Abstract/Summary

This issue compiles the outcome of the symposium at the Kunstmuseum Basel and a summer academy at the Zurich University of the Arts, concerning one of the most urgent topics of our times. You will find contributions by the guests of the symposium and additional articles by scholars and practitioners connected to this topic. Colonial Pasts and its Present: We find the traces of colonialism everywhere, as Walter Mignolo pointed out in his famous publication that modernity’s “darker side” is coloniality. To merge cultural artefacts and backgrounds, to question them, to go along with the actual needs of actual people living in the context of institutions, to follow and archive specific cultural artefacts and everyday cultural objects would be of keen interest for us. Seen from this perspective, the effort to open up the cultural sphere in museum practices without changing other paradigms is part of neoliberal capitalism, which acts in many ways across borders. Therefore, we have to scrutinize in detail precisely in which way this opening/globalization in art institutions is performed and instituted. Ronald Kolb, Dorothee Richter (eds.), De-Colonizing Art Institutions, , www.on-curating.org # 35, Zürich 2017, ISBN-13: 978-1981991747 with contributions by Sabih Ahmed, Marie-Laure Allain Bonilla, Binna Choi, Eyal Danon, Claire Farago, Yolande van der Heide, Nkule Mabaso, Same Mdluli, Shaheen Merali, Ivan Muñiz-Reed, Shwetal Patel, Rohit Jain, Raqs Media Collective, Dorothee Richter, Sophie Vögele and Philippe Saner, Woon Tien Wei, Sophie J Williamson, Claire Wintle, Michelle Wong.