The dissertation is focused on three interrelated aspects: 1) the development of a decolonial theoretical framework and collaborative research methodology with the Kamëntšá people centred on the... Show moreThe dissertation is focused on three interrelated aspects: 1) the development of a decolonial theoretical framework and collaborative research methodology with the Kamëntšá people centred on the respect for Kamëntšá ethics, principles and social norms, and the consequent reconstruction, revitalization and dignification of Kamëntšá knowledge, arts, spirituality and notions of time and space; 2) the history and colonization processes of the Kamëntšá people and Uaman Tabanok, its ancestral lands, with a specific emphasis on the work of the Capuchin missionaries, particularly their concept of enculturation and how it transformed and resignified Kamëntšá culture and religion using its own arts, narratives and rituals which were in harmony with Christianity; and 3) the concept of “cultural heritage” and the role of academic disciplines, research practices, government institutions and cultural policies in the perpetuation of colonialism through the appropriation, interpretation, control and resignification of the objects, monuments and cultures of Indigenous peoples, and their consequent contribution to maintaining inequality, racism and historical social injustices. Show less
The Spirit of Matter discusses excessive objects: those things that move people but whose existence is often denied by modern wishful thinking about ‘mind over matter’, and that things are... Show moreThe Spirit of Matter discusses excessive objects: those things that move people but whose existence is often denied by modern wishful thinking about ‘mind over matter’, and that things are supposedly ‘dead’. Such wishful thinking can be traced back to Protestant Christian influences, that were secularized in the course of modern and colonial history. A range of excessive objects – exhibits of human remains or live people, fetishes, objects in a Catholic museum, exotic photographs, commodities, and computers – demonstrate a subordinate modern consciousness about powerful objects and their ‘life’. If humanity wants to survive current planetary socio-ecological crises, it should learn from its humility towards both artefacts and non-human things. Show less
Besides the official care for cultural heritage on Java, which in the 1920s and 1930s was under the responsibility of the Dutch Archeological Service, different attitudes towards heritage are... Show moreBesides the official care for cultural heritage on Java, which in the 1920s and 1930s was under the responsibility of the Dutch Archeological Service, different attitudes towards heritage are identified of which three are discussed more elaborately using three typical case studies. It will become clear how for the local population on Java statues and sites were still places of worship where offerings were made and rituals performed. This use of heritage often clashed with repairs undertaken by the Archeological Service, for instance, for constructional reasons, but which in practice sealed off the heritage for local people for whom it was a site of veneration still. On the other hand, local people sometimes also deliebrately destroyed heritage such as statues who would have had a negative agency. This chapter aims to contribute to how such responses and attitudes should be explained and what questions need to be addressed further to understand the meaning of cultural heritage for the people living nearby heritage sites to whom they are more than reminders of an ancient past. Show less
This multidisciplinary volume brings together scholars and writers who try to come to terms with the histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean. The volume discusses a variety... Show moreThis multidisciplinary volume brings together scholars and writers who try to come to terms with the histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean. The volume discusses a variety of qualitative data on the experience of being a slave in order to recover ordinary lives and, crucially, to place this experience in its Asian local context. Building on the rich scholarship on the slave trade, this volume offers a unique perspective that embraces the origin and afterlife of enslavement as well as the imaginaries and representations of slaves rather than the trade in slaves itself. Show less
This dissertation approaches collections of Andean mummies in European national and university museums as the focus to understand the relationship between objects, documents, and the practice of... Show moreThis dissertation approaches collections of Andean mummies in European national and university museums as the focus to understand the relationship between objects, documents, and the practice of collecting in the period from 1850 to 1930. Over 200 mummies, kept by 18 different museums in Western European countries were analyzed.The comparative examination of these mummified human remains and their associated documentation kept by the museums has highlighted the importance of considering the process of formation of collections.This research details the changes that some of these collections have undergone over the years, and the importance of using interdisciplinary approaches within archaeology, including museum archaeology, physical anthropology and paleo-imaging, to understand them. A discussion on the ethical treatment of human remains in archaeological practice and museum collections is undertaken as an important framework for the information presented on the dissertation.Looking at timeframes, actors and places of collecting, as well as the information recorded about all three by museums, can result in vital information not only about the process of collecting itself, but also about the motivations and contacts between source countries and the European repositories of these remains. Show less
The starting point for this study is that for a large part of their existence, the paintings belonging to this genre have primarily been seen as export articles without intrinsic artistic value.... Show moreThe starting point for this study is that for a large part of their existence, the paintings belonging to this genre have primarily been seen as export articles without intrinsic artistic value. This fact, and the fact that they cannot be unequivocally classified, explains why this genre has, for a long time, not received the attention it deserves. The label ‘exportware’, though, does not exclude that these paintings can also be approached as ‘art’. They have an historic, an artistic, and a material value, which, as a result of their representative and social functions, over time formed an artistic phenomenon in its own right, and a shared cultural visual repertoire with its own (Eurasian) character. In order to draw conclusions about the appreciation of the extensive and historically valuable eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese export paintings in Dutch public collections, this multidisciplinary research follows the entire trajectory of this specific transcultural painting genre in sixteen museums, from the production two centuries ago to the current position. At work in this trajectory are mechanisms between people, institutions and the paintings, which increase or, indeed, diminish the appreciation of this time- and place-specific art. Show less
Nubia, located in what is now the northern part of the Republic of the Sudan and Upper Egypt, is among the most excavated corners of the world. Here, for over a century, there have been ongoing... Show moreNubia, located in what is now the northern part of the Republic of the Sudan and Upper Egypt, is among the most excavated corners of the world. Here, for over a century, there have been ongoing large-scale archeological rescue operations spurred on by an extensive program of damming the Nile, which is leading to the gradual disappearance of the territory under water. If this trend is not reversed, museums will become ‘the only and sole alternative’ venues where Nubian culture can still be admired and understood. The objective of this research is to analyze how, as a concept and archeological presence, ‘Nubia’ has been dealt with so far, and with what battles it has to contend now that museums are changing their identity and trying to adapt themselves to the political trend of this century which is all about conflict of identity. The ‘analytical tour’ of Nubian collections, presented in this research, includes museums within and beyond the boundaries of Nubia. It sheds light on how Nubia has been understood, created and silenced in the most important venues and smaller contexts and if and how modern Nubians are involved in this process Show less
The Rhetoric of Two Museums and the Representation and Canonization of Modern Art (1935-1975): The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York Museums of modern art have... Show moreThe Rhetoric of Two Museums and the Representation and Canonization of Modern Art (1935-1975): The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York Museums of modern art have determined the course of modern art history. Their contributions to the representation and canonization of modern art have been shaped by how they have presented art in their (temporary) exhibitions and publications. They have provided the public with a verbal and visual story of modern art. In order to provide greater insight into the process of the creation of the museums__ stories, this book uses __rhetoric__ to deconstruct their stories of modern art. Rhetoric is used as an analytical model to investigate the communications of modern art museums. Their goals are to communicate their stories and to persuade their various audiences of the importance of modern art. The principal strategies of classical rhetoric ethos, pathos and logos are used as the main entries for this book. Two influential museums are compared: the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam). The differences in their goals, financing, audiences and positions in their societies, have determined their different persuasive strategies. By analyzing these museums as orators and deconstructing their verbal and visual rhetoric, the process of representation and canonization is clarified. Show less
The 1850s, the discovery of new regions of Africa gradually brought the western world knowledge of the African peoples inhabiting them, and of their cultures. Increasing attention was given to... Show moreThe 1850s, the discovery of new regions of Africa gradually brought the western world knowledge of the African peoples inhabiting them, and of their cultures. Increasing attention was given to objects used by these Africans in their everyday life, and the relatively short period from 1855 to c. 1880 saw a remarkable development in this respect. Soon, it was impossible to imagine travel books without their illustrations showing articles of use from the newly opened West Central African region, and ethnographical museums had begun collecting these objects. Dutch museums also participated in these acquisitions. This research describes the growth of ethnographic interest as shown in international accounts of travel in foreign parts. The fascination with indigenous objects as described in travel accounts - especially where cult statues were concerned - constitutes a gauge of the extent to which people were becoming interested in the ‘morals and customs’ of African peoples. Then follows a description of the Dutch museums’ policy on the acquisition and documentation of objects, which was partly based on the travel accounts mentioned above.We shall recount how, during the last days of the slave trade, many thousands of objects flowed into Dutch museums from the extensive coastal region of West Central Africa. After the Colonial Museum in Haarlem and the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities (Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden) in The Hague had led the way in 1876 and 1877 respectively, halls and depots in the ethnological museums in Leiden, Rotterdam (the Diergaarde) and Amsterdam (‘Artis’) were gradually filled with these African ethnographic items, the collection and description of which had begun to be carried out in a scholarly manner. At that time virtually all the international accounts written about travels in Africa were in the possession of the Dutch ethnological museums. The attention of museum curators was thus drawn to these ethnographic items, and on several occasions curators utilised the descriptions and illustrations published in the travel accounts as guide books for their own procedures. The collections included objects that illustrate daily life: household articles, hand weapons, throwing weapons, chiefs’ headdresses, masks for members of secret societies, (gun)powder holders, ornaments, bags, footwear, decorated ivory derived from elephant and hippopotamus teeth, and especially various cult statues. The Afrikaansche Handels Vereeniging (AHV, the African Trading Association), later to become the Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handels Vennootschap (NAHV, the New African Trading Society) after 1880, played a key role in the transportation of these objects. With the assistance of good will from the boards of directors for the AHV and NAHV, the museums were successful in winning company agents to their collecting cause, and these agents tried their best in far-away Africa to gain a name as donators of objects to the Dutch museums. While a good deal of distaste for, and criticism of the ‘morals and customs’ of ‘the negro’ was still to be read in the scholarly literature (which at that time included travel accounts), the passion for collecting took possession of the ethnographic museums. The correspondence we encounter in museum archives provides a picture of the competition between institutes, occasionally engaging in skirmishes on the subject of collecting objects deriving from this African heritage. These disputes concerned African objects that appeared to run counter to the westerners’ view that ‘the negro’ civilization was inferior to their own. However, there was no conflict between this underestimation and the passion for collecting. The last section of this investigation concentrates on the views of that period on the way in which these West Central ethnographic objects could be fitted into a survey of more or less evolved ‘races, species and peoples’. The main question here concerns the extent to which indigenous objects, and especially cult statues (minkisi) collected in the West Central coastal area, were supposed to support the western belief that Africans were less civilized in comparison with other ‘races’. With the aid of sources deriving from the history of these Dutch collections, we will show the way in which these objects were used in order to demonstrate the ‘African’s’ superstition and lack of artistic sensibility, and thus his lower level of civilization. The ethnographic museums in Leiden, Rotterdam and Amsterdam exhibited their African collections together with the clear message that African material culture represented an inferior civilization. Nonetheless there was also space for a certain value placed on some objects, where these were regarded as rare and exotic. Just as in previous centuries, objects made of basketwork or decorated ivory were prized as beautifully made and beautifully shaped curiosities. Other research was needed to support and underpin this view of ‘inferiority’. For example, the State Ethnographic Museum in Leiden (which later became the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) collected ‘negro skulls’ as well as articles of use, in the interest of craniology with its measurements of skulls, a wide-spread branch of physical anthropology in that period. The results of these investigations were intended to link the physical characteristics of ‘the negro’ with the ethnographic collections, in order to show what ‘the negro’ represented in the cultural sense as well. Show less
