On the 1st May, the School of Law and Criminology and the Research Centre in International Justice will host Dr Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi, MGMM Instructor, Western Colorado University, Royal Museum for Central Africa. The seminar will take place in John Hume Lecture Hall 1 entitled, 'Beyond War Zones: Rethinking the Cultural Objects in Museum in a Postcolonial Context'.
All welcome!
Abstract
Museums are increasingly confronted with the complex legacies of an asymmetrical distribution of power, whether the result of colonial conquests, missionary collections, scientific expeditions or commercial coercion. While legal restitution remains an important issue, deeper questions arise about how museums tell the story of their collections and how these narratives evolve in dialogue with the communities from which they originate. Drawing on case studies and pragmatic examples, this presentation aims to examine how institutions are rethinking the provenance and meaning of objects acquired in asymmetrical contexts. Exploring the collection and multiple lives of certain artifacts - from 19th-century African sculptures to ceremonial objects - and how today's museums must manage the tensions between political whims, historical responsibility, scholarly interpretation and activist engagement. It will also be a question of reflecting on how practices such as artistic reappropriation, shared authority and the collaborative production of knowledge offer new frameworks for understanding heritage and the evolving relationship between museums and communities of origin.
Bio:
Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi, MA, MBA, PhD is a historian and museum curator specializing in 19th- and early 20th-century collections. She holds an MA in Art History from Paris1-Pantheon-Sorbonne, the University Diploma in provenance research from the University of Paris Nanterre, and a PhD in History from the University of the Republic of San Marino (UNIRSM).
She teaches courses on provenance research, conservation practices, and gallery management as part of the Museum and Gallery Management master's program at Western Colorado University.
Currently, she serves at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium) as the curator of historical collections, a position in which her work focuses on colonial-era collections, the Berlin Conference, the cultural entanglements between Europe and Central Africa, and current debates on restitution and provenance research.
