Paper short abstract:

Most ethnographic collections and museums in Europe have high expectations as to their role in promoting intercultural harmony and understanding despite the fact that they carry heavy colonial heritages. This paper investigates the strategies employed in attempts at achieving such a transformation.

Paper long abstract:

On the website of The International Network of Ethnographic Museums (RIME) the following description of the current and previous state of ethnographic museums could be found:

"The end of colonisation fundamentally transformed the relationships between the peoples who produced the objects in ethnographic museum collections and their former colonisers in the West. The need for ethnography museums to reassess their role has been further dramatised by the political upheavals in some former colonies, and by the major flows of migration to Europe. Ethnographic museums in the West now have the opportunity to use the accumulated wealth of their collections to provide the public with the keys to understanding other cultures as well as their own."

This paper investigates the strategies and practices employed in the attempts at creating transformations from colonially informed collections and exhibitions to promotion of intercultural dialogues through the 20th and 21st century.