Non-European objects in Krefeld collection examined

Research undertaken by Kunstmuseen Krefeld has subjected the museums’ holdings of ethnographic material to a scholarly assessment of their colonial contexts. Together with a selection of objects, the findings are now being presented at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld as part of the exhibition series Sammlung in Bewegung [Collection in Motion]. The project was funded by the German Lost Art Foundation and supervised by provenance researcher Gesa Grimme.

Kunstmuseen Krefeld hold more than 24,000 works, including roughly 115 non-European objects that entered the collection between 1891 and 1930 – a period in which European colonial powers, including the German Empire, exercised extensive political and economic control over many regions in Africa, Asia and Oceania.

“The first check carried out at Kunstmuseen Krefeld enabled an initial appraisal of collection items and the circumstances of their acquisition. The results underscore that objects from colonial contexts were not collected solely by ethnological museums: institutions in other fields likewise sought to acquire non-European objects during and after the German colonial period. The Foundation welcomes the fact that the project outcomes have been incorporated in a public exhibition, thereby making the relevance of provenance research visible,” said Dr. Michael Franz, acting representative of the Executive Chair of the German Lost Art Foundation.

Within the scope of the project, the holdings were systematically examined with regard to provenance, acquisition circumstances and potential cultural sensitivity. For a substantial proportion of the objects, the research confirms acquisition in the context of colonial power relations. Owing to gaps in historical documentation, it was not possible in all cases to reconstruct unambiguously the precise regions of origin or the conditions under which the items found their way to Krefeld. Identified regions of origin include territories under German, Dutch, British and Belgian colonial rule – among them “German West Africa”, “German East Africa”, “Netherlands India” and “British New Guinea”.

The holdings consist primarily of objects of everyday use. No explicit indications of violent appropriation have so far been found, but in view of the incomplete source base it cannot be ruled out that individual acquisitions occurred in problematic circumstances. In consequence, and in line with the German Museum Association’s Guidelines for the Care of Collections from Colonial Contexts, an unlawful acquisition cannot be excluded solely based on the extant documentation.

To the project: Erste Bestandsprüfung ethnografischer Objekte der Kunstmuseen Krefeld mit Blick auf koloniale Kontexte [First check of Kunstmuseen Krefeld’s ethnographic holdings with regard to colonial contexts]