Decolonization of Museums: Nations, Museums, Anti Colonialism and the Contemporary Moment

Museums are spaces of collection and representation. They are also keepers of knowledge. Museum collections and knowledge are constructed through distinctive power relations. There are of course different kinds of museums but the ethnographic museum has been one center piece of colonial collections. This course will examine how the collections of many museums were established. After this historical collection working through an genealogical method the course will then pay attention to the contemporary debates and practices of various attempts to decolonize various museums. In this regard we will pay attention to four museums: the Tropen Museum in Amsterdam; the British museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and to the National Art Gallery of South Africa.