Engaging and Disengaging with Colonial Pasts in City Museums

This paper aims to discuss the preliminary results of the research conducted within the Horizon2020 ECHOES Project by the members of work package 3 on the topic of ‘City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts.’ Beyond presenting preliminary results, the paper also describes the approaches of each of the researchers and analyzes some of the challenges encountered collectively while working on the three case studies at the basis of this work package.
Work package 3 (WP3) focuses on how city museums around the globe represent and engage with the colonial pasts of cities which experienced colonialism or even ‘multiple colonialisms,’ one of the key concepts of the ECHOES project. Do these museum institutions act as cultural brokers able to tackle the problem of representing entangled global histories, identities, and emotions, or conversely do they support more traditional national perspectives? How do city museums in different countries collect, exhibit, study, and engage with urban colonial heritage? Our aim is to answer these questions through qualitative comparative analyses of three city museums, focusing on all aspects such as their histories, development, collections, leading narratives, political-cultural contexts, organizational policies, outreach activities, and the reception of museum products and activities by the public. The three city museums each represent distinct colonial destinies and positions within colonial history.