2023-05-16 20:01:28
Against the background of the dispute over objects from colonial contexts, nine Berlin museums have done their homework for future cases.
During the excavation of the bust of NefertitiState Museums
In the dispute over the future whereabouts of the Benin bronzes returned to Nigeria, the museums involved in particular appeared as if they had been caught flat-footed through grossly negligent innocence.
The fact that the circumstances surrounding such a return have been carefully negotiated over several years is no argument for the quick exchange of blows media-driven scandals. Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), admitted at a press event in the Archaeological Center in Berlin that the elephant in the room naturally got restless when the term Benin bronzes was mentioned.
In the context of the restitution debates
In fact, it was about the presentation of something much more dignified. Some time ago, the National Museums in Berlin began to draw up a position paper on how to deal with the archaeological collections and their provenances. To a certain extent, it is the result of a process of self-understanding by a total of nine well-known museums, including the Egyptian Museum, the Collection of Classical Antiquities, the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of the Near East, etc. In the context of the major restitution debates, these were more or less confronted with probing questions about which objects they in their collections and how they got there.
The paper can also be viewed as a future basis for a new professional self-confidence on the part of archaeologists and archaeologists, so that it may arm them for potential demands for return. The collections and museums make a significant contribution “to the collective knowledge of transnational cultural history,” says the preamble, and they “assess the collecting of archaeological objects positively in principle.” Get out of the suspicion trap, that’s what it means. In the highly emotional so-called post-colonialism debate, museums and collections have recently been given the reputation of being questionable safekeeping sites for objects from historical raids.
Archeological history as criminal history
So it’s also about maintaining seriousness. The provenance of objects as well as questions of legality and ethical evaluation should be discussed together with scientists from the countries of origin of the objects, a kind of revision of the respective founding histories of the collections. It is now said that historical excavations took place under an asymmetric balance of power, and it was not uncommon for collections to disregard the respective agreements, such as the sharing of finds. It is not uncommon for the history of archeology to require a criminal instinct.
In a pilot project funded by the German Center for the Loss of Cultural Assets in Magdeburg, the aim is to work out where the journey of critical self-examination is heading. As early as March, the Antiquities Collection, the Museum of Islamic Art and the Museum of the Near East, together with Turkish scientists and partner organizations, began examining former excavations in the area of the former Ottoman Empire under the magnifying glass of a critical archeology.
According to the position paper, the aim is “a contemporary, responsible approach to the archaeological collections”. Exactly what “responsible” can and should mean appears to be so symbolically charged in the debate about the Benin Bronzes, because there are many, sometimes conflicting, ideas about responsibility.
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