Curating Transcultural Spaces: Perspectives on Postcolonial Conflicts in Museum Culture (Visual Cultures and German Contexts)

Curating Transcultural Spaces asks what a museum which enables the presentation of multiple perspectives might look like. Can identity be global and local at the same time? How may one curate dual identity? More broadly, what is the link between the arts and processes of identity construction? This volume, an indispensable source for the process of engaging with colonial history in Germany and beyond, takes its starting point from the 'scandal' of the Humboldt Forum. The transfer of German state collections from the Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art, located at the margins of Berlin in Dahlem, into the centre of Germany's capital indicates the nation's aspiration of purported multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism; yet the project's resurrection of the site's former Prussian city palace, which was demolished during the GDR, stands in opposition to its very mission, given that the Prussian rulers benefited from colonial exploitation. By examining the contrasting successes of other projects, such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, Curating Transcultural Spaces compellingly argues for the necessity of taking post-colonial thinking on board in the construction of museum spaces in order to generate genuine exchange between multiple perspectives. Cover Contents Illustrations Contributors Acknowledgements Positionality statement 1 Introduction: Collaborating cultures, negotiating identities Sarah Hegenbart Part One Curating transcultural spaces 2 Initial legal and policy questions surrounding objects dispossessed in colonial context Kwame Opoku 3 Symptoms of postcolonial aporia and (national) identity crises in Germany Sarah Hegenbart 4 Multiple modernisms – curating the post-war era for the present Kristian Handberg Part Two Confronting the colonial past and constructing identities on the African continent, case studies from African countries 5 The architecture and aesthetics of Apartheid: Dada in South Africa, a case study Thomas O. Haakenson 6 Contested memories and spaces: Art, archives and ambivalence in ‘Ovizire∙Somgu: From where do we speak?’ A case study Julia Rensing 7 Democracy reflected in form, space and order: Learning from West Africa’s ancient empires, a case study from Nigeria Olajumoke Adenowo 8 Westerns made in Africa, a case study from Burkina Faso Camille Varenne Part Three Postcolonial conflicts, colonial memories and negotiating identities in Germany 9 Troubling the nation: Black Germans and the teaching of history Jeff Bowersox 10 The African diaspora palace: The pastfuture of Black knowledge in Europe Natasha A. Kelly 11 Cosmopolitanizing colonial memories in Berlin: The Humboldt Forum and the current shift in Germany’s culture of remembrance Thomas Thiemeyer 12 Under the shadow of the Christian cross: Twenty years of planning and curating the controversial Humboldt Forum in Berlin Viola König Conclusion Index