Call for Research

We are interested in how the Diasporic frameworks are a possible foundation for collection policies based on kinship building and strengthening cultural affiliations, as well as how movement and relocation can be applied to a collection’s display and mediation. Further, the issue concerns the histories of peoples and objects, and the speculative possibilities for museums that grapple with the responsibility of being cultural mediators today.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is currently taking steps in rethinking its acquisition and exhibition strategies. The first step it has taken is to reconsider its collection of over 100,000 pieces into two spheres. The first comprises works that belong to the long twentieth century in which modernism was central—a collection that the museum acknowledges as its foundation and raison d’être. Many of the works that are considered to belong to the “diverse” part of the collection, are made by artists within the worldwide European Diaspora—which can be seen as a regionalist repatriation and continuation of the Western canon of modern art.

The second sphere is concerned with recently acquired works and is motivated by emigrational movements, postcolonial constellations, and community engagement. By breaking away from the modernist acquisition strategies that formed the core of the Stedelijk’s foundational collection, the museum can now examine how plural Diasporas can incorporate the complexities of objects and people. As custodians of the collection, we are obligated to care for it, now and for future generations, which means building in-roads for multiple heritages. While maintaining its steadfast recognition of the past as a source of (un)learning, the collection is then allowed a more open future as we are guided by deep research, critique, and care.

We understand that “Diaspora” does not undo the logic of coloniality and modernity and could even be interpreted as reinscribing these systems. However, as our current period suggests, global movements are diverse and multiple, and the Stedelijk Studies Journal Issue 12 seeks out those complex connections between all agents, both animate and inanimate. While we are interested in the prospects that emerge from Diasporic acquisition strategies, we also understand systems are persistent and we will take extra care in considering contexts, and to give historical and speculative models equal weight.

Subjects to be considered in relation to Diaspora include and are not limited to:

1. Community practices of artistic heritage that counter institutional display
2. Diasporic belonging through cultural production
3. Intersections of the Diaspora: race, class, and other dynamics
4. Ways of thinking beyond the social and philosophical foundations of the museum
5. Alternative museum practices / speculative futures for museums or institutions
6. Historical museum collection and exhibition practices around regions, civilizations, people
7. Dealing with Whiteness in museum collections today
8. Museological diversification and decolonization
9. Repatriation of cultural objects, and representing the “absence” or “return” of objects