Colonial Collections |

Colonial Collections Consortium

The Colonial Collections Consortium is a partnership between five organisations in the Netherlands: Museum Bronbeek, NIOD, Cultural Heritage Agency, Rijksmuseum and Wereldmuseum. The consortium supports institutions administering collections in provenance research by sharing knowledge, answering questions and providing stakeholders with a network.

News

24 September 2024

For second time cultural artefacts to be returned to Indonesia

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. Experts and organisations in the field of museums and collections in both countries collaborated intensively to make this return possible.

6 August 2024

Vacancy Project Officer Provenance Research Grants

Wereldmuseum, partner of the Colonial Collections Consortium, is looking for a Project Officer who will help implement the Provenance Research Grants. Do you have experience working on restitution, repatriation and provenance reseach cases and are you familar with the Dutch policy? Then we invite you to apply.

25 July 2024

Eleven grants for NWA research into collections with a colonial context

NWO has awarded funding to 11 research within the call ‘Research into collections with a colonial context’. Dutch museum collections may contain looted objects with a colonial context. This programme aims to redress injustice and strengthen trust and cooperation with the countries of origin.

27 June 2024

First NIAS-NIOD-KITLV fellows to start in September

In September, the first two fellows of the NIAS-NIOD-KITLV Moving Objects, Mobilising Culture in the Context of (De)colonisation start their research projects. The fellowship enables researchers and heritage professionals from former colonized countries to conduct five months of research into collections that arrived in the Netherlands in the context of colonialism.

Events

Wednesday

12 | 03 | 2025

International Conference: Decolonizing Museums and Colonial Collections

The 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.

Tuesday

01 | 10 | 2024

Pressing Matter Lecture by Dr. Marie-Sophie de Clippele

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.

Thursday

26 | 09 | 2024

Symposium: Digitised Visual Archives, AI and the Uses of the Past

What ethical challenges arise from the digitisation of European visual archives documenting sensitive histories of colonialism, war and violence? This symposium gathers historians, memory and media scholars grappling with the ‘analogue’ complexities of reconstructing historical contexts and the contested use of visual sources in the present.