The National Museums of World Culture have been granted ten million kronor for the project “Bringing the Objects to Life – and Challenging the Museums’ Colonial Histories.” The funding comes from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), which aims to give cultural institutions the opportunity to create larger exhibitions inspired by research in the humanities or social sciences.
The exhibitions are being developed in close dialogue with Professor Mårten Snickare (Art History, Stockholm University), who has written about colonial objects, and Associate Professor Linda Andersson Burnett (History of Ideas, Uppsala University), who has conducted a research project on the Enlightenment’s idea of universal humanity and 18th-century colonialism.
In the project, we regard museums, their collections, and the knowledge created around them as an integral part of the emergence of colonialism. In Bringing the Objects to Life, we want to open conversations on these issues: with visitors on site, with a wider circle of researchers, and with the groups that represent the collections’ contexts of origin. The project aims to highlight Sweden’s role in the colonial projects and, in doing so, also to discuss the history of how the collections came into being. The ambition is for this to contribute further knowledge to the field of research concerning colonialism as a global phenomenon.
RJ’s support makes possible an extensive initiative that will result in both a new permanent exhibition at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm and an addition to an existing permanent exhibition at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg. In addition, introductory installations will be created at the entrances of all four of our museums. The initiative is complemented by expanded educational offerings and public programming.
Within the project, an introductory station is being prepared at each museum, designed to welcome visitors to the site and introduce the respective museum’s collection and history of origin. They will be presented in collaboration with artists and other external partners. The objects have been chosen from the collections as representative of each place and museum. They are a tomahawk, a sarcophagus, a whipala, and a ceremonial shield – all of which can be connected to Sweden’s broader colonial history. Together, they provide four pieces of the puzzle in understanding the collections of the National Museums of World Culture.
Sandra Rathsman
sandra.rathsman@varldskulturmuseerna.se
