“colonial-local – we’re lifting the lid”
The Oder-Spree Museum in Beeskow was founded in 1906 in order to showcase the history of the district Beeskow-Storkow. Today, however, the collection also contains exhibits from the north of Europe, the Pacific and Africa. Most of these non-local exhibits are from Namibia, formerly the colony German South-West Africa. And all of this throws up a lot of questions: How did these objects come to be in the Oder-Spree Museum in Beeskow? Do they constitute looted art? What do they have to do with big game hunting, the disappearance of Sorb place names, a missing explorer of Australia, the denazification process in a small town and the grocery shops in the local villages? And what should be our response if we discover objects like these in our collections? The Oder-Spree Museum is showing this collection of ethnological objects for the first time. The exhibition design by the Department of Visual Communication provides an overview of what could be learned up to now about the origin of these objects and what caused them to find their way to Beeskow. It also shows how global interdependencies can impact on local contexts. The exhibition will be opened on April 13, 2024 at 3 pm at Beeskow Castle. It arose as a cooperative venture between the Oder-Spree Museum, the Association of Museums in Brandenburg and the studio mut.und.anmut. of the weissensee school of at and design berlin.
Link: www.burg-beeskow.de/ausstellungen/sonderausstellungen/kolonialokal