These are all questions that this participative exhibition attempts to answer.
Numerous partners have agreed to develop with the MEG an intention in line with the topicality of decolonial thought. We thank them for taking this risk and having confidence in us.
A common theme connects all this exhibition’s stories, that the museum’s responsibility towards collections and its commitment to forging long-term respectful, pacified relations with their cultural heirs and heiresses.
See also: Geneva’s early double standards on colonialism
Often viewed as the global cradle for international humanitarian response and human rights values, Geneva’s history is also linked to a darker side that helped promote inequality and racism.
The Remembering exhibition shows how Geneva actively supported and financed Belgium’s colonisation and crimes in Congo, among others, and questions motivations of the Red Cross’s founders in the late 19th century.
About Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross:
While Switzerland, unlike many of its neighbours, did not have its own colonies, Dunant worked at the Geneva Trading Company of the Swiss Colonies of Sétif, a private company founded as a result of a French imperial concession in Algeria to create an agricultural settlers’ colony that operated until 1956. Dunant later established his own business in Algeria where he subsequently settled.
