Pauline reflects on her experiences at TheMuseumsLab 2024, from visiting heritage sites in Ghana and Wales to engaging with African and European peers on decolonisation, restitution, and sustainable heritage practices.
Reimagining Museums: A Journey through Ghana’s Cultural Heart
Hosted by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, the final module of TheMuseumsLab 2024 brought Fellows to key heritage sites across Ghana, creating space for exchange on restitution, community engagement, and the future of museum practice. Explore more in this written and video reflection produced by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board.
During the MuseumsLab 2022 project session in Cape Town the team came up with a Project on the Dolls of Good Hope. The project was symbolic as it covered a topic that cuts across the countries represented in the group. The countries represented included those from all the 4 regions of the Africa continent (West, East, North and South). Germany was also present giving the team a trans-continental perspective.
Alumni Project | On the Surface: Zooarchaeology, Photography and Provenance Research as a Collaborative Process
In 2022, the On the Surface project was born out of an African-European museum exchange between three professionals who met during Module 2 of TheMuseumsLab in Berlin.
“Disrupting Restitution” was born out of a team project that started during TheMuseumsLab 2022 edition. "We came together due to our shared interest in and frustration with current debates and approaches to restitution. As a diverse group of African and European specialists and practitioners from various backgrounds (museum education, exhibitions, provenance research, policy, heritage management, etc.) we identified and discussed some of the main challenges that face those working on this contentious and complex topic."
Alumni Project | Connecting Restitution Histories and African World Festivals
In 1972, Nigerian archaeologist and head of Nigeria’s Federal Department of Antiquities, Ekpo Eyo sent a circular to several European embassies requesting “some” permanent loans of Benin Bronzes but even such a “modest loan request,” as written by Benedicte Savoy in her latest book Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat, “sparked panic among officials who feared a radical emptying of Western museums”.
TheMuseumsLab Alumni Network was formed during the Team Projects Phase of the 2022 edition of TheMuseumsLab. As dialogues and relationships developed during Module 2 hosted in Berlin, the need for a team project focused on supporting alumni activities was apparent.
Alumni Project | Benchmarking visit to Kenya on the International Inventory Programme
The International Inventories Programme (IIP) is a research and curatorial initiative that traces Kenyan cultural objects held in institutions outside the country. This project involves a benchmarking visit to Kenya to learn from the IIP’s methods, building knowledge, skills, and collaboration, particularly for developing collection inventories for Malawi, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.
