Humboldt Lab Tanzania - Shared object histories
Press release from 07/03/2018
The "Humboldt Lab Tanzania" project and the closely related provenance research project "Tanzania-Germany: Shared Object Histories?" have been running at the Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin since 2016. The museum worked together with actors from Tanzania on object histories of the collection in Berlin. The project focussed on objects that came to the museum in the context of violent appropriation and colonial wars
At the end of the "Humboldt Lab Tanzania", the trilingual publication "Humboldt Lab Tanzania. Objects from the colonial wars in the Ethnological Museum, Berlin - A Tanzanian-German dialogue", edited by Lili Reyels, Paola Ivanov and Kristin Weber-Sinn (Reimer Verlag; ISBN 978-3-496-01591-8; 59.00 euros).
Humboldt Lab Tanzania
The starting point for the "Humboldt Lab Tanzania" is the processing of the history of the Tanzania collection and its objects in co-operation with Tanzanian artists, scientists and actors from the societies of origin of the objects. The project is funded by the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation and focuses primarily on objects appropriated during the colonial wars, in particular those captured during the Maji Maji War.
Scientists from the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) carried out brief field research at the places of origin of selected objects. A Tanzanian group of artists visited the Ethnological Museum in Berlin and its depots and then, as artists in resi-dence in the studios of the Nafasi Art Space in Dar es Salaam, explored possible forms of (re-)presentation for sensitive objects. A kick-off conference at the Goethe-Institut in Dar es Salaam in November 2016 also provided space for an exchange of perspectives and points of view. In collaboration with the National Museum and House of Culture in Dar es Salaam, the findings, perspectives and artistic works resulting from the project work to date were presented in the travelling exhibition "Living Inside the Story - Humboldt Lab Tanzania" at the National Museum and House of Culture, the University of Dar es Salaam and the Maji Maji Memorial Museum in Songea at the beginning of 2017. The results have been published in a trilingual publication by Reimer Verlag and will also be included in the presentation of German colonialism in East Africa at the Humboldt Forum.
- Project management: PD Dr Paola Ivanov (Ethnological Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
- Curator, project manager in Tanzania: Dr Lili Reyels (Dar es Salaam/Berlin)
- Co-operation partners: Bookstop Sanaa: Visual Art Library & Creative Learning Space in Dar es Salaam; University of Dar es Salaam; National Museum and House of Culture, Dar es Salaam, Maji Maji Museum, Son-gea; Goethe-Institut Tanzania
- Project funding: German Federal Cultural Foundation in TURN - Fund for Artistic Co-operation between Germany and African Countries
Press photos: www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html
Pilot project: Tanzania-Germany: Shared object histories?
The pilot project "Tanzania-Germany: Shared Object Histories?" aims to develop a framework concept for researching the provenance of problematic collections, particularly those collected during the colonial period. The project began by analysing selected items from the collection of around 10,000 object numbers from what is now mainland Tanzania. The holdings to be researched were selected on the basis of their future presentation in the Humboldt Forum and/or their representativeness for various forms of collecting. The initial focus was on objects that came to the museum in the context of violent appropriation and colonial wars.
The starting point was initially the classic question of provenance research: What biographies do the objects have? Who were the previous owners and any intermediaries? How did the respective objects come into the possession of the museum? This also raises the question of the role and significance of objects in colonial encounters and power relations. Against the background of the violence of German colonial rule, its fragility and the agency of Africans should always be considered. In a second step, the project asks how these meanings of the objects have changed historically in the course of the colonial and post-colonial period on the various sides involved. Accordingly, the history of the Tanzania collection was to be analysed in cooperation with Tanzanian partners. Thanks to the Humboldt Lab Tanzania, possible formats of cooperation could be tested. For the second time, two curators in residence from Tanzania are also visiting the Ethnological Museum for a few weeks. The aim of a second project phase is to carry out joint research work in German-Tanzanian teams and to present the research results in the form of an interactive online database.
- Project management: PD Dr Paola Ivanov (Ethnological Museum, National Museums in Berlin)
- Research assistant: Kristin Weber-Sinn (Ethnological Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), museologist: Hendryk Ortlieb (Ethnological Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
- Co-operation partners: University of Dar es Salaam, Department of History; National Museum and House of Culture, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- Project funding: Board of Trustees of Prussian Cultural Heritage