Eastward Bound!
Art, Culture and Colonialism
Eastward Bound! Art, Culture and Colonialism is the title of the presentation at Amsterdam’s Tropenmuseum focusing on the rich history and culture of Southeast Asia and Oceania. Featuring some of the premiere objects from the museum collection, this wide-ranging exhibition offers a new perspective on Dutch colonial history. Eastward Bound! contributes to today’s debate on national and cultural identity and the relevance of colonial history to today’s society. Eastward Bound! is divided into four interlinked presentations and occupies the first floor that surrounds the famous Light Hall, which has been refurbished for the exhibition.
The exhibition features a thematic presentation on Dutch colonialism in the East and three displays with major exhibits from the ancient cultures of Southeast Asia and New Guinea as well as from Indonesia’s textile tradition. Leitmotif is the interplay between cultures. Essential elements of the colonialisation process are also examined: communication, exploitation and exploration. The emphasis is on the first half of the twentieth century. That was when the collection with which the narrative is told was formed. Moreover, it is a period and a legacy that is still actively remembered in the Netherlands and Indonesia.
Leading Tropenmuseum exhibits
Among the premiere objects displayed in Eastward Bound! are sculptures from Borobudur, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century gold jewellery, ritual objects from the Papuan skull cult and a major historical collection of batik. Especially noteworthy is the legendary Knaud Kris. For fifty years it was thought lost, until it was recently rediscovered.
A notable feature is the Colonial Theatre, an interactive presentation of lifelike mannequins representing characteristic figures from colonial history. Governor-General De Jonge, tobacco planter Jacob Cremer, painter and adventurer Charles Sayers, Anna Elink-van Maarseveen - missionary on Southeast Celebes, KNIL officer ‘Himpies’ Kleyntjes and native civil servant Toean Anwar (from a novel by H.J. Friedericy) describe how they lived and the things they did.
The Colonial Theatre is inspired by the Symbolic Throne exhibition that was presented in the Light Hall in 1938 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the accession of Queen Wilhelmina. Wax mannequins were arranged around an empty royal throne to represent the peoples of the East Indies archipelago. Then we looked at ‘them’; today we look at ‘us’ as well. Three of the original wax figures are included the new exhibition.
Innovative approach
The Tropenmuseum has taken a new, post-colonial perspective in Eastward Bound! The displays tell their own story. Who collected them, and why? What does that tell us about our relationship with the East Indies then and Indonesia now? Ideas about culture and cultural differences are also dealt with. Out East, the Dutch became aware of their own national identity. Yet there were also people who felt at home in different cultures and learned to adapt to life between two cultures. Today this is more relevant than ever.
For many among today’s Dutch population, their own personal history is linked in various, often contradictory ways to the former East Indies and modern Indonesia. People with different backgrounds were actively involved in developing Eastward Bound! including (former) colonists, (former) colonised and subsequent generations of new population groups and milieus that emerged in the colonial period.
In Eastward Bound! the Tropenmuseum has returned to its roots and those of the Royal Tropical Institute (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen or KIT), of which it is part. The museum was originally founded in 1864 as the Colonial Museum and merged in 1910 with the new Colonial Institute, forerunner of today’s KIT. Here the museum touches on a key theme in history, placing it in the contemporary context of globalisation and an increasingly intense debate about national identity. The Tropenmuseum is the first ethnographic museum in Europe to re-examine and exhibit its own colonial roots in this way.
Title and logo
Eastward Bound! is a title taken from a novel by Louis Couperus (1923). The form and content of his works are typical of Dutch colonial culture of the early twentieth century.
The Eastward Bound! logo is the sickness mask with its devilish grimace featured in Javanese theatre. Originally designed to confute disease-bringing spirits, the character later evolved into a clown: a joker who says things no one else dares. Both book and mask are displayed in a presentation exploring the connection between Dutch and Indonesian art and ethnography as a source of inspiration.
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