By Halim Gençoğlu
Last month, I was in Germany for an international conference. I would like to share a few things I observed at the Berlin Humboldt Museum. There is a section dedicated to Islamic art; however, the Shi’a section has been removed, reportedly due to the tension between Iran and Israel. This clearly reflects a double standard in favor of Israel.
Despite the German government’s ongoing support for Zionist Israel, it is encouraging to see that many German citizens openly oppose Israel’s brutal attacks on the ancient cities of the Middle East and now on Iran. In fact, I joined a march for Palestine alongside German citizens just last Saturday.
In the Humboldt Forum building, there is another Islamic art section. I sincerely thank Ms. Feride Gençarslan, who took the time to personally guide me through the exhibition. Ms. Gençarslan has created beautiful programs reflecting the Sufi perspective of Islam and continues to organize powerful initiatives introducing the Ottoman Sufi world. Achieving such work in a country like Germany, where Islam is often approached with bias, undoubtedly requires great skill and courage.
Decolonizing Museums: Beyond Object Restitution
In my presentation at the conference, I emphasized that museums must be decolonized not only by returning stolen objects, but also by restoring context, voice, and agency. The stories of Sarah Baartman and Algerian resistance fighters clearly illustrate how museums have long silenced African narratives, both symbolically and literally.
As Mevlana said, “Those who share the same feelings, not those who speak the same language, can truly understand each other.”
During the colonial era, European powers forcibly seized vast amounts of African cultural heritage through war, coercion, or outright theft. These artifacts were then displayed in major Western museums. Notable among these looted objects are the Benin Bronzes, Nok terracottas, Ethiopian manuscripts, and the Ashanti royal regalia.
Colonized bodies have been placed—both physically and metaphorically—behind glass for centuries, interpreted without consent, and muted through authoritative narratives. One of the most striking examples is that of Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman taken from South Africa in the early 19th century and exhibited in degrading freak shows across Europe. Even after her death, her remains were dissected, preserved, and displayed in a Paris museum until the late 20th century.
Her story is not an exception; it is a symbol of how colonial violence extended not only to land and economies but also to bodies, memories, and voices. Decolonization, therefore, is not just about returning artifacts, but also about restoring narrative ownership and subjectivity.
Algerian Skulls and the Archive of Violence
A couple of years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized the importance of returning stolen African artifacts held in European museums to their countries of origin. Shortly after, the Savoy Report—authored by French scholar Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese academic Felwine Sarr—was published. The report outlined the practical steps for restitution and provided data on the scale of the issue. It’s estimated that 90 to 95 percent of Africa’s cultural heritage resides outside the continent, mostly in major European museums. France alone holds around 90,000 artifacts from sub-Saharan Africa in its national collections. Meanwhile, just to the north in Germany, several museums house not just cultural artifacts, but also human remains from Africa.
In July 2020, the French government repatriated the skulls of 24 Algerian resistance fighters executed during the 19th-century colonization of Algeria. These skulls had been held for over a century at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, grotesquely displayed as both imperial trophies and scientific specimens.
Their return was not merely symbolic. It came after years of advocacy by Algerian academics, descendants, and civil society. Their demands were not limited to the return of bones—but also for the restoration of dignity, recognition, and the right to remember on their own terms.
This moment clearly demonstrated that museums are not passive archives of history, but active agents in shaping collective memory—and, at times, collective forgetfulness.
Africa Is Not a Museum of Pain
Speaking about Africa in museum spaces often means speaking about pain, loss, and absence. Yet this perspective disregards the continent’s resilience, intellectual labor, and creativity. Africa is not frozen in a colonial time capsule. It is a living, thinking, producing, and resisting continent.
In 1990, Nelson Mandela stated before the United Nations:
“Apartheid is a form of colonialism. It is the denial of democratic rights to the majority born in that country.”
Mandela’s words still resonate deeply within contemporary museum discourse. To decolonize institutions means not only to dismantle past injustices, but also to build structures that acknowledge and empower the voices of those who have been historically silenced.
References
Coombes, Annie E. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. Yale University Press, 1994.
Hicks, Dan. The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press, 2020.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. Verso, 2019.
Kruger, Loretta. “Sarah Baartman and the Ethics of Representation.” Critical Arts, 2001.
Shelton, Anthony. “Museums and Anthropologies: Practices and Narratives.” Museum Worlds, 2013.
Vergès, Françoise. Decolonial Feminism. Pluto Press, 2021.
UNESCO. “Restitution of Cultural Property.” unesco.org