Provenance research blog #6 is out now!

In this blog series, the Colonial Collections Consortium presents a historical object or collection from a colonial context or situation, currently (or until recently) stored in a museum in the Netherlands that has been the focus of provenance research. Our latest blog focuses on a toad and a photograph from Suriname.

The toad specimen is kept at Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the historical photograph is stored at the Wereldmuseum. The two items, housed in different museums, have been part of a research project on the role of Indigenous and Maroon individuals in Suriname in the creation of natural and ethnographic collections currently housed in the Netherlands.

Both the toad and the photograph were taken from/in Suriname on the same day – 12 september 1904 – in the context of a series of expeditions commissioned by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society (Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap or KNAG). While knowledge developed during these expeditions is largely attributed to the Dutch individuals involved, provenance research has shown that the knowledge of involved Indigenous and Maroon individuals was crucial to the expeditions and the development of knowledge and the collection of natural specimens and artefacts now housed in Dutch museums.

In this blog you will read about how provenance research can help rectify biases and challenge dominant narratives of scientific exploration in Suriname. By examining a toad and a photograph taken on the same day yet kept in different kinds of institutions can also contribute to better understanding colonial (collection) histories, as well as the histories of institutions that house them today.