Abstract
The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam is currently in a process of making innovative changes to its displays. The museum aims to critically engage with its own past and simultaneously be an inclusive platform for reimagining the future. Especially for an ethnographic institution like the Tropenmuseum, these are complex tasks. The museum was founded in 1864 as the Koloniaal Museum (Colonial Museum) in Haarlem. In the first half of the twentieth century, the institute’s main purpose became to collect, categorize, and display products and cultures from the colonies, establishing a Dutch national identity and expressing cultural dominance and superiority over the country’s colonies. These colonial foundations still manifest themselves in the institute’s collection, as well as in the imposing architecture of the building that has housed the museum since 1923, determining the institute’s conditions of existence in the present.
Highlights
The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam is currently in a process of making innovative changes to its displays
Since the beginning of this century, many have spoken of a “crisis” of the ethnographic museum.[28]
The 2012 announcement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discontinue funding the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam can be related to such a crisis
Summary
The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam is currently in a process of making innovative changes to its displays. The museum chose this moment to confront its colonial past head on.[13] This shift in vision had a major impact on a large refurbishment of the semi-permanent galleries from 1995 until 2008, for which colonial and institutional histories, issues of Othering, the engagement of source communities, shifting to thematic narratives, and the contemplation of the ways people live together were all important topics.[14]. As already pointed out, several aspects of the 2008 displays remain in place as of today, most notably a number of theatrical dioramas, such as the Colonial Theatre with its wax figures of historical archetypes, the reconstruction of the VOC Curiosity Cabinet, and the Bamboo Room, modeled after a 1912 display at the Tropenmuseum’s predecessor, the Colonial Museum in Haarlem At present, all these rather striking curatorial elements are still part of the geographical exhibit on the first floor.
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