Temporality and

Universalism in the
Contemporary
Ethnographic Museum
Two Collection
Presentations at the
Tropenmuseum

Luuk Vulkers

Introduction
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.1

In recent years the Tropenmuseum has engaged with these

complex tasks by initiating collaborations with individuals,
groups, and organizations from outside the museum. This
has, for example, resulted in the intervention Decolonize the
Museum (2017), the publication Words Matter (2018) and a 1/16
reinstallation of the more permanent displays of the
museum.2 These displays now consist of three parts. On the
first floor the thematic exhibition Afterlives of Slavery, which
opened in 2017, can be visited. It explores the ways in which
slavery continues to shape Dutch society today. The second
exhibit, occupying the rest of the galleries on that floor,
presents geographical groupings of the collection according
to the broad regions of New Guinea, Southeast Asia, and
Indonesia. This presentation has been altered in recent
years, but, as will be discussed in what follows, it is for the
most part a remainder of a previous, more comprehensive
and geographical arrangement of the collection that itself
was the result of an extensive refurbishment of the collection
displays between 1995 and 2008. Thirdly, Things That
Matter opened on the ground floor in 2018, a completely
new exhibition “about important things and the importance of
things.”3 Here, objects from the collection are grouped in
nine thematic blocks that propose questions about living and
being human in the contemporary world.4

The recent changes in the permanent displays of the

Tropenmuseum not only follow lively public debates about
identity and the Dutch colonial past but also academic
discourses around the changing role of the museum at
large. Since the emergence of New Museology and the
discursive turn in museological research in the 1990s, the
notion of the museum as an objective authority, categorizing
and representing knowledge, has been dismantled as a
Western construct, a product of Enlightenment ideologies.5
In the present, the focus of this debate has shifted to the
ways in which the entire concept of the museum as public
space can be understood to be embedded in colonial modes
of structuring knowledge. As Robin Boast states, “Where the
new museology saw the museum being transformed from a
site of determined edification to one of educational
engagement, museums of the twenty-first century must
confront this deeper neocolonial legacy.”6 Accordingly,
questions are raised about what new roles museums could
and should have in today’s globalized, postcolonial
societies—questions that the changing displays of the
Tropenmuseum explicitly engage with.

While an extensive amount of museological literature has

been concerned with the changing notion of the museum on
this broader level, the aim of this article is to thoroughly
engage with the actual results of these discourses: redefined
curatorial practice and altered modes of display. In doing so,
my aim is to reflect on the ways in which meaning is made in
the present-day museum, and could be in the future. It is, as
this article will also demonstrate, in particular a discrepancy
between “concept” (policies, visions, and mission
statements) and “practice” (strategies of display) that
prompts such a visual engagement.7

In the following, I will analyze several specific elements of

display in the Tropenmuseum’s ground-floor exhibition,
Things That Matter, in relation to the exhibit featuring
geographical displays on the first floor. The latter I will relate
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to archaeologist and historian Laurent Olivier’s concept of
temporality, in order to show how a self-reflective and
multifaceted engagement with the past persists through the
exhibit. In case of Things That Matter, I will consider how
universalism manifests itself in the exhibition, something that
I will critically relate to by considering Sarat Maharaj’s notion
of untranslatability. The analysis of both exhibits will lead me
to argue that a dynamic between divergent modes of
meaning-making is created in the Tropenmuseum,
illustrative of the complex position of the present-day
ethnographic museum.

I chose to focus on these two permanent exhibits, and

refrain from discussing The Afterlives of Slavery, not
because I consider these two to be the most significant of
the three—The Afterlives of Slavery is certainly a relevant
and bold statement—but because these two exhibits are
both primarily collection displays.8 Accordingly, together and
in relation to each other, they can be said to embody the
ways in which the present-day Tropenmuseum aims to
reconsider its own institutional history in order to challenge
the colonial modes of structuring knowledge in which most
of this collection is embedded. As this study is a selective
visual analysis more than a study of the complete narrative
structures of these two exhibits, I allow myself to start with
the older, geographical exhibit on the first floor and then
move to Things That Matter, the most recent curatorial
statement on display in the ground floor atrium, through
which visitors enter the exhibition spaces of the museum.

However, before moving to “practice” by proceeding with my

analysis of the two exhibits, I will briefly turn to “concept” by
outlining a recent history of policies, visions, and changing
organizational structures, which will lead me to address a
rather unvarying discourse in the context of which both
presentations of the permanent collection should be
understood.

Policies and Visions: Rethinking the

Tropenmuseum since the 1990s
In 2012 the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs abruptly
announced it would discontinue funding the Tropenmuseum
Amsterdam. Major cuts had to be made in the ministry’s
budget for cooperation development, on which the institution
depended for almost half of its income. After two long years
of uncertainty regarding the future existence of the museum
due to political indecisiveness, the Dutch Ministry of
Education, Culture, and Science finally granted the
Tropenmuseum a new subsidy. Yet this was done under
conditions with far-reaching consequences; the institute was
required to merge with two other Dutch ethnographic
museums in Leiden and Berg en Dal. The three separate
museum locations were retained, but became part of the
newly established Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
(National Museum of World Cultures, NMvW).
Consequently, research related to the collections of these
3/16
three museums is now conducted by the overarching
Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC).9

This merger did not only have administrative consequences.

The National Museum of World Cultures formulated a motto
that constitutes the core of a new policy, mission, and
reimagined curatorial practice: “Apart from the differences,
we are all the same.”10 Ever since, the Tropenmuseum
explicitly presents itself as a museum about people, and
didactically aims to promote inclusiveness and world
citizenship. By showing that we all deal with the same
universal themes, such as mourning, celebrating, loving, and
fighting, the museum wants to engender unity and
inclusiveness. In terms of display, this policy meant a
gradual shift from a more geographical approach to a focus
on trans-historical, trans-cultural, and thematic narratives.11

In 2018 the head of research at the RCMC, Wayne Modest,

stated that this newly envisioned mission of the
Tropenmuseum must also coincide with a reconsideration of
the museum as a political space instead of only a cultural
one. His comments strikingly echo those made by Boast
about the neocolonial legacy of the museum. For Modest,
this reconsideration firstly means an acknowledgement of
and critical engagement with the Tropenmuseum’s own
colonial roots. By extension, he also prompts us to “rethink
public institutions and their roles in maintaining and
reaffirming these colonial structures.” Secondly, according to
Modest, the Tropenmuseum must “move beyond retelling
the story of the colonizer,” and “explore how people from all
over the world have lived their lives otherwise.”12

Important to consider here, however, is that this process of

reimagining the Tropenmuseum has been going on for a
much longer time. In a 2008 policy paper, former chief
curator Susan Legêne marked the year 1990 as a turning
point in the museum’s vision, when the organization of the
exhibition 125 Jaar Verzamelen (125 Years of Collecting)
led to
a re-examination of the museum’s own collection
history. The collection was no longer viewed simply as
a depository or storehouse of material culture, but as
a source of information about historical interactions,
processes of representation, collectors and the
forming of dogmas. By implication, the museum chose
this moment to confront its colonial past head on.13
Consequently, 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

Just as with Boast and Modest, a clear unanimity can be

found in terms of policy here; Legêne’s statements on the
vision of the museum in 2008 are very much in line with
4/16
those of Modest ten years later. The univocality of this
discourse not only points at the importance of considering
the different ways in which such general policies and visions
manifest themselves specifically in modes of display but also
raises another question. What has recently been altered in
relation to the 2008 refurbishment?

Indeed, as already pointed out, several aspects of the 2008

displays in fact 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. However, it is important to note that the former
geographical arrangement also included the Middle East,
North Africa, India, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America,
making up a representation of almost the entire world. In its
present state, only a grid of three broad regions remains
intact in the geographical exhibit of the collection on the first
floor of the Tropenmuseum.

Pluritemporal Perspectives within a

Geographical Grid
In his 2011 publication The Dark Abyss of Time: Archeology
and Memory, archeologist and historian Laurent Olivier
explores different notions of time and their consequences for
the ways in which meaning is made in relation to material
culture. I will discuss the author’s theory on temporality in
order to illustrate how different temporal perspectives persist
throughout the geographical exhibit on the first floor of the
Tropenmuseum.

Olivier considers our relationship with the past to be a key

element in forming collective identities. At the same time, he
argues against understanding this past in “empty and
homogeneous” cyclical or linear terms. Olivier considers
sequential notions of time to be only recent inventions,
constructions of nineteenth-century historicists. These
sequential understandings of history create a simplified,
causal understanding of the past as an accumulation of
events and contexts, implying a comprehendible origin and
development.15

As Legêne, who has conducted extensive research on the

Tropenmuseum’s institutional history, has emphasized,
ethnographic exhibition practices have often “frozen”
peoples and cultures within such a sequential understanding
of the past. In a 2009 symposium report on ethnographic
display, she argues that throughout the early twentieth
century the creation of systematically ordered series of
collectibles with formal, functional, and geographical
filiations fossilized and stereotyped the Other, mediating
5/16
cultural as well as physical difference to a Dutch audience.
In line with such an approach to display, colonial collecting
practices tended to focus on village life, tradition, and
craftsmanship, fixating cultures in a past that was undefined,
yet simultaneously had a clear place, closer to “origin,” in a
sequential hierarchy of cultural complexity.16

In order to analyze the present-day geographical exhibit on

Fig. 1. Installation view of the New
the first floor of the Tropenmuseum, I will turn to the
Guinea display at the
temporal approach to material culture that Olivier proposes, Tropenmuseum, 2019.
instead of this linear historicism. The author argues that it is, Photo: Luuk Vulkers.
in fact, not at all the past that should be reconstructed with Courtesy of the
objects. Instead, the multiple ways in which the memory of Tropenmuseum.
the past exists in the materiality of the present-day object
should be explored. He states:
It is not, strictly speaking, history which is being made
up by the impact of the phenomena of repetition and
reproduction which archaeological materials provide
proof of, it is memory as recorded in materials. This is
a key distinction, since memory-time functions in a
way which has nothing to do with history-time.17
Accordingly, for Olivier, an object is inherently cast in a
fusion of past and present, and should not be positioned
within the sequential, historical time frame on which
conventional methodologies of archaeology and other
humanities largely depend. In terms of curating, such a shift
in focus from an object’s place in history to the memory
recorded in objects makes it possible to consider different
and conflicting temporal perspectives simultaneously.18 It is
through such pluritemporality that, as I will argue, the
geographical exhibit on the first floor enables processes of
meaning-making that move beyond statically freezing the
Other in a timeless past.

On the first floor of the majestic museum building, three of

the four galleries looking out on the central hall are
dedicated to the regions New Guinea, Indonesia, and
Southeast Asia (including Indonesian art and culture),
creating a U-shaped routing that can be approached from
two sides. The two outer galleries are dedicated to material
culture from New Guinea and Southeast Asia. In both
departments, thematic groups have been created, dedicated
to different, specific subjects. For the Southeast Asia
department, topics include “Karo rituals associated with
death,” “Court culture” and “The kris, a national symbol.” In
the New Guinea department, themes such as “Ancestors,”
“Rebalancing society” (about headhunting practices), and
“Treasures of the man’s house” are dealt with in several
display cases, each accompanied by a modest explanatory
text.

In first instance, the nature of these themes makes these

two departments reminiscent of the traditional, “timeless”
mode of ethnographic display outlined by Legêne; the
themes are surely more related to craftsmanship and village
life than they are to technological innovation or urbanism.
However, upon closer examination, several temporal
6/16
perspectives exist simultaneously. The texts accompanying
the current display cases generally differentiate between the
timeless past in which the tradition on display is cast and a
present-day reality. A text on the New Guinean treasures of
the man’s house, for example, clearly explains that these
houses used to be (in a time unknown) the center of the
community, where important initiation rituals took place,
such as scarification. It then continues to state that, in the
present, these rituals are less common, but that man’s
houses are still being built. Yet it does not stop at this dual
temporality; the thematic display cases of ethnographic
objects are interwoven with many other strategies of display,
all providing different textual and visual contexts and,
accordingly, additional temporal perspectives.

Firstly, there is the attention given to the history of the

collection, which is at play on different levels. To begin,
where possible, the provenance is listed for each individual
object, creating awareness of the sociohistorical context in
which the objects became part of the collection. A stroll
through the New Guinea department, for example, teaches
me that, by far, most of the objects on display here are early
twentieth-century acquisitions, either bought by the Colonial
Museum or gifted by named individuals or organizations. In
addition, multiple texts contextualize the ways in which the
objects on display became part of the collection. This
includes the relatively lengthy text on the important collector
Georg Tillmann (1882–1941). Tillmann is described as a
connoisseur, driven by a personal fascination for the
Indonesian archipelago, who put together a collection of
more than 2,000 Indonesian art objects with great cultural-
historical as well as aesthetic value in a relatively short
period of time. Interestingly, the fact that Tillmann himself
never visited the regions whose material culture he collected
is nowhere mentioned.19 But problematic sides of the
collection are exposed in multiple wall texts as well. Before
walking into the Southeast Asia department, a prominently
displayed text is headed “Given, bought and stolen,” and a
visit to the New Guinea department starts off with “How did
the museum acquire its collection?” These texts primarily,
and rather cautiously, deal with the difficulties of tracing
provenance, but they also suggest an awareness of colonial
power balances.

Secondly, in the middle gallery that connects the New

Guinea and Southeast Asia galleries, different phases of the
Dutch colonial past are explored by means of dioramas:
visual reconstructions of scenes, rooms, and figures from
the past. For a small part, this concerns New Guinea; for
example, there is a reconstruction of the office of the
missionary Petrus Vertenten (1884–1946) and an
arrangement of objects and photos that relates to “scientific”
explorations in the early twentieth century, intended to map
the colonial territories and their peoples. But most of this
middle gallery is specifically devoted to Indonesia. The
Colonial Theatre on display here features wax figures, each
telling a different story about everyday life in the early
twentieth-century colonial societies of Indonesia. These
figures were not invoked by the museum as static
7/16
representations of the colonial Other, but rather as “historical
archetypes of people who contributed to the very creation of
these images of otherness.”20 Besides the Colonial Theatre,
there is a reconstruction of the 1912 Bamboo Room at the
Colonial Museum in Haarlem, as well as a VOC cabinet of
curiosities. Numerous texts accompany the reconstructions,
each exposing another aspect of colonial history.

Fig. 2. Reconstruction of a VOC

Turning to the effect of these strategies of display, the
cabinet of curiosities at the
dioramas displayed on the middle gallery of the first floor Tropenmuseum, 2019.
provide specific temporal perspectives on Indonesian and Photo: Luuk Vulkers.
New Guinean art and societies that differ from the temporal Courtesy of the
perspectives that persist in the geographically ordered Tropenmuseum.
display cases of the other two galleries that I have
discussed. Whereas these display cases are mostly
concerned with exhibiting “traditional” ethnographic objects
as they were supposedly used in an undefined, timeless
past, the dioramas each contextualize an event or place—
true or fictionalized—from various specific pasts. Combined,
all of these perspectives do not present a linear,
understandable history of the geographical regions
represented. Rather, they create an uncertain and
unfinished patchwork of different as well as conflicting
understandings of the past. All these temporal perspectives, Fig. 3. Display cases with
however, relate to the memory that is generated by the structuralist thematic
various objects on display in the present. Even though, for groupings at the
example, most Indonesian art objects from the Southeast Tropenmuseum, 2019.
Photo: Luuk Vulkers.
Asia galleries were made considerably later than the VOC Courtesy of the
expeditions that the reconstructed cabinet of curiosities Tropenmuseum.
refers to, as Olivier reminds us, these events can still make
up an important part of the memory generated by these
objects.

Thirdly, the scientific assumptions that have determined the

structure of the present-day collection are exposed. In the
Southeast Asia gallery a large display case features
thematic oppositions such as dragon (underworld) and bird
(upperworld), in line with a structuralist approach to
anthropology that aims to explain cultures as interconnected
structures for which such symbolic opposites are
fundamental. The strategy of display, however, is
simultaneously exposed in an accompanying text that
outlines this scientific approach and states that, for a long
time throughout the twentieth century, Indonesian cultures
have been studied according to this structuralist and
Eurocentric method. Another text in this department refers to
eighteenth-century travelogues, which characterize the
inhabitants of Southeast Asia in a way that created
persistent stereotypes that were also fostered by the
museum itself: “These were the prevailing views at the time,
some of which persist to this day, even in this museum. One
example is the particular focus on ancestors, magic and
rituals, as can be seen in this section, which helped
perpetuate these old views.”21 Other texts and display cases
highlight the ways in which physical anthropology and
documentary photography, both also important for the
structure of the Tropenmuseum’s collection, have shaped
concepts of the Other based on classifications.
8/16
Especially the latter category of display strategies raises
questions about effectiveness. While outdated assumptions
are being exposed in text, the displays that accompany
these assumptions also remain visually exposed in actual
space. It can be argued that this implicitly reaffirms the
outdated modes of structuring knowledge that are being
discussed as outdated. This recalls the 2008 article “Staging
Colonialism: The Mise-En-Scène of the Africa Museum in
Tervuren, Belgium” by Murat Aydemir.22 In this text the
author analyses the 2008 display of the Africa Museum’s Fig. 4. Roy Villevoye, Red Calico,
2000, installation view at the
collection in relation to the alternative “walking tour” that is
Tropenmuseum, 2019.
provided. Aydemir concludes that “the expository agent of Photo: Luuk Vulkers.
the Africa Museum is split. To this day, the main exhibition of Courtesy of the
the museum remains staunchly colonial and racist in its Tropenmuseum.
implications.” He continues, “The main expository agent tells
the viewer: ‘Look! That’s how the primitives are.’ The second
supplementary agent adds [nostalgically]: ‘Look! That’s how
we used to display the ‘primitives.’”23 However, such a
mechanism does not seem to predominate in the case of the
Tropenmuseum. Indeed, the self-reflexivity of the
geographical exhibit on the first floor is largely dependent on
textual resources, and there is a clear discrepancy between
text and image. However, as exemplified above, implications
of colonialism are not reduced to footnotes or a walking tour,
but constitute a central topic of many of the displays.
Besides this, the museum continuously shifts its temporal
perspective; within the same exhibit, art is being displayed in
different and conflicting contexts, while at the same time this
same act of display is being exposed and questioned, not
only by texts but also by visual reproductions. These visual
reproductions, the dioramas, either stage the colonial mode
of display as a specific and outdated historical episode or
engage with the past from the perspective of both colonizer
and colonized.

In this context, there is one more strategy of display that

should be mentioned, which is evoked by the display of
contemporary art, adding yet another, conflicting temporal
perspective to the geographical exhibit. The Southeast Asia
department prominently features Planets in My Head (2011)
by Yinka Shonibare, and the beginning of the New Guinea
gallery is marked by the work Red Calico (2000) by Roy
Villevoye. The latter work is a large installation showing a
group of variously ragged T-shirts made by people from the
Asmat region in New Guinea, as well as photos of the
owners wearing them. As the exhibition text reads, the work
can be interpreted as referring to stereotypes of “the poor
dressed in rags,” as alluding to traditional scarification of the
face, or as commenting on the rules of dress imposed by the
Indonesian occupier. However, the work can also be seen to
function in the context of the larger geographical exhibit of
the collection. In a way, it is not part of the displays that
teach us about New Guinea, but it comments on these very
displays from the contemporary perspective. In its ambiguity
the work questions the notions of representation and
interpretation that inherently underpin the geographical
modes of display in the museum. It thus constitutes a self-
reflexive commentary on the structuring mechanisms of the
museum.
9/16
Togetherness and Universalism: Things That
Matter
The exhibition Things That Matter, more than the
geographical exhibit on the first floor, reflects the recently
envisioned mission of proclaiming unity through universal
themes. In relation to the geographical displays, emphasis
has shifted from self-reflexivity and colonial entanglement to
the possibilities of objects for knowledge production in the Fig. 5. Installation view of several
now—the universal stories that they can tell today. pavilions, Things That
Matter, Tropenmuseum,
2018. Photo: Sarah-Dona
Manev. Courtesy of
Several pavilions comprised of black boxes are spread over Kloosterboer Decor bv.
the entire ground floor, creating a theatrical setting for the
exhibition through which visitors can wander freely, without a
preconceived route. The nine themes that are dealt with
both inside and outside of the pavilions are each introduced
with a question. “How do you create new life?” addresses
the theme “fertility,” for instance. Inside the pavilion, the
walls are covered with green grass and the lights are
dimmed. In the middle of the pavilion, a harmonious
constellation of small objects densely placed together
presents itself to the visitor behind a glass dome. While the
different objects, mounted on a steel structure, show no
formal similarities, they create an aesthetic unity as a single Fig. 6. Installation view of the
“fertility” pavilion, Things
cabinet of curiosities. A text on the wall reads: That Matter,
The desire to have children and build a future for Tropenmuseum, 2018.
Photo: David Vroom.
yourself or your community is universal. It is a
Courtesy of the
timeless wish but it has particular significance today. Tropenmuseum.
The global population is growing and people are living
longer, but at the same time in many countries male
fertility is decreasing and women are having children
later in life.
Medical knowledge is constantly expanding and
doctors can do more than ever before. Yet there are
many who want to have children but are unable to.
That is why people all over the world use rituals,
customs and objects to help create new life.24
Indeed, all of these objects have to do with fertility, but this
might be the only thing they have in common. Not only do
art objects such as the Inuit Amautik and the Japanese
Votive Tablet come from a wide range of geographical
regions, they were also made in completely different times.
A careful examination of the different object texts, tucked
away underneath the steel structure, tells me that these
objects were made between the nineteenth century and
2011. Considering these strategies of display with regard to
the previous discussion of temporality, the diversified
pluritemporal perspective seems to have made room for an
all-encompassing presentism—objects are decontextualized
in order to fit the universal, present-day urge of the theme
that is addressed.

Surely one can wonder if this practice should at all be

considered problematic. If the historic objects can be
relevant in the present, as the Tropenmuseum implies, by
being tools to understand one another and to inspire
inclusive ways of living together, why shouldn’t they? In the
10/16
thematic group on “writing,” for example, tenth-century
calligraphy on an Abbasid Quran page is combined with
contemporary calligraffiti by the French artist eL Seed.
Indeed, most visitors will not notice that the calligraphic art
was produced a thousand years ago, nor will they learn
anything about the sociohistorical context in which it was
made. Following the Tropenmuseum’s line of thinking,
however, the combination does make an inspiring point
about art, beauty, and the universal and timeless human
urge to create beautiful things. A realization of such things
might indeed engender a sense of togetherness.

What I argue is not so much that the strategies of display

here should be considered inherently problematic, but more
that there is a missed opportunity to contemplate the
togetherness that the institute aims to engender. This has to
do with the specific notion of universalism that underlies the
entire curatorial concept of this exhibition, in relation to the
present-day urgency of the themes that are being dealt with.
In order to come to a truly profound sense of togetherness,
we might first need to find ways to negotiate and
contemplate difference.

In his 1994 text Perfidious Fidelity: The Untranslatability of

the Other, Sarat Maharaj argues against the idea of a
transparent translation of meaning.25 The author states that
the idea of “untranslatability” was distorted by the apartheid
regime of South Africa to “argue that self and other could
never translate into or know each other.” Accordingly, it was
used to institutionalize a suppressive racial policy of
separation. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s concept of
translation and employing it in a cultural context, Maharaj
aims to contest this negative connotation. He argues that
translation should not be understood as a transparent
process of “carrying over.” This leads us to a tempting yet
dangerously superficial attitude to multicultural translation,
“even in the face of an adverse actuality that thwarts and
distresses such an ideal at every turn.” He continues, “But to
focus on untranslatability is not only to acknowledge from
the start the impossibilities and limits of translation. It is to
highlight the dimension of what gets lost in translation, what
happens to be left over.” For Maharaj, it is exactly the
contemplation of these leftovers, “elements of hybridity and
difference,” that can lead to new meaning being created in
between preexisting concepts and entrenched ideas.26

Following Maharaj, within the narrative structure of Things

That Matter, there seems to be little space for the
contemplation of such untranslatability. While pressing
(political) issues are certainly not avoided, they also seem to
have already been resolved with harmonious and universal
sameness. Consider the theme “belief.” In a chapel-like
setting, several objects, again from divergent times and
places, have been brought together to illustrate that
“religions have always intermingled and borrowed from each
other.” On view is imagery of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a
Thai Buddha. This constellation may inspire by contesting
static conceptions of religious purity, but the display ignores
11/16
the fact that religious practices nowadays are often
misunderstood and provoke intolerance. A narrative that
would engage with these issues, without proposing a
universalist solution in advance, could possibly incite visitors
to actively question their own preconceptions and dogmas.

Within the theme "activism,” an eminent topic to contemplate

untranslatability, similar narratives are constructed. The
Fig. 7. Installation view of the
exhibition text states: "belief" pavilion, Things
Many indigenous communities and peoples have to That Matter,
fight to stop companies, government bodies and other Tropenmuseum, 2018.
Photo: Sarah-Dona Manev.
dominant groups from infringing on their rights and Courtesy of Kloosterboer
taking or destroying their land. These activists use Decor bv.
every means at their disposal, both traditional and
modern, and combine social media with ancient art
and pop culture with traditional dress.
Here you see two powerful examples. Palestinian
rapper Shadia Mansour sings her uplifting lyrics clad
in traditional dress to demonstrate her engagement
with the Palestinian cause. And as a token of their
forgiveness for crimes of the past, Aboriginal artists
presented a work of art to the Dutch government, in a
gesture of moral heroism.27
Fig. 8. Installation view of the
What visitors are not prompted to think critically about when “cultural appropriation”
encountering this display, however, are the actual conflicts pavilion, Things That
that the works discussed relate to. Instead, they are both Matter, Tropenmuseum,
somewhat depoliticized and turned into expressions of an 2018. Photo: David Vroom.
abstract but nonetheless universal human battle—in the Courtesy of the
context of which proposing “forgiveness” as a gesture of Tropenmuseum.
moral heroism also becomes rather tainted.

It should be emphasized, however, that not all thematic

groups in Things That Matter obstruct a contemplation of
untranslatability. Interestingly, this is where universalism is
replaced by an unresolved question. The theme about
“cultural appropriation,” for example, forces visitors to reflect
on a relevant theme by asking, “Is it acceptable to adopt
elements of a culture that isn’t yours?” Examples here span
from Beyoncé’s appropriation of Desi culture to modernist
notions of “primitive art.” Untranslatability is explored and
notions of “difference” are explicated; the central text here
challengingly asks the visitor to take marginalization and
power imbalances into account when thinking about the
ethics of cultural appropriation. However, this pavilion is also
where the pluritemporal self-reflexivity of the first floor
displays seems to be most absent—out of all the numerous
examples provided, not one mentions the institute’s own
acts of cultural appropriation.

The pavilion on climate change also engages with pressing

matters in a thought-provoking manner. Just like in the
cultural appropriation section, difference is contemplated in
the climate change pavilion, both in terms of cultural
perspective and socioeconomic situations: “Some countries
build dykes to hold the rising sea. But what if there is no
money or knowledge for flood defenses?” The pavilion then
only shows imagery from the Marshall Islands, illustrating 12/16
the struggle to preserve culture in the context of increasingly
unlivable circumstances. Strikingly, it might be exactly within
this thematic grouping, where trans-historical and trans-
geographical universalism is replaced by specificity in those
respects, that Things That Matter is able to not only inspire
by proclaiming sameness but also provoke critical thinking.

Conclusion
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. What followed for the museum
was a process of reinvention; a search for relevance in a
globalized present, a time in which the core practices for
which the museum was built are considered to be largely
outdated. Accordingly, the Tropenmuseum of the present—
part of the new National Museum of World Cultures—wants
to engender a sense of togetherness with universal themes
and engage critically and self-reflexively with colonial pasts.

The 2016 decision of the Ministry of Culture, Science, and

Education, accompanied by words of praise for the “new”
Tropenmuseum, to structurally continue funding the institute
can be considered an indication that this process of
reinvention has been successfully completed. However,
what a closer look at the contemporary collection displays of
the museum also makes clear is that the dual task that the
Tropenmuseum has set for itself is complex, and that this
process is certainly still unfolding. The geographical displays
on the first floor provide a nuanced, self-reflexive, and
pluritemporal account of the institute’s collection. But this
display is also deeply uncertain. It represents culture while
simultaneously deconstructing the representational
strategies that are deployed, creating an unresolved
discrepancy not only between text and image but also
between the institute’s original objectives and its current
circumstances.

The exhibition Things That Matter provides an alternative to

this focus on deconstruction by exhibiting objects from the
collection as results of universal human urges. This could
inspire visitors, but in order for this exhibition to engender
the togetherness that it aims to propagate, it might also need
to move beyond utopian harmony to contemplate temporal,
cultural, as well as socio-economic differences, and to
negotiate the uncertain realms of untranslatability. Together
these two exhibitions are not so much complement to each
other, but establish a dynamic of divergent modes of
meaning-making under one roof. While a text on the first
floor criticizes the universalist claims of structuralist
anthropology as Eurocentric, the ground floor seems to
celebrate similar universalist claims to find common ground
as a means to bring about a sense of togetherness.

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I argue that common ground constitutes a beginning, and
not an end, for critically reflecting on the ways we want to
shape our future together. In this respect the two
approaches to displaying the permanent collection
discussed in this article could learn from each other. As
seen in the geographical displays on the first floor, the
ambiguous nature of certain contemporary artworks is able
to contribute to this criticality and to question the very
notions of representation and interpretation in which
museums are grounded. Such critical, contemporary
artworks would be a welcome addition to an exhibition like
Things That Matter, in order to confront the “deeper
neocolonial legacy” of the twenty-first-century museum that
Boast so convincingly addressed.

Luuk Vulkers studied art history at the University of

Amsterdam. His interests span from ethnography in
contemporary art practice, museology, and German
postmodern art, to the emerging field of Animal Studies.
Currently he is completing a Research Master’s thesis on
the oeuvre of Rosemarie Trockel, an artist that he admires
greatly, and working as editor for Simulacrum magazine. In
addition to his academic pursuits, Vulkers works at a
contemporary art gallery in Amsterdam.

1. See, for example, Mary Bouquet, “Het negentiende-eeuwse

openbare etnografische museum,” in Kabinetten galerijen
musea, eds. Ellinoor Bergvelt et al. (Zwolle: Waanders
Uitgevers, 2005), 203–232; Koos van Brakel and Susan
Legêne, eds., Collecting at Cultural Crossroads. Collection
Policies and Approaches (2008–2009) of the Tropenmuseum,
Bulletin 281 (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2009); Daan van
Dartel, ed., Tropenmuseum for a change! Between past and
future. A symposium report, Bulletin 391 (Amsterdam: KIT
Publishers, 2009); Susan Legêne, Nu of Nooit. Over de
actualiteit van museale collecties (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2005); Geke van der Wal, ed., 125 Jaar
verzamelen, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: Tropenmuseum, 1990).
2. In 2017 the initiative Decolonize the Museum was invited to
analyze the display of the Tropenmuseum in order to dismantle
colonial narratives persisting in this display, and a publication
on the importance of language in processes of meaning-
making in the museum was made the same year, together with
several individuals and organizations. See Wayne Modest and
Robin Lelijveld, eds., Words Matter (Amsterdam: Nationaal
Museum van Wereldculturen, 2017), accessed December 29,
2018, https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/nl/over-
tropenmuseum/words-matter-publicatie.
3. Things That Matter, Tropenmuseum, accessed March 20,
2019, https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/en/whats-
on/exhibitions/things-matter.
4. Things That Matter is expected to be on view for five years. The
Afterlives of Slavery will be followed by a more extensive
exhibition in 2021 on histories of slavery and colonialism.
5. For seminal studies in this context, see Mieke Bal “The
discourse of the museum,” in Thinking about Exhibitions, eds.
Reesa Greenberg et al. (New York: Routledge, 1996); Tony
Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics
(New York: Routledge, 1995); Eilean Hooper-Greenhill,
Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (New York:
Routledge, 1992).
6. Robin Boast, “Neocolonial Collaboration: Museum as Contact
Zone Revisited,” Museum Anthropology 34, no. 1 (2011): 67.
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7. This effort is embedded not only in Mieke Bal’s mode of
semiotic exhibition analysis, but also in similar analyses of
ethnographic displays by Murat Aydemir and Michael
Bachmann. See Murat Aydemir, “Staging Colonialism: The
Mise-En-Scène of the Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium,”
Thamyris/Intersecting 19 (2008); Michael Bachmann,
“Ambivalent Pasts: Colonial History and the Theatricalities of
Ethnographic Display,” Theatre Journal 63, no. 3 (2017).
8. The geographical exhibits feature 1,755 objects from the
collection, Things That Matter features 209, and The Afterlives
of Slavery only 27.
9. See, for example, “Vertrouwen in Tropenmuseum is terug: vier
jaar subsidie is binnen,” AT5, accessed December 25, 2018,
https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/156250/tropenmuseum_nu_definiti
ef_terug_van_weggeweest; “Volkenkundige musea fuseren
maar houden drie locaties,” NRC Handelsblad, April 3, 2014,
accessed December 26, 2018,
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2014/04/03/volkenkundige-musea-
fuseren-maar-houden-drie-locaties-a1426057.
10. “Op de verschillen na, hetzelfde: mens,” Nationaal Museum van
Wereldculturen, accessed December 20, 2018,
https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/nl/over-het-
tropenmuseum/missie.
11. Ibid.
12. Wayne Modest, introduction at the event “Angela Davis, Public
Dialogue: Radical Solidarity and Intergenerational Coalitions,”
Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, May 13, 2018, accessed 20
December 2018,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBYwhXrgZcc.
13. Van Brakel and Legêne, eds., Collecting at Cultural
Crossroads, 10.
14. Ibid., 6; Legêne, in Van Dartel, ed., Tropenmuseum for a
change!, 8, 12–22, 32–37.
15. In this context, sequential approaches to time are also
inherently political for Olivier. See Laurent Olivier, The Dark
Abyss of Time: Archeology and Memory (New York: AltaMira
Press, 2011), 10, 89–92.
16. Legêne, in Van Dartel, ed., Tropenmuseum for a change!, 16–
19.
17. Laurent Olivier, “The past of the present. Archaeological
memory and time,” Archaeological Dialogues 10, no. 2 (2004):
211.
18. As archeologist, Olivier emphasized materiality more than I do
in this concise outline.
19. For more information, see Koos van Brakel et al., A Passion for
Indonesian Art: The Georg Tillmann (1892–1941) Collection at
the Tropenmuseum, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: Ro, 1990).
20. Legêne, in Van Dartel, ed., Tropenmuseum for a change!, 18.
Interestingly, Michael Bachmann argues that the visual power
of the “dramaturgical logic of naturalism” in the dioramas of the
Tropenmuseum’s Colonial Theatre implicitly reaffirms a
Western perspective: “The inversion only works if the object of
the gaze mirrors (and thus brings into being) its subject.”
Bachmann, “Ambivalent Pasts,” 307.
21. Exhibition text featured in the geographical exhibit on the first
floor of Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, visited on December 20,
2018.
22. Aydemir, “Staging Colonialism.”
23. Ibid., 98.
24. For all exhibition texts, see “Perskit Things That Matter,”
Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, accessed 30 May,
2019, https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/nl/over-
tropenmuseum/pers/perskit-things-matter.
25. Sarat Maharaj, “Perfidious Fidelity: The Untranslatability of the
Other,” in Art of the Twentieth Century: A Reader, eds. Jason
Gaiger and Paul Wood (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2003).
26. Ibid., 297–304.
For all exhibition texts, see “Perskit Things That Matter,”
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27.
Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, accessed 30 May,
 2019, https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/nl/over-
tropenmuseum/pers/perskit-things-matter.
28. See, for example, Mirjam Shatanawi, “Contemporary art in
ethnographic museums,” in The Global Art World: Audiences,
Markets and Museums, eds. Hans Belting and Andrea
Buddensieg (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2009), 368.

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