What Remains? Spiritual Artifacts, Collectors, Collections, and Communities
Mittwoch, 03.12.2025 bis Donnerstag, 04.12.2025Symposium, Universität Groningen, Niederlande
Symposium on current debates around the spiritual artifacts collected under colonial or postcolonial conditions and housed in European ethnographic museums. It will be held Dec. 3 and 4 in Groningen with many wonderful scholars and MA and PhD students involved. In this workshop, we will explore how spiritual artifacts are viewed and dealt with as they transition into and out of museum collections, both in Europe and in museums in the societies from which the collections were taken.
Which ideas and feelings do such artifacts evoke for multiple beholders? How are they seen by Christian believers and theologians, especially in the countries from where the artifacts hail?
Are they still – or again- regarded as animated? What happens if they are re-appreciated as “cultural assets” or “religious heritage”?
How are they treated in the museum context? In short: How do secular museum contexts – in Europe and in the Global South – affect the meaning, value and ontological status of spiritual artefacts and what remains of the powers imbued in them?
