What makes discussions about decolonising museums in CEE complicated?
Tina Palaić discusses the decolonization of museums in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula, highlighting the historical and current complexities of these European regions. She emphasizes the various ambivalences and difficulties that arise from the semi-periphery’s historical dual situation of being both oppressed by the empire and participating in the colonial endeavor, and the aftermath of this position.
She draws on the example of how Slovene ethnic territory was historically part of the Austrian, and later the Austro-Hungarian, Empire, its connections with Global South countries during the socialist Yugoslav era, and the current intolerance towards migrants and internal “others,” such as the Roma. Decolonization has only recently begun to be discussed in East-Central European countries, and Tina stresses that the region must develop its own concepts and interpretations regarding this topic to avoid merely transferring Western practices and knowledge into its museums.
You can read an in-depth article on the decolonization of museums in the aforementioned regions in the upcoming edited volume Unearthing Collections: Archives, Time and Ethics, edited by Magdalena Buchczyk, Martín Fonck, Tomás J. Usón, and Tina Palaić. The edited volume will be published under the umbrella of the TRACTS project in open access: https://uclpress.co.uk/book/unearthing-collections/
“Come together! Fostering socially inclusive climate education for adults” is a European project where the Slovene Ethnographic Museum (SEM), in collaboration with four partner institutions, addresses two interconnected challenges: environmental issues and social justice. The project in SEM addressed questions of how to involve Roma in discussions about climate change and how to empower them to recognize their strength and opportunities for action. You can read more about the project in all partner organisations here: https://come-together-project.blogspot.com/.
Contact:
dr. Tina Palaić, the Head of the Curatorial Department at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia