Partnership between SPK and Museums Association of Namibia: 23 objects travel from Berlin to Namibia

The items in­clude his­tor­i­cal ev­ery­day ob­jects, jew­ellery, tools and fash­ion ar­ti­cles. They were se­lect­ed by a group of Namib­ian ex­perts for their his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al and aes­thet­ic sig­nif­i­cance. Cul­tur­al her­itage com­mu­ni­ties, schol­ars and artists in Namib­ia will re­search the items in depth in di­a­logue with the col­lec­tions of the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um of Namib­ia. The ob­jects will al­so serve as a source of in­spi­ra­tion for Namib­ian artists. One of those in­volved is Dr. Laris­sa Förster, Head of the De­part­ment of Cul­tur­al Goods and Col­lec­tions from Colo­nial Con­texts at the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, who is a schol­ar­ly ad­vi­sor to the project.

Con­fronting Colo­nial Pasts, En­vi­sion­ing Cre­ative Fu­tures is fund­ed by the Ger­da Henkel Foun­da­tion. The first phase of the project was com­plet­ed at the end of June 2022 and fo­cused on strength­en­ing the Namib­ian mu­se­um land­scape. This made it pos­si­ble to ren­o­vate the de­pot at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um of Namib­ia and to em­ploy a re­stor­er and a muse­ol­o­gist to in­ven­to­ry the col­lec­tion there. Amount­ing to 400,000 eu­ros in to­tal, the funds were al­so used to es­tab­lish the Mu­se­um of Namib­ian Fash­ion in Otji­waron­go, which is due to open on 1 June this year. The sec­ond phase will start with the jour­ney of the 23 items and will be fund­ed by the Foun­da­tion with an ad­di­tion­al sum of just un­der 300,000 eu­ros. Most of the project funds go to­wards work on the ground in Namib­ia.

The project in­volves a num­ber of phas­es: col­lab­o­ra­tive prove­nance re­search on the col­lec­tions from Namib­ia at the Eth­no­log­i­cal Mu­se­um in Berlin and the prepa­ra­tion of an ex­hi­bi­tion at the Hum­boldt Fo­rum about the re­search pro­cess have been com­plet­ed. Based on the joint prove­nance re­search, the 23 ob­jects from the Eth­no­log­i­cal Mu­se­um will now trav­el to Namib­ia, where they will be brought in­to di­a­logue with the col­lec­tions at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um of Namib­ia. Over the next two years, work­shops in­volv­ing Namib­ian her­itage ex­perts, re­searchers and con­tem­po­rary artists will be held at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um of Namib­ia fo­cus­ing on ob­jects from both mu­se­ums, and re­search will be con­duct­ed in her­itage com­mu­ni­ties across Namib­ia.

The his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tions from Namib­ia at the Eth­no­log­i­cal Mu­se­um were large­ly ac­quired dur­ing the Ger­man colo­nial pe­ri­od (1884-1919). Their prove­nance has been the sub­ject of in­ves­ti­ga­tion since the be­gin­ning of 2018, with Namib­ian part­ners in­volved from 2019 on­wards.
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