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Workshop, June 11, 2022

Colonial Provenance. Swiss museum collections in need of clarification. Provenance research of material heritage in Swiss museum collections has so far mainly focused on collections with a potential connection to Nazi looted art. In the 2021-2022 funding period, the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) also supports provenance research projects at Swiss museums that are explicitly dedicated to researching the acquisition and ownership histories of objects collected in colonial contexts. The expansion of funding to include the according holdings is evidence of a changing awareness – at the federal level as well as at the level of individual institutions – regarding the role of Swiss museums and collectors in the context of Europe's colonial expansion. Based on the project ‘Traces of Colonial Provenance’1, which is one of the projects funded by the FOC, the workshop will present provenance research currently being carried out at Swiss museums on collections from colonial acquisition contexts. On the one hand, the focus will be on networking and the possibility of exchange between the researchers themselves. On the other hand, the method of provenance research and the relevance of material heritage for historiography as such will be critically reflected based on current theses of (post-)colonial Switzerland. Provenance research conducted at museums is thus deliberately exposed to a broader academic debate to discuss the role of museums as Switzerland’s colonial archives.

The official and full title of the project is in German and reads: «Spuren kolonialer Provenienz. Die Erforschung ethnografischer Sammlungsprovenienzen anhand des ‘Zeller-Archivs’ am Bernischen Historischen Museum»

Workshop 1: The heritage of colonial Switzerland 9:15 – 12:15 Historical collections of non-European material heritage in Switzerland refer to numerous biographies of people and institutions that were active in various functions in colonies worldwide. The study of scientific collections (ethnographic, zoological, botanical, etc.) from colonized areas also provides insights into the contexts in which they were acquired and amassed. Furthermore, they can be used to explore a system of Eurocentric knowledge production that contributed significantly to the exercise of colonial rule and in which Switzerland was particularly involved. To what extent and in what potential way can museums be understood and used in this sense as colonial archives and their collections as testimonies of Switzerland's colonial entanglements?

Keynote by Ciraj Rassool, University of the Western Cape: Confronting colonialisms in South Africa and Germany: Some lessons for Swiss museums? 13:45 – 14:30 This presentation is interested to understand the varied ways in which the colonial, colonialism and coloniality has been understood in South Africa and Germany: as period and ‘context’ firmly set in the past; as legacy in the present; as classificatory system; and as enduring relations of power. In arguing that the museum is the fundamental site of empire and coloniality, it also explores the meanings of the post-colonial and the postcolonial, and what a postcolonial and anticolonial museum politics and practice could look like, in South Africa, Germany and in Switzerland.

Workshop 2: Researching, documenting, and communicating colonial provenances 14:45 – 17:30 The great unknowns of ethnographic museum collections and archives are the identities of original, indigenous owners, which in many cases have not been documented by the collectors. The concrete moments of acquisition on site also often remain unknown, which poses great challenges for provenance research today. Missing, blurred or incomplete information, the selective one-sidedness of the represented voices in museum archives, or Eurocentric and racist evaluations in the sources place high normative demands on the documentation and communication of colonial provenances in museums. What conditions and expectations must post-colonial provenance research consider today and what special challenges does it face?

Timetable 08:30

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