CCA - Gertjan PLETS - Curating colonial university heritages otherwise

Abstract

“Colonial heritage cannot be studied from a European perspective alone”. Since 2024, Utrecht University (UU) has been conducting research into the colonial heritage of universities. Gertjan Plets, Associate Professor of Heritage Studies at UU, is leading the international project Colonial Legacies of Universities: Materialities and New Collaborations (COLUMN). The EU-Horizon project COLUMN brings together nine academic and cultural organisations from eight countries : researchers from Suriname and South Africa and curators from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Mexico. COLUMN was initiate to ensure that the colonial history of universities is explicitly not viewed solely from a European lens.

“We must create new frameworks and languages to truly decolonise heritage. So we aim to actively reshape the academic debate and take it in a new direction”, says Plets. The project focuses on the colonial history of the Botanic Gardens and the collections of the Utrecht University Museum (UMU). For example, at the UMU, researchers and staff created new ways to make anthropological collections accessible. “Take, for example, the research on the Nias masks – plaster casts made during the colonial period of the faces of residents of the Indonesian island of Nias. I’ve been working on this with collection manager Reina de Raadt and Jakarta-based exhibition curator Sadiah Boonstra for three years. We opened an exhibition on Nias in November 2024 and are now continuing to collaborate with local communities, while also sharing these findings with European audiences” (Gertjan Plets).

Localisation précise voir https://www.ulb.be/fr/solbosch/plan-du-campus