Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum by Katrin Sieg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum by Katrin Sieg Sol Izquierdo de la Viña Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum. By Katrin Sieg. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. Pp. 326 + 16 illustrations. Cloth $80. Paper $34.95. ISBN 9780472075102. Given the museum's historical alliance with the European colonial project, it has long been the target of anti-racist and decolonial interventions. Following major efforts by activists, curatorial proposals have emerged to challenge museums so as to bring the crimes of colonialism into public debate and urge for reparations. In Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum, Katrin Sieg examines the process in which museums review the colonial past, confront its continuities and work towards healing. The book meticulously surveys the crucial decolonial work initiated by activists, academics, and artists, which has prompted the actions of bigger institutions. By developing a wide theoretical apparatus and analyzing decisive exhibitions, it sheds light on a process still in progress. Approaching the issue from a background in theater studies, Sieg presents the museum as a stage on which to choreograph revisited narratives of European history. By including in its parcours the visitors' bodies, its rooms facilitate the performative experience of mourning and encourage a utopian anti-imperial future. Her position is nevertheless shrewd regarding the troubles and complex steps involved in decolonizing museums. She recognizes the burdens facing historic museums given their role as instruments of imperial powers that scientifically justified and publicly presented racism, and she acknowledges Europe's difficulties in detaching itself from this "colonial gaze." Therefore, besides the need to scrutinize this institution and its forms of representation, she argues that a decolonization process requires deep institutional and structural transformations. The book begins with an introductory chapter that presents a historical overview as well as vertebral concepts for decolonial theories. Sieg deepens the "labor of mourning", as formulated by Paul Gilroy, arguing that it is needed to overcome colonial melancholia as well as retraumatization, and thus essential to healing colonial wounds. Through a survey of key post/decolonial literature, her study offers an indispensable conceptual framework to comprehend the complex and urgent challenges of decolonization. Moreover, the first portion of the book maps out different critical interventions that ignited the flame of decolonization, thus situating the origins of this process in social movements. Chapter two focuses on ethnology museums that have avoided confronting their colonial legacy, instead reframing themselves as world museums with suspect claims to multiculturalism. One paradigmatic example is the controversial case of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin that exercised a "rebranding of the imperial past as cosmopolitan heritage" (49). Several activist platforms came together and positioned themselves against the expensive architectural project, vehemently [End Page 609] calling for the restitution of human remains and cultural assets guarded in Berlin's ethnological collections. The activists' actions around the Humboldt Forum have been essential to bringing this debate into the public sphere and putting pressure on German institutions. In the same way, the project "Colonialism in a Box" (2011), documented in chapter 3, recounts an intervention at the German History Museum in Berlin. Sieg observes the museum's linear triumphalist narrative, which due to its "colonial aphasia" is unthinkingly aligned with colonial violence. On the contrary, the project "Colonialism in a Box" challenged the narrative by looking at instances of asymmetrical relations with the colonized territories and offering "contrapuntal readings" (Edward Said) of objects in the permanent exhibition. Thus, by documenting pioneering efforts of grassroots activism, often overlooked in academic publications, Sieg's first three chapters elucidate the reasons and goals of the decolonial agenda. As a response to "Colonialism in a Box," the German History Museum developed the exhibition project German Colonialism: Fragments of its Past and Present (2016–2017), which is thoroughly analyzed in the book's central part (chapters 4–6). This section examines singular curatorial strategies and articulates a critical assessment of decolonial practices in museology. Sieg praises the exhibition's focus on Afro-German stories throughout colonial and postcolonial history, its inclusion of the perspectives of Black curators, and avoidance of violent and racist images that perpetuate the dehumanizing colonial gaze. As she states...