PhD | Dutch Art Museums: Decoloniality, Curatorial Practices, and the Implicated Subject

PhD-candidate | Oscar Ekkelboom
Institution: Radboud Universiteit, RICH
Supervisors: prof. dr. Liedeke Plate and prof. dr. Hanneke Grootenboer 

This project looks into art displays in Dutch museums in order to learn how the Museum constitutes and reinforces the modern/colonial divide that separates the ‘other’ from the western ‘I’.
Because of immense pressure from social movements and political activism many museums in the Netherlands are currently seeking to decentralize Euro-modern perspectives. However, while diversifying their displays, exhibition programs, and curatorial teams, they miss to address to what extent the Museum itself is implicated in the power structures of Modernity. To understand this, the project investigates art displays through a decolonial lens, for example, by questioning how museums display art through whiteness and how the enjoyment of art is implicated in the suffering of others. Finally, by learning the positionality of the art displays within Modernity, this project allows us to think of curatorial practices that enable museums to move away from dominating power structures – in other words, to delink from the modern/colonial order.