Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of activist actors from 'societies of origin' for establishing new modes of dealing with the coloniality of ethnographic collections in Berlin. It discusses the ambiguity of the emerging configurations as all collaborations depend on institutional resources and goodwill.

Paper long abstract:

Recent public debates on the coloniality of ethnographic collections – and the push for restitution – have had a transformative impact on anthropological museums in Northern Europe. In particular, these dynamics have been aligned with the reformulation of institutional imaginaries which seek to involve 'communities' and 'societies of origin' in exploring the histories and determining the future of ethnographic objects. At the same time, these institutional openings have become a window of opportunity for individual and collective actors from those contexts from which these objects have been taken to shape this process actively – with public pressure ensuring that their concerns and priorities are acknowledged in the resulting political and/or institutional decisions. In this paper, I explore the ambiguous openings that the public push for, and the institutional aspiration toward, transforming museum practices and collaboration in the wake of the promise of decolonization have created in the case of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. By focusing on recent instances of collaboration with communities and societies of origin, most prominently the campaign for returning the Ngonnso’ statue to Cameroon, I show that activist actors and groups have taken an active role in transforming object-related representations and practices in museums themselves. At the same time, the emerging configurations are shaped by ambiguity, as more consistent ways of dealing with the demands and expectations of the involved persons and groups are being caught up in institutional hierarchies and contradictions as well as the continued dependency of all collaborations on institutional resources and goodwill.