The German Lost Art Foundation mourns the death of Dr Jeremy Silvester

Ini­tial­ly work­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Namib­ia, Jere­my Sil­vester lat­er moved to the Mu­se­ums As­so­ci­a­tion of Namib­ia (MAN), of which he was most re­cent­ly di­rec­tor. MAN stood for in­ten­sive co­op­er­a­tion with Namib­ian com­mu­ni­ties, for par­tic­i­pa­tion and for the pur­suit of di­a­log. To­geth­er with his col­leagues, Jere­my Sil­vester made MAN one of the most in­flu­en­tial and dy­nam­ic Namib­ian NGOs in the cul­tur­al sec­tor.

As part of the “Africa Ac­ces­sioned” net­work project, MAN has been seek­ing con­tact with Ger­man mu­se­ums and col­lec­tions that own ob­jects and pho­tographs from Namib­ia since 2014. MAN thus paved the way for many Ger­man-Namib­ian forms of mu­se­um co­op­er­a­tions, which are be­ing con­tin­ued and ex­pand­ed as part of the grow­ing aware­ness of colo­nial her­itage in mu­se­ums.

“Africa Ac­ces­sioned” al­so cre­at­ed the ba­sis for a pi­lot study of Namib­ian ob­jects in mu­se­ums and col­lec­tions in Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, which is cur­rent­ly be­ing pre­pared. Jere­my Sil­vester pro­vid­ed key im­pe­tus for this. He sup­port­ed the project with his ex­per­tise and drive, and ac­com­pa­nied it with his grip­ping vi­sions for the fu­ture of mu­se­ums and col­lec­tions in Namib­ia and Ger­many.

Jere­my Sil­vester was con­vinced that mu­se­ums not on­ly serve the ex­change of knowl­edge and ideas (along with so­cial (self-)un­der­stand­ing), but can al­so con­tribute to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and, above all, cre­ate new re­la­tion­ships. His ideas and con­vic­tions will live on in nu­mer­ous projects!