Do you work at a Dutch heritage institution, such as a museum, university, archive or library, that manages colonial collections or objects and would you like to map out the provenance history? The Consortium Colonial Collections can support your research project through the Provenance Research Scheme. In May, we will organise three online consultation hours to explain the scheme and the requirements step by step. You can then also ask your questions to the consortium colleagues.
The online consultations will take place in Dutch via MS Teams on:
- Tuesday 20 May 2025, 3pm-4pm
- Wednesday 21 May 2025, 10am-11am
- Thursday 22 May, 3pm-4pm
There are a maximum of 15 spots per consultation hour. Sign up to receive the MS Teams link!
Date: 15 March – 21 September 2025
Location: University Museum Groningen
Address: Oude Kijk in ’t Jatstraat 7a, 9712 EA, Groningen
Organisation: the exhibition is part of the international research project Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value, and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums and was curated by researchers from Amsterdam, Groningen, and Leiden.
How did orangutans from Borneo end up on a dissection table in the Netherlands? What happened to the elephants studied by scientists? How did they gain access to human remains from the Netherlands and its colonies? And what impact did their work have on the development of racial science?
The University Museum Groningen presents Entangled Stories: Science and Colonialism in the Collection of Petrus Camper, an exhibition exploring the colonial history of the university’s collection. At its core is the legacy of scientist Petrus Camper (1722–1789), whose collection has been preserved at the University of Groningen for over 200 years.
Camper was a man of contradictions: he opposed slavery, yet he collected human remains from the colonies without consent. For years, Petrus Camper was honored through exhibitions (including at the University Museum) and in the city of Groningen. However, with today’s understanding, critical questions must be asked about how Camper and other scientists obtained human and animal specimens. The exhibition highlights how Camper’s legacy is intertwined with colonial structures and the development of scientific racism. How should museums address this history?
Entangled Stories invites visitors to take a fresh look at the history of science and to reflect on the future of academic heritage.
The exhibition, on display from 15 March until 21 September 2025, is part of the international research project Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value, and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums and was curated by researchers from Amsterdam, Groningen, and Leiden. For more information about Pressing Matter, please visit www.pressingmatter.nl
Book presentation: Legacies of colonialism in museum collectionsDate: Thursday 15 May 2025
Tim: 3.30 – 5.00 PM (CET)
Location: KITLV, Herta Mohr building, room 1.30
Address: Witte Singel 27A, 2311 BG, Leiden
Organisation: Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV) / Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies
Language: English
In ‘Legacies of colonialism in museum collections: The (un)making of Indonesian Islam in the Netherlands’ Mirjam Shatanawi tells the untold story of Indonesian Islam in museums. Often overshadowed by Hindu-Buddhist art, Indonesian Islamic heritage rarely receives the attention it deserves in museum collections and exhibitions.
This book unravels the historical silences rooted in Dutch colonial rule that have marginalized Indonesian Islamic material culture. Delving into the colonial archives, it traces the journey of Indonesian objects in Dutch museums, exploring their original meanings and their re-appropriation during instances of collecting, classification, interpretation and public display. The analysis focuses on the long-term effects in the present, in particular in relation to the decolonisation of museums.
What are the structural patterns inherited from colonialism that result in silences today? How can repair happen beyond repatriation and re-interpretation of individual objects? Through this lens, the book addresses the enduring impacts of colonialism and offers pathways for the decolonization of museums today.
Author
Mirjam Shatanawi is a postdoctoral researcher at KITLV, where she conducts research on the provenance and makings of the institute’s collection of manuscripts and books from Indonesia. She is also a Senior Lecturer of Heritage Theory at the Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdam University of the Arts).
Discussants
Susie Protschky is Professor of Global Political History at VU University. She is specialised in modern Dutch colonialism, Indonesian history, and the history of photography.
Adieyatna Fajri is a PhD Candidate at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies and Groningen Institute of Archaeology, University of Groningen.
Theo Frids Hubarat is a Lecturer at Parahyangan Catholic University and fellow at NIAS.
Moderator
Marieke Bloembergen is Professor of Heritage and Postcolonial Studies in Indonesian History at the Institute for History and the KITLV. Her research interests concern the political dynamics of cultural knowledge production in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia.
Date: Friday 11 April 2025
Tim: 1:30 – 4:30 PM CET
Location: Amstelkerk
Address: Amstelveld 10, 1017 JD Amsterdam
Organisation: Colonial Collections Consortium, DutchCulture
Language: Dutch
On Friday 11 April 2025, the Colonial Collections Consortium is organising a public event at the Amstelkerk in Amsterdam around the working visit of the National Museum Commission Suriname to the Netherlands. During this event, you will meet the members of the National Museum Committee Suriname and they will share their findings from the working visit. There will also be a panel discussion with the delegation members, in which attendees can ask questions.
From 7 to 11 April, the National Museum Commission Suriname, chaired by Roseline Daan, will pay a working visit to the Netherlands. This working visit is facilitated by the Consortium Colonial Collections and organised by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands in cooperation with DutchCulture. During these five days, the Museum Committee will gain inspiration for their work in Suriname and strengthen relations with Dutch partners.
Participation is free, but we ask you to register.
We hope to see you at the Amstelkerk on 11 April!
The language of the event is Dutch
What is the programme?
- 1:30 Doors open
- 14:00 Opening and presentation on the National Museum Commission Suriname, and its working visit to the Netherlands
- 14:30 Panel discussion with delegation members and questions from attendees
- 15:30 Networking opportunity with drinks and snacks
- 16:30 End
Who are the delegation members?
The Commission consists of experts dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Suriname’s heritage. Members include:
- Roseline Daan – Chair, senior policy advisor at Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Suriname
- Tanya Sitaram – Secretary, historian
- Rita Tjien Fooh – Member, heritage expert, director of National Archive of Suriname
- Ashvini Gangadin – Member, legal expert
- Daphne Yflaar – Representatie of Directorate of Culture, Head of State Collection Suriname
What does the National Museum Commission Suriname do?
The National Museum Commission Suriname was installed in September 2023 by Minister Henry Ori of Education, Science and Culture of Suriname, with the goal of strengthening the museum infrastructure in Suriname and promoting the handling of indigenous heritage, including the possible return of cultural objects. The Museum Commission plays an important role in the preservation of Suriname’s heritage and actively cooperates with various national and international partners.
Who is this event intended for?
The event is aimed at anyone with an interest in Surinamese heritage, colonial history and cooperation between Surinamese and Dutch museums. We welcome anthropologists, museologists, historians, students, museum staff, heritage professionals and the Surinamese diaspora involved or interested in cultural cooperation between the two countries, among others.
The language of the event is Dutch
Register
Date: Thursday 20 March 2025
Time: 17:00 – 18:30 CET
Location: Spui 25,
Address: Spui 25-27 1012 WX Amsterdam
Organization: NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, as partner of the Colonial Collections Consortium
This event has already taken place. You can watch the livestream
How can academics and museum professionals research the provenance of a colonial museum collection? And can we trace possible ‘involuntary loss of possession’ or looted objects? During the colonial era, a variety of objects were taken to the Netherlands, often against the will of their original owners. For some years now, these collections and the possible return of colonial objects have been under scrutiny.
How do you investigate the provenance of museum collections acquired during the colonial era? Our guest speakers Mirjam Shatanawi (Reinwardt Academie and KITLV), Caroline Fernandes Caromano (LUCAS) and Paul Voogt (Missiemuseum Steyl) research such collections in the Netherlands. During this event, they will discuss their experiences as provenance researchers and some common challenges they encounter in their work. They talk about finding your way around extensive archival material spread across different institutions in the Netherlands and ways they trace ‘involuntary loss of possession’. They will also discuss the topic of researching colonial collections from different perspectives. What does it mean for a small museum with limited means to examine its collection history? And what is it like for someone from Brazil to research objects taken from their country and subsequently scattered across the European continent?
In order to assist researchers from the Netherlands and abroad in the first steps of their provenance research, the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR) of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies will present a series of digital research aids. The aids have been developed within the Colonial Collections Consortium, in conjunction with the Colonial Collections DataHub. Together with the experts and the audience, we will discuss what contribution such research aids can bring to the development of research into colonial collections in the Netherlands.
About the speakers
Wiebe Reints is a researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, working in a project within the Colonial Collections Consortium to create a series of research aids for conducting research into museum collections from a colonial context. He has a background in history and museum studies and graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 2023. He is interested in how the colonial past is reflected in museum collections and the restitution of cultural goods.
Mirjam Shatanawi is researcher and curator in the field of Islamic heritage and colonial collections. She obtained a PhD at the University of Amsterdam on the almost complete absence of Indonesia within the narrative of Islamic art and culture in Dutch museums. From 2001 until 2019, she worked as a curator at the Wereldmuseum. Nowadays, she teaches heritage theory at the Reinwardt Academie in Amsterdam and conducts research into the colonial manuscript collection of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV).
Paul Voogt studied anthropology (MA, University of Amsterdam) and business administration (MBA, Henley UK). He held management positions at Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, Naturalis Leiden and Utrecht University Museum and worked on redevelopment projects of museums in Kenya (National Museum) and Zanzibar (House of Wonders). He was appointed curator of Missiemuseum Steyl in 2022. Currently he engages in provenance research of a collection from Papua New Guinea, with a grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Caroline Fernandes Caromano is a Brazilian researcher with academic degrees in Social Sciences and Archaeology from the University of São Paulo and the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Living in the Netherlands since 2018, she has been a researcher at various renowned institutes. For the past 20 years, she has been conducting fieldwork and research in museum collections in collaboration with indigenous peoples of the Amazon, focusing on themes such as traditional knowledge, heritage and material culture.
Martijn Eickhoff is director of NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor of Archaeology and Heritage of War and Mass Violence at the University of Groningen. He researches the history, cultural dimensions and after-effects of large-scale violence and regime change in Europe and Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the spatial, material and transnational aspects. In 2020, he published the book The Politics of Heritage in Indonesia, co-written with Marieke Bloembergen.
Date: Friday, 24 January 2025
Time: 10:00 – 15:00 CET
Location: Radboud University, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, 6525 GD Nijmegen
Organization: Globalise, Comatting Bias, Resisting Enslavement, Radboud Institute for Culture & History
How can digital infrastructures for colonial archives support a better understanding of historical and contemporary issues? This symposium brings together researchers and practitioners to discuss the challenges and opportunities of working with digitized colonial records.
Key topics
- Colonial archives and global significance
Reflect on the relevance of these archives for understanding shared histories and their broader implications. - Text recognition and digital access
Explore what comes after digitization and how to create meaningful tools for using complex historical records. - Biases in the archive
Address the inherent biases in colonial records and their impact on research and public access. - Reaching new audiences
Consider how digital infrastructures can engage diverse groups, including descendants of colonized communities.
Event overview
Many archives related to the Dutch colonial past have been digitised in recent years. From the archives of the VOC and WIC to early modern family, notarial, and business archives. These archives are closely intertwined with the colonial past itself. They contain information that sheds light on the (everyday) consequences and experiences of colonialism worldwide. These archives also provide access to information about non-European societies that is often not preserved in other ways. Colonial archives are often literally world heritage. More and more archives are therefore being made accessible through digitisation and text recognition. But as rich and diverse as these archives are, they are not neutral.
Challenges and questions
The symposium Colonial archives and meaningful digital infrastructure explores challenges, questions, and examples surrounding digital access and enrichment of shared resources related to the colonial past.
- How can digital infrastructure contribute to making unique information about the people and societies affected by or resisting colonialism findable and researchable?
- How can multiple perspectives and the many voices in these archives be made more visible?
- How can we ethically employ new techniques?
- And who are the true beneficiaries of advanced access and research infrastructure?
- Who should these initiatives serve, and how can global stakeholders beyond Dutch and professional users be reached (such as the descendants of colonized societies and of those societies whose pasts can be reconstructed using these archives)?
New approaches
Last spring, the advice Dealing with shared sources of the colonial past. Advice on repair and restitution in relation to colonial archives by the Dutch Council for Culture called attention to the role that a responsible handling of colonial archives can play in a better understanding of the impact of colonialism worldwide and its legacies to the present day. It also emphasised that colonial archives themselves are often tools that serviced colonial rule, and whose accessibility has often accentuated the flawed and one-sided perspectives that they bear.
New approaches are thus key to ensuring that new digital access and user infrastructures do not amplify colonial distortions or injustices, but instead contribute to dialogues in, and between, former colonizer and colonised societies. This leads to the question: how can digital infrastructures for colonial archives contribute to a better understanding of past and present in a complex world of present-day inequalities and memory cultures?
View of the Harbor of Sūrat (Gujarāt), anonymous, c. 1670 Rijkmuseum, SK-A-4778, CC0
Pressing Matter Winter School13-24 January 2025
Pressing Matter will organize the Pressing Matter Winter School in January 2025 in collaboration with the Colonial Collections Consortium on restitution research and practices. The Winter School is meant for (Indigenous) early career professionals working in museums, art institutions, or universities in countries outside of Europe. Wereldmuseum Leiden is hosting the Winter School.
The aim of the Winter School is twofold: to have Indigenous people help shape the future of restitution and to facilitate to the building of global networks of Indigenous scholars, curators and community practitioners around questions of restitution. The small-scale winter school, limited to 12 participants from different continents, takes place at the Wereldmuseum Leiden and other relevant sites in the Netherlands, and will run for two weeks. Participants have access to the various (museum) collections of partners in the Pressing Matter consortium*. The program consists of sessions on key concepts within restitution work, collection visits, lectures by specialists in the field, and research on specific objects.
The selected participants bring various perspectives, approaches and contexts to the Winter School. They originate from Ghana, South Africa, Rapa Nui, Tahiti, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Surinam, St. Maarten, Mexico, and Canada.
Faculty
Faculty members include:
- Wayne Modest (Wereldmuseum/VU)
- Susan Legêne (VU), Wouter Veraart (VU)
- Laurens de Rooy (Amsterdam UMC)
- Amade M’charek (UvA)
- Paul Wolf Mitchell (UvA)
- Lisette Jong (UvA)
- Birgit Meyer (UU)
- Martijn Eickhoff (NIOD)
- Klaas Stutje (NIOD)
- Adieyatna Fajri (NIOD)
- Katja Kwastek (VU)
- Chiara de Cesari (UvA)
- Victor de Boer (VU)
- Cindy Zalm (Wereldmuseum)
- Mirjam Hoijtink (Wereldmuseum)
- Carine Zaayman (Wereldmuseum)
- Sophie van Aardenne (Wereldmuseum)
- Marieke van Bragt-Kroonen (Wereldmuseum)
- Karolien Nédée (Wereldmuseum)
- Wendy Boham (Wereldmuseum)
- Eveline Sint Nicolaas (Rijksmuseum)
- Harm Stevens (Rijksmuseum)
About Pressing Matter
Pressing Matter is a four-year international research program about colonial legacies in museums, financed by the Dutch National Science Agenda (NWA) and coordinated from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. One of the main partners is the Wereldmuseum. Pressing Matter investigates the potentialities of ‘colonial objects’ to support societal reconciliation with the colonial past and its afterlives, and to deal with conflicting claims by different stakeholders for these objects within museums. The project will connect fundamental theories of valuation and property to postcolonial debates on heritage to these societal debates and aims to develop and test, first, new theoretical models of value and ownership and, second, new forms of return that address but move beyond current approaches to heritage restitution, while developing a theory of object potentialities grounded in the entangled, multipolar histories in which colonial objects were collected, kept and made meaningful.
* The Pressing Matter partners are Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Wereldmuseum, Museum Bronbeek, Museum Vrolik, Rijksmuseum, Utrecht University Museum, University Museum Groningen, Foundation Academic Heritage, and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Societal partners are Imagine IC, The Black Archives, HAPIN Papua Support Foundation, the Rijksakademie, Framer Framed, the Peace Palace Library, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, and DutchCulture.
On Wednesday 15 January and Friday 17 January, NWO is organising four matchmaking sessions for the 2nd round of Call ‘Research on into collections with a colonial context’. The Call encourages knowledge development, knowledge exchange and collaboration between researchers and heritage institutions from countries of origin of collections and the Netherlands.
The matchmaking sessions are designed to facilitate interaction and cooperation between researchers associated with international organisations and Dutch museums and knowledge institutions. By working together and exchanging knowledge, we aim to build a bridge between countries and regions of origin, and the Dutch museum and research field. These sessions provide space to get to know each other, discover collections and make concrete plans for future consortium applications and project proposals. The matchmaking sessions are primarily aimed at consortium applications, but are of course open to all interested parties.
Day 1: Matchmaking
Museums
The focus of this day is provides scope foron getting to know a number of Dutch museums and the collections they manage.
Location: online
Wednesday 15 January 2025
Session 1: 10:00 – 12:00 CET
Session 2: 15:00 – 17:00 CET
Day 2: Matchmaking
Researchers
The focus of this day aims is to facilitate contact and exchange between international and Dutch researchers.
Location: online
Friday 17 January 2025
Session 3: 10:00 – 12:00 CET
Session 4: 15:00 – 17:00 CET
About the Call
The Call ‘Research into collections with a colonial context’ is part of the thematic programming of the National Science Agenda, which aims at scientific and societal breakthroughs in collaboration with governments. The Call focuses on collaboration between researchers and stakeholders from countries where objects and collections with a colonial history in Dutch institutions originate and from the European Netherlands, on current issues surrounding these objects.
Within the Call, funding is available for researchers from countries of origin to conduct short-term research in the collections of Dutch museums and institutions, and for larger projects to create sustainable research networks.
Symposium: Honour & Discomfort, war booty in museum collectionsDate: 12-13 November 2024
Time: 09.30 AM – 5 PM
Location: National Military Museum, Verlengde Paltzerweg 1, 3768 MX, Soest
Organisation: The Royal Defense Museums Foundation (SKD)
Language: English
On 12 & 13 November 2024, at the National Military Museum in Soesterberg, The Royal Defense Museums Foundation (SKD) is organizing the symposium: ‘Honour & Discomfort, war booty in museum collections’. At this symposium, the current state of provenance research and restitution in military museums will be discussed.
Military history cllections are a separate niche
Driven by political activism and an increased sense of historical fairness, there is a renewed interest in war, colonialism and their tangible heritage. Recently, many museum objects have been returned to their original owners, all of which appears to be just the beginning of a new surge of claims and restitutions that is also set to reach military museums. Military history collections are a separate niche that cannot just simply be directly compared to art or anthropology museums.
At the symposium, we will discuss the current state of provenance research and restitution in military museums. We will engage with experts on how to deal with the subject and discuss the notion of ‘fairly conquered in battle’. With the renowned Dutch historian and moderator Hans Goedkoop as the events’ chair, the symposium is set to address the above alongside many other related issues.
A selection of topics:
- “Deutsch or Dutch?” – Joint Provenance Research on the Fokker D.VII Airplane at Deutsches Museum, Munich
- Looting nazi Germany – the case of the German War Art Collection
- The case of the so-called saber of El Hadj Omar Tall
- Who should own the past? Restitution of contested heritage and the law
- The legacy of a Swiss-German arms manufacturer E. Bührle – Dillema’s, Challenges and Entanglements in presenting a contested art collection
- Four colors, not three. The symbolic power of a flag
Military museums
The symposium is being organized by the The Royal Defense Museums Foundation (SKD), with the support of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History (ICOMAM). Dutch and international experts from museums and the field of looted art, war booty and restitution will be sharing their views and insights. The symposium is aimed at museum professionals, civil servants, legal practitioners, historians, policymakers, reporters and private collectors. The two-day event revolves around lectures covering the legal, social, historical, ethical, moral and practical aspects of the subject, with plenty of room for discussion and exchange of views.
Date: 6 November 2024; 26 November 2024
Time: 10.30 AM – 4 PM
Location: Leiden; Amersfoort
Organisation: ErfgoedAcademie
Audience: collection staff (curators, registrars) of museums and other collection managing institutions, employees of municipal or provincial authorities
Language: Dutch
About the course
Colonial collections differ widely, including how they were obtained. Collaborative research into the history of objects can shed light on their origins. Employees of museums and archives have an important task in conducting provenance research on these collections. This course ‘Provenance Research on Colonial Collections’, developed by the ErfgoedAcademie together with the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, aims to support them in this task.
Why this course?
- Get a better understanding of the colonial history in relation to heritage, current policies and the responsibilities of various organisation in the Dutch heritage field.
- Practice various aspects of provenance research, applicable to your own museum organisation.
- Explore the dilemmas surrounding colonial collections.
The course will be held in Dutch.