‘Can I have Pakistan back?’ It was my first week working as a curator of the Middle East and North Africa at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, and my colleague, the curator of South Asia, had asked me a revealing question.1 Until then, Pakistan had been assigned to my predecessor, who oversaw the museum’s collections of the Islamic Culture Area (islamitisch cultuurgebied). And now it was being asked that the country be ‘returned’. ‘Will you also take Afghanistan?’, I replied, feeling somewhat uncomfortable by this request, and hoping to hit a light tone. ‘No, my cultural zone is British India, so Afghanistan belongs to you’, was the answer.
That the legacies of colonialism permeated the Tropenmuseum at all levels was not news to me. My first big job at the museum had been to curate an exhibition about the relationship between the Netherlands and Islam (see Shatanawi 2012a; 2012b). I soon learned that in my position as the curator for the Middle Eastern and North African collections, Islam was at the centre of attention. The requests directed to me, both internal and external, often concerned Islam in many of its aspects. Besides, many of the objects collected by my predecessors had a direct connection to the Islamic faith (see Shatanawi 2014). At the same time, and much to my surprise, I discovered that Islam did not feature prominently in relation to the Indonesian collections, which at the Tropenmuseum made up the largest share of the collections. There were several curators for the Indonesian collections at the time, and none had much knowledge of nor interest in Islam.2 It did not take long before questions about Southeast Asian objects relating to Islam and Muslims were directed to me.
The overall lack of interest in Indonesian Islam at all levels of museum practice (collections, exhibitions, research) left me puzzled, since Indonesia had been the prime colony of the Netherlands. The National Museum of World Cultures (NMVW), of which the Tropenmuseum today forms part, has one of the largest and most prominent collections of art and material culture from Indonesia, most of which was collected during the colonial period.3 Yet despite this long history, few objects in the collection have been identified as ‘Islamic’ and there is no terminology to denote ‘Indonesian-Islamic’ artistic styles. Equally important, Indonesia was widely known as the country with the largest number of Muslim inhabitants in the world. Moreover, my curatorial career started in February 2001, just seven months before Islam would be propelled to the forefront of public debate, as well as in museum practice.4 For a curator for the Middle Eastern and North African collections, Islam was the number one topic requested, followed by queries relating to Turkish and Moroccan culture, the countries of origin of the largest Muslim communities in the Netherlands. Yet the events of that time did not seem to have a similar impact on curatorial practice related to Indonesia. Museums in the Netherlands continued to present Indonesia as a country largely devoid of Islam and Muslims. In the Tropenmuseum gallery of Southeast Asian cultures, Islam was relegated to one small display case. The Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands’ premier national museum, did not even bother to include a single Islamic object from Indonesia in its dedicated Asian Pavilion (Westermann 2015; Bloembergen and Eickhoff 2014).5 Situations like these kept me wondering: is this simply a matter of colonial amnesia, the act of forgetting colonial histories, or are we witnessing colonial aphasia, an occlusion of knowledge, ‘a difficulty generating a vocabulary that associates appropriate words and concepts with appropriate things’ (Stoler 2011, 125)?
My increasing anxiety about this matter was made productive in a curatorial practice that combined work on the ground with the investigation of the historical practices of collecting and presenting Islam at the Tropenmuseum, resulting in several books and articles (Shatanawi 2014; 2012a; 2009c; Vos 2008). These publications laid the foundation for this book. I also reflected on my own practice in the context of the epistemological legacies of the Tropenmuseum (Shatanawi 2012a; 2012b; 2009a; 2007). I wrote about othering as the museum’s core business, because ‘it only represents half the globe’, enforcing a distinction between ‘the West and the rest’. The museum’s anthropological outlook, and the emphasis on cultural traits as markers of difference, meant that essentialism was woven into the organisational structure, with a ‘compartmentalized world of cultures’, each with its own curator and collection. As long as the ethnographic museum functions as a distinct entity, I concluded, I cannot counter curate my way out (Shatanawi 2007). Yet somehow, despite my attempts to write ‘against culture’ (Abu-Lughod 1991), I did not manage to get a grip. I felt a deeper investigation was needed to be able to understand the entanglements with the past, and ultimately to undo some of its effects in the present.
This book is the result of years of research on these matters. The overarching question is directed to why and how ‘Islam’ was collected, categorised and exhibited in Dutch museums, tracing the colonial legacies in today’s practice. It follows the traces of tens of thousands of objects that are now present in museum collections in the Netherlands, such as the hajji doll that is featured on the cover.6 It was one of 350 dolls that were presented in 1893 to the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina as a present for her thirteenth birthday by ‘the ladies of the Dutch East Indies’, who intended to entertain and educate the young queen (see also p. 110). The ladies had the dolls carved by local craftsmen, but then complained that making realistic representations was ‘virtually unknown to them’ and, hence, that the ‘natives’ needed ‘European guidance’ to make progress in this area (Bakhuizen van den Brink-Raedt van Oldenbarnevelt 1894, 3–4). More important than the doll itself were the clothes it was donned. Each doll came with a detailed description of the local names of the garments, as well as their meanings and symbolism. This allowed the queen to learn about the different population groups in the colony. Today the dolls are on display at the Wereldmuseum Leiden, one of the instances where the colonial memory of Islam is reactivated, as discussed in this book. Intriguingly, the hajji doll’s face bears an expression of earnestness and slight distress, crafted by the woodworker from Cianjur, whose name the ‘ladies’ did not find worth mentioning. Could there be a message he intended to convey through this expression, and how does it hold relevance in today’s context?
I started at the Tropenmuseum in 2001, when I was appointed associate curator for the exhibition Urban Islam. In 2004, I was appointed curator of the Middle Eastern and North African collections. I negotiated a change of job title; previously the position was named curator of the Islamic Culture Area, but I found the rubric of Islam too narrow to describe the Middle East and North Africa, the region that was the focus of the position, and too broad because it suggested a larger focus area, including other Muslim-majority regions in Africa and Asia.
This changed in 2005 when Willem (Pim) Westerkamp was appointed curator of the History and Cultures of Southeast Asia. Between 1991 and 2005, Westerkamp worked as a curator at Museum Nusantara in Delft.
The National Museum of World Cultures was founded in 2014 as an umbrella organisation that serves the collaboration of four ethnographic museums: the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the Africa Museum in Berg and Dal and (since 2017) the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam. In 2023, all locations changed their names to Wereldmuseum and, hence, the Tropenmuseum was renamed Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. National Museum of World Cultures (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, abbreviated NMVW) remains the official name for the organisation.
Publications about museums and Islam commonly start with the observation that after the events of 9/11 and the rise of Islamophobia, museums have shown increased interest in presenting Islamic art and material culture. Across the globe, museums have invested in new galleries, or their existing collection displays have undergone a major overhaul (for a partial list see Shaw 2019a).
Another example of the marginal position of Indonesian Islam in Dutch public culture is the publication by Poorthuis and Salemink (2011), Van harem tot fitna: beeldvorming van de islam in Nederland 1848–2010 (“From Harem to Fitna: Images of Islam in the Netherlands 1848–2010”), a voluminous book of more than 700 pages, promising to be a comprehensive overview of the modern history of the connections between Islam and the Netherlands. In this study, Dutch imperialism and its relationship to Indonesian Islam are reduced to mere footnotes.
Wooden doll dressed as a hajji. Collection National Museum of World Cultures inv. no. RV-1108-1. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11840/683870.