Ilja Labischinski
(Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin)
In 1894, the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin commissioned the Indigenous Ethnologist Francis La Flesche to assemble a collection of around 60 objects that would best represent his own culture, the Omaha. More than 120 years later this collection became the historical starting point for a collaborative exhibition project between the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, Stiftung Humboldt Forum and the Nebraska Indian Community College. A curatorial team of museum workers in Berlin together with Omaha representatives, students and teachers of NICC researched the collection and developed an exhibition that finally opened in September 2022.
In my thesis I will persue the question how postcolonial provenance research can be applied in a collaborative curatorial practice, using the case study of the exhibition “Against the current. The Omaha, Francis La Flesche and his collection” in the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. To do that, I will first research the history of the collection of Omaha cultural belongings that Francis La Flesche sent to Berlin and second examine the curatorial practices how this research is applied into a collaborative curatorial process that turned into an exhibition in the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. While provenance research has focused primarily on identifying the origin and ownership history of objects in museum collections, often in the context of restitution efforts, this research will explore the potential of postcolonial provenance research as a tool for collaborative curatorial practices and how provenance research can inform collaborative museum work
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