SHARING STORIES ON CONTESTED HISTORIES
Museum & heritage programme by the Reinwardt Academy and the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency

Programme

Sharing Stories on Contested Histories

Organisers

Museum & heritage programme by the Reinwardt Academy and the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency

Cohort

Camila Opazo-Sepúlveda, Christian Reeder, Darius Saviour Ankamah, Georgetine Nremoredjo, Imogen Coulson, Jacinta Koolmatrie, Jade Turner, Jéssica Hipolito, Katherine Katzer, Kavita Peterson, Leilani Wong, Maya Narvaes, Osvaldo Falcão, Ranmalie Jayawardana, Sabine Wohlfarth, Salsabilla Sakinah, Seth Kriger, Sharika Parmar and Yasmine Sedeik.

FACILITATORS

Sofia Lovegrove, Ruben Smit, Jodie van 't Hoff, and Chunni Chiu and Remco Vermeulen.

ABOUT SHARING STORIES ON CONTESTED HISTORIES
How are museum and heritage professionals around the world responding to current societal challenges, such as the climate crisis and social inequalities? How do museums critically engage with their own histories and reflect on their role in society in the face of these challenges? How can they handle collections created and collected during colonial times in more caring and ethical ways? How do they navigate and react to contestations over certain histories and heritage? This exchange programme brings together a group of young museum and heritage professionals from around the world to reflect on these questions and to exchange knowledge and experiences regarding their working practices.

REFLECTION

SHARING STORIES ON CONTESTED HISTORIES | Museum & heritage programme by the Reinwardt Academie & the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency

Last month, I finished the 'Sharing Stories on Contested Histories' programme. Starting as 20 online strangers, we became close over 3 months discussing the coloniality of museums, including restitution, care, ancestral remains, colonial violence, reparative museology, Indigenous justice & community-led heritage projects.

From 9-17 November, we exchanged Teams for Amsterdam, visiting museums including the Amsterdam Museum, Rijksmuseum, and Wereldmuseum Amsterdam where we discussed the exhibitions on colonialism with head curator Imara Limon, history curators Eveline Sint Nicolaas and Maria Holtrop & Director Wayne Modest. We exchanged with the Dutch national slavery museum quartermaster Peggy Brandon . With Carine Zaayman & Stevie Jane Nolten we discussed ethics of care.

Our programme cohort hosted a world cafe, gathering different people from the heritage field to discuss our different interests, including artist intervention, climate change, restitution, care, youth engagement, unwilling audiences and activist communities. At my table, we discussed how we can imagine different (radical) kinds of collective spaces & movements beyond institutions such as museums.

Discussing the institutional violences of museums all week made me more grateful for the sessions with The Black Archives & Weaving Realities Collective, showing us how to engage with colonial history & coloniality in a manner that is community-led and just.

And mostly, this cohort reconfirmed the importance of community. Criticising institution from inside or out can be exhausting, so we must find like-minded people and support each other, where we find solidarity in our different struggles against the same systems.

For this, I thank my wonderful cohort Camila Opazo-Sepúlveda, Christian Reeder, Darius Saviour Ankamah, Georgetine Nremoredjo, Imogen Coulson, Jacinta Koolmatrie, Jade Turner, Jéssica Hipolito, Katherine Katzer, Kavita Peterson, Leilani Wong, Maya Narvaes, Osvaldo Falcão, Ranmalie Jayawardana, Sabine Wohlfarth, Salsabilla Sakinah, Seth Kriger, Sharika Parmar and Yasmine Sedeik.

And to the great people that brought us together, thank you Sofia Lovegrove, Ruben Smit, Jodie van 't Hoff, and Chunni Chiu and Remco Vermeulen.

I feel deeply motivated to continue my work on institutional critique and decoloniality, which I have been working on with my initiative Beyond the Buzzword. I also look forward to continuing collaborating with this great group!