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Paper short abstract:

This introductory paper will pose questions concerning underlying assumptions and inherited ways of seeing that frame research, interpretation and display of African material in museums, including questions of future ownership, international collaboration and universalism.

Paper long abstract:

As the future of colonial era collections from Africa in European museums is increasingly debated, this paper will pose questions concerning the underlying assumptions and inherited ways of seeing that frame the research, interpretation and display of African material in museums. Reflecting on the recent Sarr-Savoy report on restitution, commissioned by French President Macron, this includes responses to questions of future ownership, international collaboration and universalism that have circulated in the press and online since December 2018.

A demand for the recognition of acts of colonial violence in the past, and their legacies in the present, lie central to these debates. This includes questions about the structural inequalities that frame ideas of legitimacy and appropriate justice. While moral and logistical debates about repatriation continue to rage above the curatorial level, this paper seeks to recognise some of the underlying colonial legacies and inequalities that continue to frame work with African collections today. This includes reflection on our own practice, and the embedded and inherited assumptions and vocabularies that permeate the academic background and professional training traditionally associated with museum curatorships. What are the assumptions underlying how collections are presented, and who for? What are the tensions that permeate ideas of legitimate expertise? Can anything be done to disrupt them?

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Paper short abstract:

This paper argues for a critical look at museum labelling strategies as perpetuating colonial concepts of Africa. And aims to put forward strategies to decolonise museum practice through labelling.

Paper long abstract:

As museums across Europe undertake to transform their displays of African material culture much concern has rightly been given to how a display can be used as a tool to explore colonial histories. But often the use of language in displays can fall by the wayside. In this paper I propose a rethinking of museum labels as subject to the geopolitics of knowledge. Prominent decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo's arguments for an understanding of knowledge as being tied to the geographic and the political offers a critical lens with which to unpack the labelling strategies of museums, and in particular their grasp of the cultural heterogeneity of Africa as a continent in constant flux. Impositions of the ethnographic present in labelling, however modernised the display, impacts on the viewers engagement with displays of African material culture. And for a museum to truly decolonise its displays the labelling must be viewed as essential to transformation. By studying the labelling strategies of African material culture at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the British Museum in London, museums employing vastly different display methodologies, I aim to show how language still based in empire perpetuates a view of a timeless homogenous Africa. I therefore argue that labelling strategies should become a main aspect of attempts at decolonisation and not supplementary to it.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the process of curating the V&A's display 'Maqdala 1868', which aims to encourage a dialogue about objects collected during historic periods of conflict and promote discussion about access to these collections in museums today.

Paper long abstract:

On 13 April 1868, the fortress of Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala was attacked by British troops seeking to secure the release of a number of European hostages being held captive by the Emperor. As the fortress was captured, Tewodros committed suicide and the British troops proceeded to remove a large quantity of treasure from Maqdala and the surrounding areas, much of which was brought back to England.

In April 2018, to mark the 150th anniversary of these events, the V&A opened 'Maqdala 1868', a display of around 20 objects connected to the British Expedition to Ethiopia. The display considers the role of these objects as witnesses to a significant and difficult period in Ethiopian and British history, and addresses some of the questions and controversies surrounding objects of this nature in UK museums. The display has been developed in consultation with the Ethiopian embassy in London and an advisory group from the Ethiopian community and historians, members of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church, members of the Anglo-Ethiopian society and representatives from the Rastafarian community.

This paper, presented by the curator of the display, will discuss the challenges and lessons learned from developing a display of this nature, which aims to encourage a dialogue about objects collected during historic periods of conflict and promote discussion about access to these collections in museums today.

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Paper short abstract:

This presentation will use the exhibition "African Scribes: Manuscript Culture of Ethiopia" held at the British Library in 2018 as a case study to explore the challenges displaying items that l sill evokes strong emotions among some people in Ethiopia

Paper long abstract:

The Magdala Manuscripts are among one of the highlights of the British Library's rich international collections of religious manuscripts. The manuscripts total 349 volumes and include works dating back to the 13th century. The manuscripts were all taken from the King Theodore's capital at Maqdala (መቅደላ) by a punitive expedition in 1867-68. After the fortress of Magdala was captured by the British troops, the soldiers looted hundreds of sacred and secular objects sold to raise prize-money for the troops. Most of the looted items were deposited in the British Museum (British Library), Victoria & Albert Museum and some of the manuscripts were acquired by the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University, the Royal Library of Windsor Castel and some still remain in private possession across Europe.

I was appointed curator for the Ethiopian collection at the British Library in 2016, this was the first post created since the foundation of the British Library. 2018 was the 150th anniversary of the 1868 Abyssinian Expedition, to mark the anniversary I curated the exhibition, "African Scribes: Manuscript Culture of Ethiopia," in the British Library's Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery. It was the first exhibit to be held at the UK devoted entirely to Magdala manuscripts collection, exploring the culture of a manuscript tradition which extends back to the early centuries of the Christian era.

I recognized this anniversary was an opportunity to debates the future of Ethiopian manuscripts collections in European museums.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper is about the historical and current display of the colonial Dryad collection and the continuing Eurocentric decorative arts perspective that permeates it display, interpretation and use from the 1930s until today.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the changing displays of African objects in the Dryad Collection, a colonial collection made by Harry Peace in the 1920s and 30s to educate UK teachers about 'handicraft' skills before and after entering the Leicester Museums Service. It will argue for the need of multiple voices from Africa and beyond and firm curatorial understanding and decision-power to address inequalities of representation, also in money-strapped museum services. After introducing this collection, its biography of use and display, before and after entering the museum, it will focus on the current display in the World Arts Gallery of New Walk Museum, as opened in 2006. The collection entered the museum service in 1969 as a school loans collection, only to be assessed into the permanent collection in 1988. In the redisplay of parts of the museum in 2006, the World Arts Gallery was opened, replacing partly former decorative arts displays. A Eurocentric decorative arts perspective was chosen for its interpretation and display with some disturbing implicit assumptions on artistic creativity in Africa's past without much understanding of the wide diversity of the African continent. Several attempts have been made in the past to address this gallery, including the current intervention of the Global Artists - The Whole World Paints project, and its problematic display is finally recognised by sr management. However, the proposed focus on local voices for a newly to-be-developed 'community gallery' and future choice to operate without curatorial staff might create serious challenges.

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Paper short abstract:

Can we justify an assumption of moral distance from processes prevalent at colonial times? Do the objectifying terms we use to narrate colonial histories hinder our ability to acknowledge continuities and parallels in today's world?

Paper long abstract:

In 1863 Alexandrine Petronella Francisca Tinne (1835 - 1869), Alexine for short, equipped an extravagant expedition in order to follow the Bahr El Ghazal River with the aim of penetrating as far as Azande country in the Southern Sudan. World Museum Liverpool contains artefacts from the present day South Sudan that artefacts that were acquired on the expedition. Alexine represented her expedition, as a disinterested exercise in pleasurable tourism, yet the expedition itself and the collections that resulted from it were only made possible through dependence on the organized violence and slavery that underpinned the expanding infrastructures of travel, translation and trade in the Bahr el-Ghazal region at the time. The corruption embedded in nineteenth-century globalized capitalism and the brutal methods then employed by merchants in ivory extraction, have their parallels today. Can we justify an assumption of moral distance from processes prevalent at those times? Do the objectifying terms we use to narrate colonial histories hinder our ability to acknowledge continuities and parallels in today's world?

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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses research on African collections in Sussex and Kent Museums, which is being conducted collaboratively with African curators and diaspora interest groups.What is the potential of collections assembled through different sorts of encounter - missionary, military and ethnographic?

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses research-in progress on three specific colonial-era African collections in Sussex and Kent Museums. The collections are the product of diverse colonial encounters - missionary, military and ethnographic - and are held in very different sorts of Museums. The research involves archival and oral historical research, digitization, re-interpretation and curating new displays both in situ and in African museums. We explore the findings of the first stage of research, focussed on the ways in which the collections are currently being used and interpreted. The research contributes to broader debates over 'decolonial' possibilities for African collections in various ways. First, through its methodology of co-production with African curators and African diaspora interest groups. Second, through the focus on small regional museums, inviting discussion of the impact of geographical location (rural, small town) and other constraints (legal, institutional, financial and other) in taking forward particular potentially 'decolonizing' strategies. The collections we focus on are: C19th objects collected from Botswana, donated to Brighton Museum by the LMS missionary Willoughby; artefacts from Sudan, collected during the C19th military campaigns against Mahdist forces in the Sudan, donated to the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham; and a large collection of artefacts from the Namibia/Angola borderlands collected by the Powell-Cotton sisters held in the Powell-Cotton Museum in Birchington-on-Sea.

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Paper short abstract:

I will analyze how early pro-restitution arguments were once detoured as colonial propaganda by focusing on José de Oliveira's public defense of DIAMANG, an Angolan diamond mining company. DIAMANG's Dundo Museum, a 'Museum of African Art' in Africa, was used to validate the late Portuguese empire.

Paper long abstract:

The restitution of African heritage that will be prompted by Sarr/Savoy's report is being heralded by activists, journalists, and academics as groundbreaking. Nevertheless, there is a 'pre-history' to this possibility which should be taken into consideration. The Portuguese empire is never mentioned throughout Sarr/Savoys' report. This lapse constitutes a considerable blind spot because the restitution of African pieces and the creation of a major 'African Museum' in colonial Angola, the 'Museu do Dundo' (1942-1974), was central to Portuguese imperial propaganda from the early 1950's onwards.

This paper will focus on the propagandistic efforts of José Osório de Oliveira (1900-1964), a Portuguese writer and public intellectual. José Oliveira was engaged in defending DIAMANG's public image in Europe (Belgium, France and Germany) and Brazil. DIAMANG (1917-1988) was a diamond mining company, with mixed Belgian, British, North American, Portuguese and South African capital, responsible for the brutal colonization of 52.000 km2 at the northeasternmost province of Angola.

Central to José Oliveira's apologetic efforts was the account of the creation of a 'Museum of African Art' in Africa, where the 'indigenas' (racialized populations) could be taught about their own cultures and admire 'masterpieces' - theirs and those of other 'major' African civilizations. In his pamphlets and lectures, José Oliveira mentions other European intellectuals who defended either the restitution of African pieces, or the creation of museums 'in situ', as a way of legitimizing the colonial situation.

We must prepare for our exciting 'post-restitution' future by confronting their legacy and arguments.