20 September 2024
In response to a request from Indonesia, the Netherlands is returning 288 objects from the Dutch State Collection to Indonesia. These objects were wrongfully taken to the Netherlands during the colonial period and are of cultural interest to Indonesia.
Minister of Education, Culture and Science Eppo Bruins has decided to return the artefacts. In doing so, he is following the advice of the Colonial Collections Committee chaired by Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You. The artefacts are currently in the collection of the Wereldmuseum. Experts and organisations in the field of museums and collections in both countries collaborated intensively to make this return possible. Minister of Education, Culture and Science: “Commenting on the decision, Minister Bruins said: “This is the second time we are returning objects that should never have been in the Netherlands, based on recommendations from the Colonial Collections Committee. In the colonial period, cultural objects were often looted, or they changed hands involuntarily in some other way. The return of these objects is important with regard to material redress.”
This is the second set of recommendations issued by the Colonial Collections Committee. In the summer of 2023, objects were also returned to Indonesia, and to Sri Lanka. With this return, the Ministry is thus continuing its course.
The following objects will be returned:
The artefacts will be officially returned to Indonesia on 20 September at the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam, in the presence of the director-general for culture of Indonesia, Hilmar Farid, and the Indonesian Repatriation Committee. The Colonial Collections Committee advised the Minister to return these objects on the basis of provenance research by the Wereldmuseum and in accordance with the national policy on colonial collections. These recommendations have been established in close dialogue and cooperation with the Indonesian Repatriation Committee and other experts. It demonstrates the close bilateral relations between Indonesia and the Netherlands in the cultural field.
The Committee has published its recommendations. Further recommendations are being prepared in response to other requests from Nigeria, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia.
Pressing Matter Lecture by Dr. Marie-Sophie de ClippeleDate: October 1, 2024
Time: 3:30 – 5:00 PM (CEST)
Location: Initium, room IN 2A-45
Address: De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam
Organisation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), Pressing Matter
“Is the tide turning for the repatriation of human remains in museums?”
The presence of human remains in museums originates from various sources: they may have been preserved immediately after death, excavated during archaeological digs, or collected in foreign countries, the latter often under contentious circumstances during colonial periods. What justifies the presence of these human remains in collections? Do they not rightfully belong to their place of origin? There is currently no (international) right to repatriate human remains preserved in collections located in a country other than their country of origin. Despite these legal shortcomings some recent developments are interesting to note. The recent changes seem to welcome a new era of repatriations, based on an inclusive heritage justice model.
Dr. Marie-Sophie de Clippele is Assistant professor of law, holding a chair in nature and heritage law at UC Louvain Saint-Louis – Brussels. Her research focuses on cultural heritage and environmental law, with a strong interest in legal theory. She participates in various interdisciplinary research projects relating to the restitution of colonial collections, the status of human remains, the digitization of natural history collections, or the rights of nature. Her first monograph addressed the burden of heritage (‘Protéger le patrimoine culturel: à qui incombe la charge?’, PUSL, 2020) while her second book deals with human remains (‘Restes humains et patrimoine culturel, de quels droits?’, Anthemis, 2023).
Free admission, for questions and registration, please send an e-mail to Elsbeth Dekker, e.m.dekker@vu.nl
Symposium: Digitised Visual Archives, AI and the Uses of the PastDate: September 26, 2024
Time: 1:00 pm – 5:30 pm (CEST)
Location: VU Main Building Agora 1
Address: De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam
Organisation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
What ethical challenges arise from the digitisation of European visual archives documenting sensitive histories of colonialism, war and violence?
Digitised archives now have the potential to build sustainable connections with source and stakeholder communities well beyond Europe, as well as within it. Stakeholder sensitivities, copyright laws, and restitution agreements regulate the use of archives. Yet social media and AI have opened up new ways of circulating digitised archive materials in ways that are hard to regulate. Meanwhile, historians, memory and media scholars are still grappling with the ‘analogue’ complexities of reconstructing historical contexts and explaining the contested use of visual sources in the present.
Mass digitisation of visual archives and the proliferation of AI raises the questions: who are digital archives for? What social and ‘scientific’ purposes do visual AI tools serve? And how might this impact how images are used as representations of the past? To what extent are AI tools actually driving digitisation of visual archives rather than serving this process? Computational methods have great potential for generating new taxonomies and turning ‘primary sources’ into ‘data’ that can be analysed at scale. But is a technology-driven framework producing ‘better’ history, and who is it improving accessibility for? Generative AI already has applications to harvesting ‘stock’ web-based images to produce new or edited visual icons of violence, atrocity, genocide, colonialism or war. If the extant icons of violence already circulate free from historical context, and constitute a narrow range of examples to begin with, what will new ‘averages’ produce, and what does that mean for the way these histories are perceived?
Attendance is free, but registration is required or email m.a.van.maanen@vu.nl
13.00 Professor Susie Protschky (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Welcome and Introduction
13.15 Professor Kim A. Wagner (Queen Mary University of London), Through the Perpetrator’s Eye: The Bud Dajo Massacre (1906) and Atrocity Photography
13.45 Professor Daniel Foliard (Université Paris Cité / LARCA), Binarized and Polarized? Contested Pasts and their Photographic Legacy in the Digital Age
14.15 Professor Kees Ribbens (Erasmus University Rotterdam / NIOD), AI Meets the Holocaust: History by Popular Demand?
15.30 Tea and coffee
15.30 Associate Professor Ana Dragojlovic-Éclair (University of Melbourne), Mending Matrilineality: Re-presencing Indigenous Foremothers
16.00 Dr Tintin Wulia (University of Gothenbug), Future Pasts: Revisioning Archival Aesthetics in the Age of Fungibility
16.30 Professor Karen Strassler (City University of New York), Demanding Images in the Public Archive
17.00 Questions and discussion
17.30 Close of symposium, drinks
International Conference: Decolonizing Museums and Colonial CollectionsDate: March 12-14, 2025
Location: Figueira da Foz, Portugal
Organisation: the conference is a collaborative effort between colleagues from Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA University, and Évora University (Portugal), Queens College, City University of New York (USA), University of São Paulo (Brazil), and Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (UK), supported by TheMuseumsLab.
The TRANSMAT IN2PAST Conference conference will delve into the theme of transdisciplinarity as a vital tool and framework for reimagining museums and their colonial collections from an inclusive and decolonial perspective. Globally, there is a growing movement fueled by public demand to decolonize museum institutions. However, practical strategies for decolonizing museums and addressing their colonial collections are often lacking in discussions.
Transdisciplinarity has emerged as a response to the growing complexity of contemporary issues in society and must also be invoked to deal with the complexity of decolonization and the processes of collection documentation and rethinking of the ‘captive’ objects held in museums. To undiscipline museums and adopt a novel approach to documenting, curating, and presenting colonial collections, there is a need for future museums to be receptive to diverse ways of knowing, both within and beyond academia. Consequently, through case studies from around the world, this conference aims to disseminate transdisciplinary experiences and methodologies related to museums and colonial collections, fostering a more inclusive and informed approach to preserving and presenting historical knowledge.
Topics that will be discussed during the three-day conference include:
The final programme of the three-day conference is currently being drawn up.