Ahmad Mohammed writes: Sacred objects, ancestral remains, and ritual artifacts remain estranged from the communities that created and cherished them. This condition is what many scholars and practitioners now identify as cultural heritage alienation: the systematic displacement of heritage from its social, spiritual, and cultural lifeworlds into the frameworks of Western curatorial authority. But community control is crucial.
Museums hold thousands of ‘things’ from all around the world. In larger institutions like Te Papa, the histories of these ‘things’ are not always known. This blog is looking at ways to start recovering these lost stories and histories.
Thomas Fues writes: the German government emphasises its willingness to confront Germany’s colonial history and its consequences. But it remains to be seen whether and how such declarations of intent at the beginning of the legislative period will actually be implemented in the coming years.
The June 2025 report by a working group of Edinburgh University DECOLONISED TRANSFORMATIONS CONFRONTING THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH’S HISTORY AND LEGACIES OF ENSLAVEMENT AND COLONIALISM focusses mainly on slavery an its current impact. At the en dit has an interesting recommendation for the university's Anatomical Museum and its 200 skulls.
Since 2018, the Association on American Indian Affairs has monitored 1,159 auction houses worldwide and provided auction alerts regarding the sale of sensitive cultural heritage. The Association’s work to monitor domestic and international auctions help fill this gap by identifying and reporting items that may warrant repatriation. The alerts have been shown to stop improper sales and support the return of important items.
Within the national museum context, the Repatriasi exhibition risks becoming a missed opportunity to critically engage with the afterlives of returned objects, beyond marking their physical return.
During the 19th century colonial wars, the library of the rulers of Palembang in Sumatra was looted by British and Dutch troops; its manuscripts were transported to other places and some of them are lost. Alan Darmawan looks for traces of some of these mishandled treasures.
Zainab Tahir: The Marine Heritage Gallery, a gallery managed by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries in Jakarta, sparked conversation about the complexities surrounding the display of three thousand commercially salvaged artefacts.
Ahmad Mohammed writes: Immersive technologies and digital repatriation are reshaping heritage practice—opening up new possibilities for connection, access, and repair. But are we asking the right questions?
Heritage interpretation—the process through which meaning is assigned to the material and immaterial traces of the past—is never a neutral act. It inherently involves questions of power, identity, and authority, writes Ahmad Mohammed.
The (black-red) coalition agreement of Conservatives (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) in Germany contains remarkably positive statements on dealing with the colonial legacy.
Te Papa collection manager and kaitiaki taonga Moana Parata brings home a precious taonga, a raranga vest collected by Carl Freeze, an American Mormon missionary in the early 1900s.
A European art collector challenged Conan Cheong's commendation of the Dutch Government’s return of the Singhosari stone Bhairava, Nandi, Ganesha and Brahma statues to Indonesia the year before.
When repatriation has been largely framed within nation-state contexts, what does it mean to truly foster inclusivity in this process? Is it essential to involve the communities directly affected for such inclusivity to be achieved? What insights can we gain from community-led repatriations regarding local priorities, needs, and cultural practices?
Argentina has one of the most important and sensitive bioanthropological collections in Latin America. Most of the remains in museums come from Tehuelche and Mapuche victims of the so-called "Conquest of the Desert". However...
This blog discusses the necessity for a comprehensive monitoring system for tracking restitution efforts involving cultural belongings and ancestral remains in Latin America.
‘In 1894, two colonising powers faced each other across the narrow strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok. One was the Netherlands East Indies, the other the kingdom of Lombok, ruled by a settler regime from Bali that dominated the island’s indigenous Sasak population.'
Once, The Art Newspaper called the historical relationships of the art trade with museums a ‘foggy world’. That was in 2016. I dare say the relationship of trade with museums still is very foggy. How does this relationship look like?
During the European expansion constant fighting and violence and the taking of spoils of war went hand-in-hand. Palaces, shrines, homesteads and entire villages were plundered and destroyed. In the restitution debate, the focus is mostly on state-collections resulting from these confrontations. There is ample evidence, however, that many more parties were involved. This blogpost has soem of the evidence.
Why is research into colonial collections in the private sector - I mean art dealers, auction houses and private collectors - so tough? The main reasons is that most of them have built a wall around themselves, and there is rarely a hole in this wall through which an outside observer can look inside their closed bulwark.
What’s in a name? The language we use tells us who is speaking, from what perspective, and (implicitly), who controls the narrative. Names, in short, have power.
