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Date
09.04. - 11.04.2025
Location
Museumsakademie Joanneum
Meeting point
Zurich and Neuchâtel (CH)
Costs
200 €, reduced fee 150 € (The reduced fee is available to students, trainees, unemployed people, and employees of this year’s cooperation partners.)
External registration
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In 2024, four exhibitions on Swiss colonial history were shown in the city of Zurich, tracing colonial continuities in the present. This took place in the context of strong public interest and a complex debate in which, for example, the decolonisation of museums was also called for. Based on the aforementioned exhibition projects, we will embark on an exploratory tour of selected museums in Zurich and Neuchâtel. We will meet curators, scholars, and artists from the Swiss National Museum, the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich and the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, the ETH and the University of Zurich as well as the University of Fribourg to discuss how museums today can deal responsibly with contaminated collections in the context of workshop discussions and exhibition visits: How can the step be made from research and debates on colonialism to curatorial practice? What opportunities are opened up by international museum collaborations or by including communities from the diaspora in the exhibition process? What should be done with collections of objects from violent contexts? In Neuchâtel, we will take a look at the colonial heritage in public space and the history of the Musée d'Histoire naturelle’s collection.
Organisers of the workshop
Raphael Schwere provenance researcher at the Natural History Museum Basel, prior to that co-curator of “kolonial” at the Swiss National Museum, Zurich (CH)
Bettina Habsburg-Lothringen management team, Museumsakademie Joanneum, Graz (AT)
