“After I became general director, in 2016, I immediately thought we should do a show on slavery, since it was a big part of Dutch history, and also an exhibition on the independence of Indonesia [1945-49]. Both provoked a lot of emotions”, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam director Taco Dibbits says in the Financial Times. “
“We’ve had a relationship with some countries for hundreds of years, one which was not at all equal — the wrongs that have been done, you can’t disentangle just by saying, ‘OK, you get this back.’ But we try to work within the museum sector: with the national museum in Jakarta, for example, we work together and research together, and decide what should happen to the objects — and try to stay out of the political sphere as long as possible.
“National museums reflect what a country is. US museums are the triumph of the individual. In France it’s the state. Also with Sri Lanka, which was a relatively short period of [Dutch] colonisation — it was British afterwards — there were objects from the King of Kandy.”
“When we started to talk about it, it became obvious that there was much to learn, on both sides. Incredibly fulfilling.” But it’s not always a pretty story of mutual education and enrichment. The issue of restitution is “often also used internally, in a country, to affirm a national identity, sometimes a nationalist identity. That’s where it goes wrong.”
