Lecture 'Things and Time. Ethnographic Museums and the Resistance of Object'
- For whom
- Alumni , Business , Press , Employees , Private individuals , Students
- When
- 16-09-2026 from 17:30 to 17:30
- Where
- Auditorium 3 Suzanne Lilar, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent
- Language
- English
- Organizer
- Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences & Department of History - Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
- Contact
- dries.josten@ugent.be
- Website
- https://www.ugent.be/doctoralschool/en/doctoraltraining/courses/specialistcourses/objective-of-the-humanities-objectivity-politics-and-knowledge-production
Kasper Eskildsen on how huseums have shaped our concept of the past as well as our understanding of the world.
"By placing physical objects in proximity to one another, curators allow us to travel through time and space. Walking through the exhibits, we can compare periods and peoples with one another and comprehend developments and differences. This experience of time and space travel, as decades of scholarship have shown, is often illusory. Museums do not merely reveal the past and the world but reflect contemporary worldviews and, through their constructions of time and space, have legitimized global inequalities, racism, and colonialism. However, I argue, the commitment to material artefacts has also often challenged these constructions. The objects themselves offer resistance. This can even be seen in ethnographic museums, which have been the target of much of the criticism. The racist and (neo)colonial misuse of ethnographic museums demanded the suppression of certain kinds of objects."