The (NMVW) () is an overarching museum organisation for the management of several

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

s in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, founded in 2014. It consists of the

Tropenmuseum The Tropenmuseum ( en, Museum of the Tropics) is an ethnographic museum located in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1864. One of the largest museums in Amsterdam, the museum accommodates eight permanent exhibitions and an ongoing series of tem ...

() in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

, the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal, and the

Museum Volkenkunde The National Museum of Ethnology (Museum Volkenkunde), is an ethnographic museum in the Netherlands located in the university city of Leiden. As of 2014, the museum, along with the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal, ...

() in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

. The National Museum of World Cultures works in close cooperation with the

Wereldmuseum The Wereldmuseum Rotterdam (formerly known as the Museum voor Land- en Volkenkunde) is an ethnographic museum, situated at Willemskade in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The museum was founded in 1883 and shows more than 1800 ethnographic objects fro ...

() in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

. It is also part of nation-wide Dutch organisations for research into provenance studies and projects of restitution of cultural heritage to countries of origin, like the former Dutch colony in today's

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

Structure and collections

The Dutch National Museum of World Cultures (NMVW) was founded in 2014 by a merger of the

, the

and the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal. It also oversees the

, whose collection belongs to that city. According to the museum's webpage, these collections contain "nearly 450,000 objects and 260,000 photographic images that are part of the state or municipality collections, and another 350.000 images of documentary value." The NMVW was created in the context of public discussions in the Netherlands, as well as in other European countries, about the

colonial history Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 aut ...

collections and calls for the restitution of African cultural heritage to different countries of origin. About forty per cent of the collection in the museum is estimated to have been acquired in colonial contexts. As Stijn Schoonderwoerd, then director of the NMVW, said about this discussion: “It led us to question our colonial history and we saw that we had the potential to ask a lot of questions about identity, control, power, inequality and

decolonization Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...

.” According to an article about the NMVW, published in the

UNESCO Courier ''The UNESCO Courier'' is the main magazine published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It has the largest and widest-ranging readership of all the journals published by the United Nations and its sp ...

of October/December 2020, the museum began work on its guidance for

repatriation Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...

in 2017. Already before this, repatriations are said to have "occurred over the decades, but claims had previously been handled on an ad hoc basis." In March 2019, a document called ''Return of Cultural Objects: Principles and Process'' was published, to express “the overall mission of the museum to address the long, complex and entangled histories that have resulted in the collections the museum holds.” It includes a “commitment to transparently address and evaluate claims for the return of cultural objects according to standards of respect, cooperation and timeliness.” In a collaboration with the

Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...

in Amsterdam and the ''Expertise Centre for the Restitution of Cultural Goods and the Second World War'' at the National Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), the NMVW is focused on Indonesia – with projects to consolidate research into colonial-era military expeditions and trading-house networks.

Repatriation of cultural heritage

In March 2020, the Dutch culture minister returned a gold-inlaid kris – a large

dagger A dagger is a fighting knife with a very sharp point and usually two sharp edges, typically designed or capable of being used as a thrusting or stabbing weapon.State v. Martin, 633 S.W.2d 80 (Mo. 1982): This is the dictionary or popular-use de ...

– to the Indonesian ambassador in The Hague, on the basis of

provenance Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...

research conducted by the museum. It belonged to Prince Diponegoro, a Javanese rebel leader and Indonesian hero who waged a five-year war against Dutch colonial rule from 1825 to 1830. Some of his belongings, including a saddle and a spear, were repatriated to Indonesia in the 1970s. In January 2021, the Dutch government approved a central mechanism for the repatriation of colonial heritage. Upon the recommendations of an advisory commission, it announced to return any objects in the national collections found to have been illegally taken from former Dutch colonies. To this end, a research group of nine museums and Amsterdam’s

Vrije Universiteit The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

are said to launch a €4.5m project in June 2021 in order to develop practical guidance for Dutch museums on colonial collections.

Sources

References

External links

Webpage
of the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands (in English) *W
page
of the ''Museumovermensen.nl'' (). *W
page
of the ''AfrikaMuseum.nl'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen Ethnographic museums in the Netherlands Museums established in 2014 National museums of the Netherlands African art museums

Structure and collections

Repatriation of cultural heritage

See also

Sources

References

Further reading

External links