Valentin Sohn

Collecting?
Looking for Paradise
Raststätte
Editorial

Collecting?
2024

Collecting? questions the role of the museum as a cultural and political institution, engaging critically with practices of collecting, representation, and colonial history.

At its center is the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren near Brussels – a symbol of the close entanglement of science, power, and colonial exploitation. With a collection of over 120,000 ethnographic objects, mostly from present-day Congo, the project raises fundamental questions: Who collects? Who tells the stories? And who truly owns these objects?

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