The art of not knowing
Rethinking museums in a decolonial age

For decades museums have been the custodians of human history, but what if the stories they tell are embedded in colonial history? As society is shifting towards more inclusive and diverse ways of living, museums are under public pressure to reflect on their colonial roots. Can they reshape themselves to meet the demands of a more equitable future?

Extractivist practices and epistemic violence in the colonial legacy of musuems

Historically, museums have possessed collections of artefacts belonging to indigenous communities of formerly colonized societies, which were mostly violently taken away from indigenous communities during the colonial era. Many of the artefacts, art objects, manuscripts, and other entities that are exhibited in museums reflect a painful colonial experience of extraction. For the past decade, much discussion has been focused on the decolonization of Western European museums, revolving around the question of what is needed for museums to break away from their inherent colonial roots and epistemic assumptions. 

Extractivist practices of museums, namely the acts of violent, non-consensual extraction of artefacts, still shape how museums acquire, display, and relate to communal knowledge of formerly colonised people, which raises urgent questions about restitution and decolonisation within the context of today’s museums.

Linda Martin Alcoff, a philosopher and professor, has written extensively on extractivist practices, arguing that these practices are grounded in specific Western European epistemic assumptions, such as beliefs about the value and nature of knowledge, expertise, and methodologies, and that it is through these assumptions that the extractivist actions are justified. This web of underlying epistemic assumptions of extractivist practices includes the idea of objectivity, in the sense that knowledge can be identified by anyone regardless of their position or expertise, meaning that Western European museums have the same access to indigenous knowledge as the communities surrounding that manifestation of knowledge (artefact). 

Further, extractivist practices assume that knowledge is non-relational, that it can be removed from its context of practices, rituals, and social embeddedness without the decrease in meaning and value. But values can be diminished when artefacts or entities are removed from their social embeddedness – when, for example, a ceremonial object is taken from a community and placed in an exhibition, it becomes detached from the rituals, beliefs, and lived experiences that define its significance. 

Reimagining the museums: The Kali’na project 

Seeing the harmful effects of colonialism and colonial collections, much attention and debate has been centered around the oppressive past of Museums with a loud demand for decolonisation, involving discussions about the possibility or impossibility of restructuring museums that operated  within a colonial system. 

The Research Center for Material Culture in the Netherlands (RCMC) seeing this debate, organised a symposium in 2015, where multiple scholars were invited to discuss what kind of societal, political, and structural changes are needed in order to imagine a form of redress. The symposium was split into two parts: the first addresses the philosophical grounds for redress, and the second revolved around material redress, reclaiming heritage that has been violently taken away or disappeared as a result of extractivist practices.

One of the symposium’s participants was Laura van Broekhoven, the Head of the Curatorial Department and Curator for Central and South America at the Tropenmuseum, the Afrika Museum, and the Museum Volkenkunde. In the symposium, she talked about the then-ongoing Penard Kali’na Manuscripts project, which involved materials found in the museum’s archive in Leiden.

Since 1915, the museum has held a collection of objects from the Kali’na, indigenous communities located in northern coastal areas in South America, including in Suriname. In 2001, manuscripts that had never been unpacked were found in the Museum’s archive in Leiden. Tracing them back to their original source revealed that they had been created and written down by the Penard brothers, three siblings who were extensively collecting and documenting knowledge of indigenous communities in Suriname. Moreover, the researchers discovered that an encyclopaedia was mentioned in the manuscripts. In 2015, after searching through the archive, they found texts, symbols, and drawings belonging to the Kali’na encyclopaedia that had been lost. 

The museum transcribed and collected these letters and manuscripts, and partnered with the VIDS, the Association of Indigenous Village Heads in Suriname, and the Faculty of Archeology and Humanities of the University of Leiden. The encyclopaedia was found to include indigenous and shamanic knowledge, traditional practices, symbolisms, and drawings that had not been previously published. Laura van Broekhoven emphasised the importance of respecting the secrecy and sacredness of these documents, hence they were not publicised. 

The VIDS and local government officials came to Leiden to go through the documents and discuss how to address them. Together, the VIDS and the research team retraced some of the relatives, people mentioned in the manuscripts, village chiefs and shamans in order to find out more about the manuscripts’ relevance and sacredness. Workshops have been held in indigenous villages and a ceremony by a shaman took place.

This project exemplifies a valuable shift in museum practices and research concerning lost artefacts of indigenous communities, valuing collaboration and centering the rights of indigenous people and decolonial methodologies. 

Experiential knowing and epistemic confusion: A Helen Verran inspired reorientation

Nevertheless, one can ask the question whether these efforts truly reflect a shift towards an equal, respectful, and collaborative process, or whether more is needed in order for museums to truly change their approaches to other knowledge systems? 

Western European museums should recognise that the world is not merely an accumulation of different perspectives on a singular reality, but is plural in a deeply ontological sense

Helen Verran, a philosopher and critic of decolonial methodologies, argues that musuems require deeper epistemic transformations. She proposes that Western European museums ought to enact multiversal relationality, the recognition that the world is not merely an accumulation of different perspectives on a singular reality, but is plural in a deeply ontological sense, meaning that there are multiple valid realities that are not necessarily comparable or commensurable. 

According to her, truths and entities (such as artefacts or manuscripts) are deeply relational to their cosmology, meaning that entities are ontologically tied to specific social and cultural realities. As such, artefacts are living relational realities, as they are ‘alive’ only within their original social context. For Verran, enacting multiversal relationality involves experiential knowing, experiencing an entity without having preconceived notions and assumptions about it, just experiencing it. Such an approach comes with a feeling of not knowing, in other words, not having fixed epistemic grounds or clear answers to rely on. Western Europeans ought hence to free themselves from fixed epistemic assumptions such as objectivity, non-relationality, and many more, in order to approach artefacts in a different and more meaningful manner. 

Seeing this, the research team could have approached the manuscripts with the awareness of not having any clear answers to what knowledge is discovered in them, and no clear directions of certain methodologies applied, instead embracing epistemic confusion. Further, given Verran’s framework, the research team could have addressed the manuscripts as being alive in their relationality to social and cultural practices, not as fixed carriers of knowledge, thus recognising that their meaning is empty when the manuscripts are studied within a Dutch context. Although this was partly done by the research team, through collaborating with the VIDS and visits to some villages in Suriname, the awareness of living relationality could have been stronger. Researchers ought to train themselves to engage with entities without underlying assumptions and preconceived concepts, instead internalising feelings of not knowing. 

As museums in Europe confront the shadows of their colonial past, the Penard Kali’na project offers a glimpse into a more equitable and fair future, rooted in respect, collaboration, and communication. But as scholars like Helen Verran remind us, genuine transformation demands a fundamental epistemic shift: a willingness to let go of Western certainties and approach knowledge systems with humility, openness, and the courage not to know. Only by embracing this discomfort can museums begin to reimagine themselves not as keepers of global heritage but as participants in a multiverse of living, relational worlds.