Symposium December 2008

Restructuring the Tropenmuseum

For more than ten years the Tropenmuseum has been working on a radical modernization of its permanent exhibitions. One by one, all departments were renewed. Because the changes were phased in gradually, the museum had the opportunity to react to contemporary (international) museological discussions.

This large-scale restructuring has lead to a re-evaluation of issues concerning the responsibilities of a museum: connecting the past to the present, the relationship between education and recreation and the role of ethnographic museums within today’s multicultural societies.

An important aspect of the renewal has been to recontextualize the Tropenmuseum’s historical -and mainly colonial- collections. To achieve this, the museum has built up strong ties with the countries the collections originated from and started a debate on its colonial legacy. The museum is deliberating the status of autonomous art in an ethnographic museum and intangible heritage is becoming one of its central themes.

The Tropenmuseum is a museum where stories are told from various cultures from all over the world. In permanent and temporary exhibitions, the objects function as storytellers, enlivened by using state of the art multimedia applications. The Tropenmuseum’s high quality digitalization of the different collections has become an example for many heritage institutions world-wide.

The Tropenmuseum conveys the Royal Tropical Institute’s focus on international and intercultural cooperation and aims to increase the understanding and knowledge of cultures by way of its projects in the Netherlands. The Tropenmuseum is also an active participant in collaborations with partners world-wide from the heritage sector.

More information on the Tropenmuseum's permanent exhibitions