Museums, Empire and Decolonial Praxis

A New Museum Paradigm?
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-80521-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 204 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 468 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Museum Studies

Museums, Empire and Decolonial Praxis examines how museums and heritage institutions interpret colonial histories today. Bringing together academics, practitioners and artists, this edited collection explores whether contemporary decolonial work signals the emergence of a new museum paradigm.

Traversing time, place and institutional context, the chapters combine established and emerging case studies from museums across Europe, Africa and the Americas. Contributors ask how museums can work with and against racist histories, objects and images; how non-Western epistemologies and ontologies can reframe provenance research and material culture; and what decolonisation means in practice for those working in, with, and on museums. Rather than treating decolonisation as a settled solution, the volume stress-tests it as a paradigm that now shapes the terrain of museum work, embraced, adapted, contested or resisted. Through collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches, the book foregrounds museums as relational spaces embedded in political, ethical and social struggle. Collectively, the chapters capture a distinctive moment of change in museum practice, offering both critical reflection and practical insight into how decolonial praxis is reshaping the purpose, authority and future of museums.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of museum studies, heritage studies, art history, history, archival studies and education. It will also appeal to museum professionals, artists, activists and cultural policymakers engaged in debates around empire, restitution and decolonial practice.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Aylett-Streitberg, Samuel

Jones, Matthew

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstsammlung, Museen, Ausstellungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

00. Introduction: Decolonisation in the Contact Zone Matthew Jones & Samuel Aylett-Streitberg  01. Collecting the world on paper: Traveling artists and the history of the art museum Freya Schwachenwald  02. A map of vulnerabilities: Racialisations, Racism and Decolonisation in German-speaking museums Gaëlle Shrot 03.Unlithified: Meditations on possibility and minerals in the museum Eleanor S. Armstrong & Kopo V. Oromeng 04. Not everything is for us: a re-assessment of Western epistemology through digital heritage management Billie Duch Giménez 05. Holding Art Museums Accountable: Recovering Entangled Lives of Enslaved People in London’s National Gallery Sean Cham 06.Returning and Retaining – Reclaim and Repatriation of ethnographic Photographs as Processes of Dispute, Contest and Reconciliation Alona Dubova 07. Towards a New Anthropological Voice Sydney Stewart Rose 08. Performing the Provenance of Ramesses II at the British Museum: Alternative Forms of Restitution in Contemporary Artistic Practice Liza Weber 09. Pulling strings: From policies of extraction and accumulation to policies of care in the work of Nicolás Grum Victoria Vargas-Downing 10. Exhibhitionary Praxis Toyin Agbetu  11.“Dead on Arrival”? The Humboldt Forum Samuel Aylett-Streitberg & Ionna Streitberg.

Über Autor(innen)

Samuel Aylett-Streitberg is Visiting Fellow in The Centre for Empire and Postcolonial Studies at the Open University and serves as Academic Director at Arden University Berlin, Germany.

Matthew Jones is an early career researcher with a PhD from the University of Sussex and has a forthcoming monograph titled Curating Transatlantic Slavery: Challenging History and Practices in the Museum.