On the 23rd of April, Professor Bernadette Atuahene from the USC Gould School of Law had a conversation with Pressing Matter’s Elsbeth Dekker on Dignity Taking, Dignity Restoration and the Future of Colonial Collections within the framework of Otherwise Property Conversations. The recording of this conversation is available now on youtube and here on this website.
The workshop organized by our PI Birgitte Meyer and Postdoc researcher Ana Rita De Amaral with the Koninkrijk Nederlands Instituut Rome, entitled Missionary Material Assemblages and the Mission of Museums was inspiring and successful. Ana Rita wrote a report on the event here
On Friday the 26th of April, Dr Laurens de Rooy and Dr Paul Wolf Mitchell gave a talk at Gewina (Belgisch-Nederlands genootschap voor wetenschaps- en universiteitsgeschiedenis) on human remains in museums. See more information about the event here
On Wednesday, the 24th of April our second Pressing Matter Quarterly Meeting took place. Many subjects were discussed, such as the key concepts of Pressing Matter and the preparation of the Biannual Consortium. The minutes of the meeting has been sent to all the PI
On Monday, the 15th of April Pressing Matter co-organized a seminar on human/ancestral remains at Pakhuis De Zwijger Amsterdam. Our PI Laurens de Rooy spoke on collections in Museum Vrolik. More information can be found here.
Dr Paul Wolf Mitchell participated in a symposium with scholars concerning museums, race, and reparative justice, particularly around human remains, organized by the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR), on Friday, the 12th of April 2024. See more information about the event here.
Within the context of the exhibition Remix at Museum de Fundatie (20th of February – 2nd of June) in which she participates, our artist in residence Aram Lee gave a talk together with 2 other artists of the exhibition on Friday, the 5th of April at Museum de Fundatie. See more information about the event here.
On Thursday, the 4th of April the PM team organized a visit to the exhibition Colonialism and Rotterdam at the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam. Our senior provenance researcher François Janse van Rensburg contributed to the exhibition by lending some objects from his personal collections. The exhibition is scheduled until the 30th of November 2024.
On Thursday the 23rd of February, our senior provenance researcher Karwin Cheung presented in the Acquiring Loot panel at the Boxerloot Conference that took place from the 22nd to the 23rd of February 2024 in the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich.
Two of the Pressing Matter team members wrote a chapter in the edited volume Ordering the Human: the Global Spread of Racial Science (Columbia University Press), which will be published in April 2024. Dr Paul Wolf Mitchell wrote the 1st chapter, entitled Origins of Races, Organs of Intellect: Polygenism, Political Order, and the Enlightenment Construction of Cranial Race Science, and our PI Professsor Amade M’Charek wrote the 4th chapter, entitled Race and Sameness: On Ordering the Human and the Specificities of Us-ness and Other-ness.(this is related to WP 3A)
