Between October 21st and 24th we’ll be organising an on-line conference entitled “Decolonizing Museum Cultures and Collections: Mapping Theory and Practice in East-Central Europe”.
The conference is an online event aimed at mapping the range of decolonial approaches to museum collections and practices in East-Central Europe.
In recent years, the debate over ‘decolonization’ has reinvigorated the museum and heritage sector globally, with a range of intensities and agendas. International organizations are being called on to reshape cultural institutions, to reorganize knowledge production and recognize its diverse forms, to share power and authority, to account for multiple perspectives, and to confront historical injustice in museum cultures, practices, structures, narratives, and collections.
Post- and decolonial approaches already have a strong foothold in post-socialist Eastern European scholarship and public discourse with regard to the legacies of Russian/Soviet, German/Nazi, Habsburg, Polish, and Ottoman imperialisms. But in practice, the impact of decolonial critique has been limited to temporary interventions rather than more sustainable heritage methods and strategies.
Similarly, the rediscovery of 19th and 20th-century entanglements among East-Central Europe, Asia, and the Global South by historians have been only weakly echoed in the museum sector. Overseas collections in East-Central European museums call for special attention with regard to both their histories and futures.
The conference will be held on Zoom with a daily program scheduled from ca. 1 pm to 9 pm CEST (Warsaw) so that it should be accessible to participants from different time zones. All you need to participate is to register yourself in advance and join us using your own device.
More details and registration links can be found here: https://decolonizingmuseums.pl