ScienceUncut

Larissa Förster shares her ideas that base on four years on observing restitution processes with various continents. She therefore captures the present debate on the return of human remains and the restitution of objects in Germany. In the second part, Förster reflects on examples of repatriation from the past. Finally, she connects her analysis to present debates on restitution and the history of museum collections...

Barbara Plankensteiner talks about her experience regarding the restitution of human remains from the Weltmuseum Wien to the Maori community through the official representatives. She contrasts this experience to an initiative called “the Benin Dialogue” that deals with the art work. Barbara Plankensteiner is Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Weltmuseum Wien where she also is in charge of the Subsaharan Africa collections...

Barbara Plankensteiner talks about her experience regarding the restitution of human remains from the Weltmuseum Wien to the Maori community through the official representatives. She contrasts this experience to an initiative called “the Benin Dialogue” that deals with the art work. Barbara Plankensteiner is Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Weltmuseum Wien where she also is in charge of the Subsaharan Africa collections...

Sophie Lenski talks about the legal aspects of the return of ethnological objects. She points out that the legal standards of the time when the objects were brought to Europe would have to be applied even today. But that leads to the dilemma that these legal standards do not fit the moral standards we would apply nowadays...

Sophie Lenski talks about the legal aspects of the return of ethnological objects. She points out that the legal standards of the time when the objects were brought to Europe would have to be applied even today. But that leads to the dilemma that these legal standards do not fit the moral standards we would apply nowadays...

In her talk “From Curiosa to World Culture: what comes next”, Adriana Muñoz describes how the Swedish Värlskulturmuseet in Göteborg defines its new role in the Swedish society. She points out that “museums with wholly or partially ethnographical direction must, even more than now, have an important mission in promoting contacts between Swedish and non-Swedish cultures”. Muñoz looks as a curator at the history of the collection from a post-colonial perspective...

In her talk “From Curiosa to World Culture: what comes next”, Adriana Muñoz describes how the Swedish Värlskulturmuseet in Göteborg defines its new role in the Swedish society. She points out that “museums with wholly or partially ethnographical direction must, even more than now, have an important mission in promoting contacts between Swedish and non-Swedish cultures”. Muñoz looks as a curator at the history of the collection from a post-colonial perspective...

Völkerschauen, or human ethnological displays, promised to take visitors “around the world for fifty pennies”, providing a form of popular entertainment in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany while also satisfying deepening European curiosities about exotic peoples and places. For the Samoans – many of high social status – who traveled to Germany to take part in Völkerschauen, the displays were seen as an opportunity to establish political ties with the colonial power...

Völkerschauen, or human ethnological displays, promised to take visitors “around the world for fifty pennies”, providing a form of popular entertainment in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany while also satisfying deepening European curiosities about exotic peoples and places. For the Samoans – many of high social status – who traveled to Germany to take part in Völkerschauen, the displays were seen as an opportunity to establish political ties with the colonial power...

For the last 40 years, museums, that show Non-European objects, had to change a lot due to the different intercultural discourses. Anthony Alan Shelton, Director of the Museum of Anthropology and Professor of Antropology at the the University of British Columbia, gives an overview on the different approaches and perceptions of ethnological museums from a Canadian perspective...