Who owns the museum?

(Post-)Colonial Ownership and Cooperation in the Age of Globalisation

24 May 2022, 7 PM
Lenbachhaus, Georg Knorr Hall
Luisenstraße 33, 80333 Munich

Together with international experts, we want to look at museums as globally networked institutions. They are embedded in and help shape multi-layered political, economic and epistemic power and ownership relations. How can museums be thought of differently as hubs of global museum, curatorial and artistic cooperation? How can participation and access and ownership of cultural heritage be shaped differently? Even beyond questions of colonial heritage, the global action of cultural institutions is up for debate in the face of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, rising commodity prices and intensifying geopolitical conflicts. What kind of collaboration - local and global, physical and digital - is possible and desirable in the museum of the future? The artist and curator Shuddabrata Sengupta, the curators Luiza Proença and Flower Manase and Chao Tayiana Maina, an expert on cultural heritage, will discuss what kind of collaboration – local and global, physical and digital – is possible and desirable in the museum of the future.

Chao Tayiana Maina is a Kenyan digital heritage specialist and digital humanities scholar working at the intersection of culture and technology. Her work primarily focuses on the application of technology within African heritage. She is the founder of African Digital Heritage, a co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism and a co-founder of the Open Restitution Africa project.

Flower Manase is a senior curator of History at the National Museum of Tanzania with a Bachelor degree in History and Archaeology. Ms. Manase is currently engaged in provenance research of colonial collections in Germany (Ethnological Museum Berlin) and Tanzania (Museum and House of Culture-Dar es Salaam) under a collaborative research project funded by Gerda Henkel Foundation.

Luiza Proença is a transdisciplinary researcher, writer and curator. Currently she is a societal/communal-based work fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. She was a curator at the São Paulo Art Museum and at the 31st São Paulo Biennial, and editor of publications of the 9th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, among other institutions. From 2017 to 2019, she worked as curatorial researcher for bauhaus imaginista at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta is an artist and curator with the Raqs Media Collective, Delhi.


The discussion will be moderated by
Julian Fuchs, Head of Cultural Programmes for the Goethe-Institut São Paulo and Southern America.