The Netherlands: Research on shared heritage

Slavery on Display: Researching Museum Exhibitions
Rianne Walet (Utrecht University), research intern at The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE), investigates how museums have used their collections to present the history of Dutch slavery and its legacies in their exhibitions. From 2001 onward, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of exhibitions on related topics. The focus will therefore be on exhibitions from the past 17 years. Selected museums, such as the Rijksmuseum and the Amsterdam Museum, will be examined more closely. Interviews with curators and other staff members will help to give an overview of their choices and viewpoints regarding the history of slavery. By comparing the outcome with other case studies, overlapping developments will become visible. These might serve as handlebars for the Shared Heritage Programme and the RCE on how to further engage with this topic on a broader scale.

When the built heritage speaks
What does it mean to call a Dutch policy programme with Suriname, a former Dutch colony, ‘Shared Cultural Heritage’? How can this possibly-contested heritage be ‘shared’ in a post-colonial era? In her short documentary titled ‘Als de stenen spreken’ (if stones could speak), research intern Maria van Leeuwen (Utrecht University) invites us to take a critical and narrative approach to the Netherlands’ shared built cultural heritage programme with Suriname. Van Leeuwen combines her background in Dutch literature and culture with the RCE’s policy practice to give policy advice. The documentary focuses on the historical cemetery of ‘Nieuwe Oranjetuin’ in Paramaribo - a place of built heritage that has no current use and where stories about buried people meet stories about tomb symbolism, building styles and Surinamese burial rituals. The movie contributes a storytelling approach to the exploratory project ‘Technische missie Nieuwe Oranjetuin Paramaribo’, in which the RCE was involved.