Introduction Sarah Johnson and Fanny Wonu Veys

Introduction

Sarah Johnson and Fanny Wonu Veys

This publication is part of a larger focus by the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures (NMVW) – an umbrella organisation comprising of the Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), the Museum Volkenkunde (Leiden) and the Afrika Museum (Berg en Dal) – and the Wereldmuseum (Rotterdam) on the provenance of its collections. In March 2019, the museum took an important step to embed provenance into its practice and policy with the publication of Return of Cultural Objects: Principles and Process, which identifies the principles on the basis of which the museum will assess claims for the return of objects of which it is the custodian. As part of this proactive policy, the museum works with countries and communities of origin to assess places for the justifiable return of objects to the original owners. In the summer of 2019, two researchers were hired for the fulltime investigation of the museum collections’ provenance.

The purpose of this publication is also proactive – it aims to assess how the museum can better highlight provenance both in the display of existing collections and in the collecting of new objects. This inaugural edition is roughly divided in

two parts. The first section focuses on framing existing collections. It investigates previously unexplored provenance of well-known objects and brings to light objects whose provenance left them underrepresented in exhibitions and ethnographic research. The second section looks at the way new acquisitions can expose the provenance of the museum’s history and existing collections. The first article, by Rosalie Hans, one of the museum’s two provenance researchers, presents new research on the early collecting practices of Dutch missionaries for the Afrika Museum. Hans illustrates the importance of investigating the biographies and histories of the missionaries who collected objects in Africa in order to better understand the objects’ provenance. Her article brings to light novel information on the source and formation of the Afrika Museum collections.

In his article, Karwin Cheung, Assistant Curator East and Central Asia at National Museums Scotland, traces the provenance of four Buddha heads from the Tianlongshan cave temples in China. He argues that their removal from their original context by Japanese and European traders shifted their position from Buddhist objects and inserted them into the history of trade and imperialism in twentiethcentury East Asia. The Tianlongshan Buddhas have received great international scholarly attention from art historians. As Cheung illustrates, unlike in art museums where the heads are displayed and celebrated as masterpieces of art history, they have historically not found a place in ethnographic contexts like NMVW where the four heads remain in storage.

François Janse van Rensburg, Junior Curator Southern Africa, similarly questions why an object has remained perpetually in NMVW’s storage. In his article, Janse van Rensburg uncovers the provenance of an ox-wagon, likely made by a British prisoner of war in South Africa, and argues that its link to white Afrikaans culture and Dutch nationalism led to its perceived unsuitability for an ethnographic context. As a result of its ability to tell the story about the relationship between Europeans and non-Europeans in South Africa, the ox-wagon is now a top piece of the South Africa collections.

Alternatively, Erna Lilje, Junior Curator western New Guinea, considers a large feather headdress that has had a prominent record of display from London to Paris to Leiden. The object was attributed to Yule Island in museum records. As Lilje argues in her article, the source attribution for the headdress was arrived at because Yule Island was the missionary headquarters that transferred the headdress to Europe. Because of its hazy provenance history, the headdress’ existence has not been made available to source communities.

Lilje’s article provides a model for how more thorough provenance research into the origins of objects can lead to more visibility of museum objects for source communities. In the first article of the second section, Davey Verhoeven, a Research Associate at the museum focusing on Japan, shows the political entanglements in the depiction of Nagasaki Bay on a nineteenth-century Japanese folding screen, acquired by the NMVW in 2019. The screen, made around 1836, provides a unique view on the bay of Nagasaki, including the Dutch trading post of Deshima and a Chinese compound. While the screen’s painter has been called ‘the photographer without a camera,’ Verhoeven’s article reveals the painter’s self-censorship in many details of the screen and therefore the danger in using such objects as archival documents of provenance.

Daan van Dartel, Curator Popular Culture and Fashion, discusses her decision to commission a project on trade and colonialism by Susan Stockwell (1962) with the artist herself. Van Dartel gives Stockwell the space to unravel the links between the museum’s provenance and colonialism in her own words. Stockwell’s dress combines the language of fashion in the form of a dress with maps of colonial territories, linking the territorial claiming of the female body and the colonial landscape. The project marks a broader initiative by NMVW to commission work by contemporary artists that engages with the provenance of the museum’s colonial past.

All translations are by the authors unless otherwise noted.