The rich Bavarian Capuchins collections from the Mapuche were exhibited in the mission museum of their monastery in Altötting, near Munich, until it closed in 1987.
Through in-depth analysis, Scholz not only provides insights into the specificity of this particular collection, but also contributes to the understanding of missionary museums in general by elucidating their relation to contemporary ethnographic practices, as well as linking this history to the current debate on the provenance, handling and presentation of ethnographic collections from colonial times kept in European museums.
By exploring the Bavarian Capuchins’ collecting activities in Chile and how the artifacts were exhibited in Altötting, Scholz aims at reconstructing the biography of this particular set of artifacts, and establishing a more transparent curation as to the origins of the objects.
In this way, Scholz addresses the issue of the ‘treasures’ that missionaries brought back and that are still kept in monasteries, missionary houses and public museums, which generally tend to be excluded from debates regarding the decolonization of museum collections.
Chapter in ‘Cross-critical heritage – Critical approaches to missionary legacies’, p. 219-251. Eds. Jonas Van Mulder, Thomas Coomans, and Dries Vanysacker.
