoman Empire brought opportunities for German archaeologists to conduct excavations on sites such as Tell Halaf, Pergamon, and Samarra ranging from the Assyrian to the Islamic period. In Berlin, multiple institutions holding relevant collections have begun the long process of dealing with their colonial pasts. Projects are underway to make collections widely accessible online, to reconfigure exhibition concepts in ways that address colonial acquisitions, to expand provenance research, and to respond to requests for restitutions. Thus, Berlin is an ideal setting for a course that addresses the relationship between museum collections, archaeology, and colonialism. The reconfiguration of museums in the decades since German Reunification has led to increased attention to new exhibition spaces for permanent collections, and critical engagement with collections' pasts. Practices of archaeological excavation and the exportation of finds, of collecting, and of researching and representing provenance and colonial pasts can be examined firsthand in museum spaces.