By Chikako Inoue
On a rainy day at the beginning of September, our group visited Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, a cultural museum that has been active since 1926. The museum consists of two permanent exhibitions, “What’s the Story” and “Things That Matter,” and four temporary exhibitions, “Our Colonial Inheritance,” “Imprints,” “Martial Arts,” and “SARI/STATEMENT.” I checked out every expo except “Martial Arts” because I ran out of time as the dreamy world of colorful Sari magnetized me. Like most of the “cultural museums” in the “Global North,” Wereldmuseum also collects and showcases objects presumably stolen or taken away in a colonial power imbalance. This museum makes their best effort to acknowledge such colonial history and encourage visitors to reflect on it. Besides the contents, the first floor had a beautiful open area with a beam of blue light that reminded me of Bibliotheek Neude (a public library in inercity Utrecht near where we are staying), which I admired.
A series of exhibitions, especially “Our Colonial Inheritance,” focuses not only on showcasing the culture and the history within and outside of the Netherlands but also on how the exhibited objects ended up being here. The second floor is entirely dedicated to contextualizing the exhibition of Surinamese/Afro-Surinamese and Indonesian/Indo-Dutch culture in the history of Dutch coloniality. Part of the effort to decolonize the museum’s colonial heritage is seen in the display method as well. This was the first time for me to see a replica of the exhibited object for the visitors to touch, which is a great approach in terms of increasing the accessibility and deconstructing the hierarchy among museum/objects and visitors. As a Digital Studies concentrator, I was also intrigued by how they integrated digital technologies into their exhibition: for example, they had a quiz board where you can play with another person, an interactive calligraphy lesson, etc. Throughout the exhibit “Our Colonial Inheritance,” I learned a complex web of colonial history among European countries including the Netherlands, countries colonized by the Netherlands such as Suriname and Indonesia, and Japan. There, I learned about the history of Japanese occupation in Indonesia in relation to Dutch coloniality through objects such as tapestry and posters. In Japan, teaching Japanese coloniality in history class is, shamefully, rare. Thus getting to know Japanese colonial history via this museum was a great opportunity for me to think about the post-war responsibility of decolonial work for me as a Japanese scholar.
Our visit to Wereldmuseum left me pondering this question: what, and how long, will it take for us to reach the decoloniality that we are heading to? Although the museum acknowledges its colonial heritage in the exhibition, the exhibition is still composed of presumably stolen objects after all. In addition, some of the descriptions show that the targeted audience is not someone familiar with the culture that is exhibited. Of course, visitors are looking for new knowledge; but this also indicates that the museum is catering more to “Western” audiences who are not familiar with “Oriental” cultures and histories. When you visit any museum, ask yourself this question: Whose voice is describing this object, culture, and history? And for whom?
