Each Case Is Different

Provenance research is so much more than a search for origin: It offers new perspectives on objects, collections, their histories, and the multifaceted relationships embedded within them. The Museum der Kulturen Basel is systematically examining its collection for coloniality and highlighting the central importance of collaborating with communities in the Global South. This work also reveals how complex and demanding ethnological provenance research is. This volume "raises groundbreaking questions that will shape ethnological provenance research in the decades to come" (George Meiu).
The Museum der Kulturen Basel is one of the five state museums of the Canton of Basel-Stadt and, with a collection of over 340,000 objects from all regions of the world, it is Switzerland's largest ethnological museum. Managing this collection –acquiring, preserving, securing, exhibiting, and mediating the collection – is the core mission around which the museum's activities are centered. In recent years, provenance research and collaboration with so-called "source communities" have played a prominent role.