New Book: Returning Southeast Asia's Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution

 Edited by Louise Tythacott and Panggah Ardiyansyah

With contributions from Gabrielle Abbe, Jos van Beurden, Socheat Chea, John Clarke, Charlotte Galloway, Chanraksmey Muong, Duyen Nguyen, Phacharaphorn Phanomvan, Melody Rod-ari, Wieske Octaviani Sapardan

The last 150 years has seen extensive looting and illicit trafficking of Southeast Asia's cultural heritage. Art objects from the region were distributed to museums and private collections around the world. But in the 21st century, power relations are shifting, a new awareness is growing, and new questions are emerging about the representation and ownership of Southeast Asian cultural material located in the West.

This book is a timely consideration of object restitution and related issues across Southeast Asia, bringing together different viewpoints including from museum professionals and scholars in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia – as well as Europe, North America and Australia. The objects themselves are at the centre of most narratives - from Khmer art to the Mandalay regalia (repatriated in 1964), Ban Chiang archaeological material and the paintings of Raden Saleh. Legal, cultural, political and diplomatic issues involved in the restitution process are considered in many of the chapters; others look at the ways object restitution is integral to evolving narratives of national identity. The book's editors conclude that restitution processes can transform narratives of loss into opportunities for gain in building knowledge and reconstructing relationships across national borders.

"Every Southeast Asian country has a different experience of the loss of antiquities, but we all share in the deeply-felt benefits of contemporary restitution initiatives. This book makes an important contribution to bringing these questions out into the open."
- Dr. Phoeurng Sackona, Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia

Louise Tythacott is the Woon Tai Jee Professor of Asian Art at Northumbria University, United Kingdom.

Panggah Ardiyansyah is an MPhil/PhD student of History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS University of London.

NUS Press

Tibetan Materialities and Cultural Economies

University of Copenhagen, November 2, 2018  

This one-day workshop seeks to engage with a seeming resurgence of interest in Tibetan materialities by inviting papers to discuss the topic of Tibetan materiality and cultural economy, without necessarily privileging Buddhist frameworks. We welcome papers from scholars working in Tibetan contexts within or outside the geographical boundaries of Tibet, and who would like to engage in interdisciplinary discussions about materialities and economies. We imagine papers addressing topics like heritage economy, sustainable tourism, encounters between different kinds of economies, digitalization and 3D-printing of Tibetan heritage, museums without objects, (challenging) the post-colonial museum, repatriation, as well as the mass-production, branding, authenticity and profit of marketing Tibetan culture.

The workshop Tibetan Materialities and Cultural Economies is hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Buddhist Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. For more information, visit their blog: 

Words Matter: Book Launch, Tropen Museum.

BOOK LAUNCH: WORDS MATTER Thursday 28 June 2018 | Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam The Research Center for Material Culture cordially invites you to an evening on repairing, refusing and re-imagining language to mark the launch of our publication WORDS MATTER. Recent controversy in the Netherlands surrounding whether museums should change the titles of some of their paintings and refrain from using discriminatory words in wall texts or catalogues is in part the lead up to this publication and symposium series. The emotionally and politically charged nature of discussions in the media surrounding the proposed changes should persuade anyone in doubt that words matter, that language matters. This is not an issue for just a small group of experts, but an ongoing dialogue between colleagues, neighbors, strangers and friends. It is a discussion that is embedded in a larger societal dialogue that debates issues of citizenship, belonging and representation in The Netherlands and beyond. Indeed, it is not just words that matter: the perspectives or the position from which one writes or displays also matters. In this context, it is important to interrogate our personal and institutional relationships to categories, terminologies and meanings. To whom does language belong? In what ways can language become more inclusive to those who have been marginalized or excluded within our societies and institutions? Who is included in or excluded from ‘modern’, non-‘Western’, ‘traditional’, ‘us’ and ‘them’? And what is the correct pronoun to describe someone who self-identifies as transgender? The publication WORDS MATTER is the physical manifestation of the museum’s long-term commitment to becoming a more inclusive institution and is the result of multiple, long-term projects that aim to dissect and dismantle some of the complex contested words, stereotypes and concepts that are present not only in cultural institutions, but also in the media and society at large. The symposium is a critical celebration and a stage for artists, academics and the audience to question, refuse, provoke and engage (with) contested languages and their presence within our institutions, societies and relationships. The program consists of two events: a day program for heritage professionals and cultural producers, and an evening program for general audience. Program • Ogutu Muraya (Writer and Storyteller) • Astrid Roemer (Writer) • Eliza Steinbock (Leiden University) • Kira Wuck (Poet) • Simone Zeefuik (Writer and cultural programmer) Practical Information Where: Tropenmuseum, Linnaeusstraat 2, Amsterdam When: Thursday 28 June 2018, 19:30 – 21:30 Admission: € 8 (incl. publication) - Get your tickets here Language: Dutch and English

view webversion

Research   |   Events   |   Open space

Keti Koti Talks : Perspectives on the Slavery Past and its Afterlife

Keti Koti Talks : Perspectives on the Slavery Past and its Afterlife SUNDAY 1 JULY 2018 | OOSTERPARK  Boni Tula stage | Free entrance | 4.45 pm - 5.45 pm Perspectives on the Slavery Past and its Afterlife is a series of short lectures presented during Keti Koti that explores the link between the Dutch slavery past and current structures of power, exclusion, and inequality. Slavery as a dehumanizing practice created structures of relations that still live with us today. Like other former colonial powers, the Netherlands owes its wealth and elevated position in the world, in large measure, to its past colonial activities. This power and privilege came at a specific cost to the formerly colonized and enslaved: the Africans that were captured, enslaved, and subjected to a brutal process of dehumanization. The same Africans that facilitated a thriving (plantation) economic system in the Dutch Caribbean, that generated wealth for individual owners and their descendants, as well as for the Dutch Metropole. How do we repair a history that is not yet acknowledged for its complexities, nor considered a shared past? Within the context of the Keti Koti commemoration and celebration, the Research Center for Material Culture invites an interdisciplinary group of thinkers, designers and artists to share their critical perspectives on the legacies of slavery and the colonial past in contemporary Dutch society. These talks give insight into how different sets of practices connect and how the legacies of slavery and the colonial past manifest in the present. This event takes place at the Keti Koti Festival at the Oosterpark and is a prelude to the exhibition on slavery and colonialism (medio 2021) at the Tropenmuseum. This exhibition explores the Dutch history of slavery and colonialism, and its afterlives in the present, through the lens – the experiences - of the enslaved and their descendants. More than a series of facts, or the expected telling of the triangle trade, the exhibition zooms in on the condition of enslavement, the (cultural) responses of the enslaved, and the experiences of those living slavery’s afterlife in present-day Dutch society. SPEAKERS and PERFORMERS Researcher Mark Ponte (Stadsarchief) Lecturer Grace Ndjako (Universiteit Amsterdam) Barby Asante (curator and artist) Moderator: Aspha Bijnaar (independent researcher) Keti Koti stories by Bibi Fadlalla (filmmaker)

view webversion

Research   |   Events   |  Open space