Provenance Research at the Humboldt Forum

Research partners at the storage facility in Berlin: Julia Binter, Jonathan Fine, Nehoa Kautondokwa and Cynthia Schimming with Uaṱunua in the Ethnologisches Museum storage facility in Berlin, film still from “Tracing Namibian-German Collaborations”, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Moritz Fehr

Projectiles belonging to Hassan bin Omari, ca. 1895. Inv. no. III E 4661 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Ethnologisches Museum / scan: Hendryk Ortlieb

Index card of the “Mask of a Bird Monster”, ca. 1900. Recto of the historical object index card with the “Mask of a Bird Monster”, paper, inv. no. IV A 893 © Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum / scan: Annette Hlawa

Provenance Research at the Humboldt Forum

Museum collections are the result of relationships. Provenance research makes the origins and relational histories behind the objects visible, and scrutinises the unequal power relationships that existed when the objects were acquired.

Bought, plundered, exchanged, donated, extorted, looted: the objects in the collections of the Ethnologischen Museums and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst were acquired and appropriated in a whole range of ways. Accompanied by a booklet, both collections at the Humboldt Forum explore the objects, people and events to tell the stories that have shaped the relationships between human kind and objects.

Provenance research itself also builds relationships. Collaborative research and dialogue with people from the regions from which the objects originate can change our ideas about our shared past. Collectively confronting histories that are often violent can also create new ways of dealing with the objects in the future and new paths for postcolonial provenance research.