ICOM Europe

ICOM Africa

ICOM Arab

Italian Ministry of Culture DIVA

ICOM Italy

ICOFOM, SUSTAIN, MPR, AVICOM, ICOM WGD

Debates involving museums and decolonization practices are ongoing and evolving, taking into account the global consequences of colonialism in contemporary societies, including social and economic inequalities, the marginalization of certain populations, ongoing threats to indigenous peoples and their traditional lands, institutional racism, and sexism in all their forms. Decolonization, in its many uses by museums and curators, is a practice and an effort that sits within a continuum - which in turn looks different in different parts of the world - addressing various difficult histories related to political relations and processes of the Empire formation, and resulting in various experimental solutions. But one general thing we must recognize from the current debate is the fact that "decolonization" is about probing into the systems used, the destruction wrought and remedying, by telling the difficult truth of its ruthlessness. Restitution involves not only a material (and legal) transfer of colonial objects, but also a spiritual return of identity knowledge that had been taken off. More significantly, for people claiming their right to memory, restitution means a reconnection with history: a reconnection that requires their collaboration with the institutions that narrate the colonial past, by engaging in collaborative practices to reconnect with the material traces of their past that are currently held by European museums in order to use and/or rediscover traditional knowledge, and engaging in collaborative practices, African and Afro-descendant curators, artists, activists, and scholars. European museums are rewriting narratives, changing practices, and sharing their imagery and knowledge as a mean to ‘decolonize’.

Sharing must lead to the recognition of cultural diversity and consequently to thinking of the museum not as an absolute entity with similar characteristics - which are also ‘colonial’ in the exportation of the Western historical model -, but as realities linked to processes of memory formation, processes which, for historical, anthropological and sociological reasons, cannot respond to absolute models but respond to territorial realities that develop their own models.
The presence, in terms of quality and quantity, of tangible and intangible works of African provenance in European museums, dedicated institutions, religious, missionary, ethnological and scientific institutions, mainly universities, is enormous and partially unknown.

For all collections not subject to restitution, a long task awaits the depository museums, their reconnaissance and cataloguing with the verification of provenance and the definition of the exhibition criteria and the museological projects for their enhancement (mediation apparatus, conservation, restauration and educational projects). The difficulties of interpretation, more generally, concern all art that does not belong to long-standing cultural systems. By referring to studies focused on cultures other than our own, we are able to recover visions and attitudes that allow us to understand our own heritage much better and recover the intelligence of our past. It is precisely for this reason that the European musealization of objects from outside Europe cannot take place without dialogue on the pivotal concepts for such collections, the concept of heritage and museum.

The conference in the present document wants to exchange views about new ways of considering African museum heritage in European museums by comparing concepts of museum and heritage in European and African thought and practice.
It will include two in-depth conceptual sessions with four keynote speakers, two from Europe and two from Africa, followed by two panel discussions. This session will be followed by three panels of comparative experiences between European and African museologists and museum professionals, summarised in a final discussion of reports and posters.