Dec 13th, 2018: Keynote Speech by Prof. Andreas Eckert on “Decolonizing the Museum? African Objects and the Politics of Restitution”

The Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (ABI) and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) host a livestream of the keynote speech of Prof. Andreas Eckert which will be held in the context of the workshop ‘Restitution and Repatriation of Looted and Illegally Acquired African Objects in European Museums’ at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies Africa (MIASA), University of Ghana, Accra.

This event will be shown at FRIAS (Albertstraße 19, 79104 Freiburg) in the Lecture Hall (‘Pathologie’) on 13 December 2018 at 4:45 p.m. and will be followed by a short reception.

The restitution of looted art from Africa sent or sold to European museums by agents of European colonizing missions is the black box at the centre stage of the MIASA workshop on ‘Restitution and Repatriation of Looted and Illegally Acquired African Objects in European Museums’ that needs to be interrogated to garner frameworks for resolution. Processual stalemates and the continuing bid by European museums to erase and deny African people’s human rights and direct access to the looted creative and spiritual works of their ancestors, begs for continuous scholarly debates on these issues on the African continent by both African and international professionals and stakeholders. Such a quest is at the core of this workshop being hosted by MIASA in partnership with the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana, Accra. For more information on the workshop and for a detailed workshop programme, please refer to http://www.mias-africa.org/events

Prof. Andreas Eckert is a renowned and popular scientist for history, particularly Africa. From 2002 to 2007, he was professor for contemporary history with a focus on the history of Africa at the University of Hamburg. In 2007, he took over the chair of African history at the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt University, Berlin, where he also served for some time as the institute’s director. He has undertaken research as a guest professor at various international universities such as Maison des Sciences de l' Homme, Paris, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He is currently the director of the Forum for Transregional Studies and of the International Research Centre “Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History” at the Humboldt University, Berlin. 

MIASA (Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa) is an international research centre at the University of Ghana in Accra. The institute facilitates the cooperation of Ghanaian scientists with their international peers beyond disciplinary and geographical boundaries. MIASA is committed to reducing global asymmetries in the production of knowledge and aims to facilitate stronger cooperation among and between researchers in both Anglo- and Francophone Africa. For more information on MIASA, please refer to http://www.mias-africa.org/