Research on Colonialism and Culture Meets at the Museum
The new exhibition Bringing the Objects to Life – and Challenging the Colonial Histories of Museums by the National Museums of World Culture is the result of an initiative by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) to promote collaboration between research and culture.
The National Museums of World Culture was one of seven organizations awarded funding through RJ’s Art and Culture initiative, which aims to create new productions based on academic research. The goal is to make the humanities and social sciences accessible to a wider audience. The exhibition draws on research in the fields of the history of ideas and art history.
Bringing the Objects to Life – and Challenging the Colonial Histories of Museums is a multi-site exhibition, presented across four institutions: the Museum of Ethnography, the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, and the Museum of World Culture. Using their own collections, the exhibition raises critical questions about colonialism in museum practices.
Two research projects form the foundation of the exhibition. The first is Colonial Objects: Materiality, Visuality, and Swedish Colonialism by Mårten Snickare, Professor of Art History at Stockholm University. This research explores Europe’s colonial history and the museum as a quintessentially European institution, through the analysis of objects acquired in colonial encounters. The second project is The Limits of Humanity: Linnaean Naturalists and the Colonial Legacy of the Enlightenment by Linda Andersson Burnett, Associate Professor in the History of Ideas at Uppsala University. Her research examines the relationship between the concept of “universal humanity” and colonialism during the Enlightenment.
The exhibition Bringing the Objects to Life – and Challenging the Colonial Histories of Museums will open in 2026.