A Laboratory for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue?
Missionary Collections at the Interface of Religion, Science and Global Society
By Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Binter
Transdisciplinary, international conference
A Laboratory for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue?
Missionary Collections at the Interface of Religion, Science and Global Society
University of Bonn, Steyler Missionare (Societas Verbi Divini)
Sankt Augustin/ Bonn
10–12 September 2024
Can missionary collections become laboratories for intercultural and interreligious dialogue? An international, transdisciplinary conference seeks to answer this question by bringing together experts from the Study of Religions, Theology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Global History, Art History, History of Science, Regional Studies of Africa, Oceania, South East Asia and South America as well as Critical Museum and Heritage Studies. It aims to analyze mission history and its material heritage in museums against the backdrop of a changing understanding of mission and decolonial criticism of museums. It also addresses the role of artistic creation in engaging with historical and contemporary religious contact and conflict and aims to rethink the history of collections as history of knowledge. These transdisciplinary discussions will ultimately lead to a future-oriented debate about the scientific and global-societal potential of missionary collections.
The conference is organized by the University of Bonn in collaboration with the Steyler Missionare (Societas Verbi Divini) in Sankt Augustin/ Bonn and serves as a first step towards the innovative, transdisciplinary rethinking of their museum Haus Völker und Kulturen (HVK).
Organisers: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Binter, Dr. Rafaela Eulberg, Dr. Stanisław Grodź, Prof. Dr. Adrian Hermann, Prof. Dr. Karoline Noack, Prof. Dr. Klaus von Stosch, Christian Tauchner
A cooperation between:
Global Heritage Lab, Transdisciplinary Research Area Present Pasts, Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, Zentrum für Religion und Gesellschaft, International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues, Anthropos Institute, Steyler Missionswissenschaftliches Institut
To register for the conference, please go to:
Provisional Schedule
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Adenauerallee 131, 53111 Bonn
5:30 PM – 6:00 PM Welcome
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Keynote by Prof. Dr. Birgit Meyer, University of Utrecht
Missionary Collections as Laboratories for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue: Problems and Possibilities
8:00 PM Dinner with Conference Participants
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Haus Völker und Kulturen, Arnold-Janssen-Straße 26, 53757 Sankt Augustin
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Guided Tour of the Exhibitions at the Haus Völker und Kulturen
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM Coffee Break
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM Workshop Mission and Museum – Comparative Examples
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM Workshop Changing Concepts of Mission
4:00 PM – 4:30 PM Coffee Break
4:30 PM – 6:00 PM Workshop Beyond Essentialisms – Art as Dialogue between Religions
6:00 PM – 08:00 PM Dinner
8:00 PM – 9:30 PM Filmscreening and Discussion: A Goddess in Motion (María Lionza in Barcelona)
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Haus Völker und Kulturen, Arnold-Janssen-Straße 26, 53757 Sankt Augustin
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Film installation and Discussion: re|despair – Painful Encounters in German Museums
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM Coffee Break
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM Workshop Histories of Collecting as Histories of Knowledge
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM Panel Discussion The Future of Missionary Collections
Workshops
Mission and Museum – Comparative Examples
The workshop Mission and Museum in Global Perspective will look at case studies from Austria, the Netherlands, Poland and Nigeria and explore how the handling of missionary collections has changed against the background of a changing understanding of mission and the decolonial critique of museums.
This panel is intended to be documented as an Audio Working Paper and Graphic Recording.
Moderator: Dr. Markus Scholz, Philosophical-Theological College of St. George
Speakers:
- Nina van der Werf, Missiemuseum Steyl
Mission and Museum – Comparative Examples - Dr. Claudia Augustat, Weltmuseum Wien
Can digital repatriation matter? Thinking with landscapes - Dr. John Kelechi Ugwuanyi, University of Bonn and Ambrose Onyemaechi Ezema, University of Nigeria, Nsukka Missionary Collection for Who and for What? The Making and Unmaking of Cultural Heritage by the Okunerere Adoration Ministry, Nigeria
- Mona Kwasniewska, SVD Museum Poland
Changings Concepts of Mission
The workshop Changing Concepts of Mission aims to create a transdisciplinary basis for understanding mission as a dynamic, situational and economically, politically and culturally interwoven practice.
This panel is intended to be documented through Graphic Recording.
Moderator: Prof. Dr. Klaus von Stosch, University of Bonn
Speakers:
- Dr. Jan Hüsgen, German Lost Art Foundation ”good Christians and good & useful objects” Moravian mission and slave emancipation in the Caribbean
- Prof. Dr. Chris Wingfield, University of East Anglia
All wrapped up in a piece of Tahitian Cloth: The Protestant Missionary Exhibitionary
Complex in 1832 - Christian Tauchner SVD, Sankt Augustin Steyler Mission Institute
Changing Concepts of Mission - Heide Lienert-Emmerlich, Mission eine Welt
Beyond Essentialisms – Art as Dialogue between Religions
The workshop Beyond Essentialisms – Art as a Dialogue between Religions looks at art from Africa, the Pacific, Asia, and Europe and asks whether and how artistic creation can negotiate and translate religious and cultural understandings.
This panel is intended to be documented through Graphic Recording.
Moderator: Dr. Rafaela Eulberg, University of Bonn
Speakers:
- Dr. Zachary Kingdon, National Museum Scotland
Religion, Creative Agency, and Critique within Mozambican Makonde Migrant Communities in 20th Century Tanzania - Rev. Dr. Christian Weber, mission 21
Can artistic creation negotiate and translate religious and cultural understandings? - Prof. Dr. Adrian Hermann, University of Bonn
Moving images as religious medium and research medium for the aesthetics of religion - Naomie Ratunde University of Bonn
Materialities, Memories and Mission – On the Ayoréode Collection at the BASA Museum
Histories of Collecting as Histories of Knowledge
The workshop Histories of Collecting as Histories of Knowledge takes an in-depth look at the nexus of collecting and knowledge creation and discusses the historical inclusions and exclusions in the production and documentation of knowledge in religious contact and conflict zones.
This panel is intended to be documented as an Audio Working Paper and Graphic Recording.
Moderator: Dr. Martin Radermacher, Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr-University Bochum
Speakers:
- Dr. Oliver Lueb, Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum Missionary traces in secular collections – Experiences from preparing an exhibition on missionary collections in North Rhine-Westphalia at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum – Kulturen der Welt, Cologne
- Dr. Peter Rohrbacher, Austrian Academy of Sciences
P. Wilhelm Koppers in Central India: Theoretical reflections on his collecting activities in 1938/39 - Dr. Harald Grauer, Anthropos Institute
A look behind the façade of an institution… - Amélie Roussillon, Utrecht University
Collecting and documenting Abelam: Rethinking the role of Father August Knorr (SVD) in
Papua New Guinea - Prof. Dr. Peter Pels, University of Leiden
Heritage and the Question of Conversion: Paradoxes of Knowledge in Thinking about Missionaries Collecting (both Things and People)
Panel Discussion: Towards Futures of Missionary Collections
What can we learn from a critical re-examination of missionary collections as histories of religious contact and conflict? How can we unpack their political, economic and epistemological entanglements past and present? And can they become laboratories for intercultural and interreligious dialogue?
This panel is intended to be documented as an Audio Working Paper and Graphic Recording.
Moderator: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Binter, University of Bonn
Participants:
- Dr. Ramona Jelinek-Menke, Philipps University Marburg
- Dr. Stanislav Grodz, SVD, Anthropos Institute
- Prof. Dr. Karoline Noack, University of Bonn
- Valerie Viban, Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung e.V.
Caption:
Photo: Masken aus dem Kamerun im HVK, Christian Tauchner