Historical use of pesticides to protect collections means objects are contaminated by not only colonial heritage
The day Santi Hitorangi would touch the human remains of his ancestors was meant to mark the beginning of the end of their 140-year spell in forced exile.
were to ceremonially transfer their ancestors’ remains from the realm of artefacts to the realm of deceased humans. “At the time, many of these museums were understaffed and completely overwhelmed with the task of handling the objects they had amassed during the colonial era,” said Tello, a former conservator at Berlin’s Ethnological Museum.
The masks, which were once worn in religious ceremonies, were bought in 1915 by the German ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss from the son of a deceased Kogi priest – a purchase the museum says should never have happened. “It’s pretty clear that these masks came to Berlin unlawfully,” said the Berlin state museums curator Manuela Fischer.announced
In some cases, fears have proven to be unfounded. The curators of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, a new museum, had originally planned to exhibit a climbablesailing boat from the city’s ethnological collection. Instead, they took the costly decision to commission Fiji boatbuilders to build another replica instead. Concerns about pesticides used on the old boat, the museum said, were one factor that had led to that decision.
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