Colonial Collections under Scrutiny: Researching the Origin of Objects

How can academics and museum professionals research the provenance of a colonial museum collection? And can we trace possible ‘involuntary loss of possession’ or looted objects? During the colonial era, a variety of objects were taken to the Netherlands, often against the will of their original owners. For some years now, these collections and the possible return of colonial objects have been under scrutiny.

How do you investigate the provenance of museum collections acquired during the colonial era? Our guest speakers Mirjam Shatanawi (Reinwardt Academie and KITLV), Caroline Fernandes Caromano (LUCAS) and Paul Voogt (Missiemuseum Steyl) research such collections in the Netherlands. During this event, they will discuss their experiences as provenance researchers and some common challenges they encounter in their work. They talk about finding your way around extensive archival material spread across different institutions in the Netherlands and ways they trace ‘involuntary loss of possession’. They will also discuss the topic of researching colonial collections from different perspectives. What does it mean for a small museum with limited means to examine its collection history? And what is it like for someone from Brazil to research objects taken from their country and subsequently scattered across the European continent?

In order to assist researchers from the Netherlands and abroad in the first steps of their provenance research, the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR) of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies will present a series of digital research aids. The aids have been developed within the Colonial Collections Consortium, in conjunction with the Colonial Collections DataHub. Together with the experts and the audience, we will discuss what contribution such research aids can bring to the development of research into colonial collections in the Netherlands.

About the speakers

Wiebe Reints is a researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, working in a project within the Colonial Collections Consortium to create a series of research aids for conducting research into museum collections from a colonial context. He has a background in history and museum studies and graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 2023. He is interested in how the colonial past is reflected in museum collections and the restitution of cultural goods.

Mirjam Shatanawi is researcher and curator in the field of Islamic heritage and colonial collections. She obtained a PhD at the University of Amsterdam on the almost complete absence of Indonesia within the narrative of Islamic art and culture in Dutch museums. From 2001 until 2019, she worked as a curator at the Wereldmuseum. Nowadays, she teaches heritage theory at the Reinwardt Academie in Amsterdam and conducts research into the colonial manuscript collection of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV).

Paul Voogt studied anthropology (MA, University of Amsterdam) and business administration (MBA, Henley UK). He held management positions at Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, Naturalis Leiden and Utrecht University Museum and worked on redevelopment projects of museums in Kenya (National Museum) and Zanzibar (House of Wonders). He was appointed curator of Missiemuseum Steyl in 2022. Currently he engages in provenance research of a collection from Papua New Guinea, with a grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Caroline Fernandes Caromano is a Brazilian researcher with academic degrees in Social Sciences and Archaeology from the University of São Paulo and the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Living in the Netherlands since 2018, she has been a researcher at various renowned institutes. For the past 20 years, she has been conducting fieldwork and research in museum collections in collaboration with indigenous peoples of the Amazon, focusing on themes such as traditional knowledge, heritage and material culture.

Martijn Eickhoff is director of NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor of Archaeology and Heritage of War and Mass Violence at the University of Groningen. He researches the history, cultural dimensions and after-effects of large-scale violence and regime change in Europe and Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the spatial, material and transnational aspects. In 2020, he published the book The Politics of Heritage in Indonesia, co-written with Marieke Bloembergen.

About the Colonial Collections Consortium

The Colonial Collections Consortium is a partnership between five organisations in the Netherlands: Museum Bronbeek, NIOD, Cultural Heritage Agency, Rijksmuseum and Wereldmuseum. The consortium supports institutions administering collections in provenance research by sharing knowledge, answering questions and providing stakeholders with a network.