Pathways of Art: How Objects Get to the Museum

An illustrated reader on the highly topical subject of non-European art in the museums of the global North.
 
Non-European artworks in European and American museums have become the subject of controversial debate. How exactly these collections of art from Africa, North and South America, Asia, and Oceania have been amassed in the global North over centuries, and how such works continue to be acquired and traded today, is under close scrutiny, and claims for their restitution to the places and people of their origin are voiced loudly.

Zurich’s Museum Rietberg, one of Europe’s most renowned museums of non-Western art, has undertaken an extensive exhibition project to explore the thoroughly ambivalent history of its own collection. The essays in this illustrated reader published in conjunction with the exhibition investigate the pathways along which objects traveled to the museum. They shed light on how the meaning of these artifacts has shifted in the course of the transfers. And they demonstrate the importance of provenance research for learning comprehensively about and taking a critical approach in the assessment of the complex biographies of artifacts.Pathways of Art offers an important contribution to the current debate about the status and impact of non-European art in the global North. It aims to foster awareness of the colonial and postcolonial contexts of trading and collecting such artworks and to help establish new museum narratives.

Esther Tisa Francini is a historian and head of archives and provenance research at Zurich’s Museum Rietberg.

Sarah Csernay is an art historian works as a research assistant in provenance research at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich.