Dr Njabulo Chipangura (Maynooth University) Whose Stories are told by museums with African collections from colonial contexts?

Abstract:

Manchester Museum (MM) which is a part of the University of Manchester holds approximately 35 000 ethnographic collections mostly dispossessed from local communities and ordered and categorized according to geographical regions of Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia (Chipangura and Seabela 2025). The African collection is the largest with over 15 000 provenanced objects and an estimate of 15 00 unprovenanced objects. These unprovenanced objects do not have any contextual information on where they were collected from apart from labels that only indicate “Africa?”. In this talk – I will look at what it means to relationally curate this African collection with a colonial context in view of collaborating and giving access to diaspora African communities as part of decolonial solidarities in action. An empirical practice of decolonisation informed by notions of relational care and the disobedient museum will be presented drawn from my own practice and positionality having been the curator of this collection between 2022 – 2025. I will draw upon Africa Day Celebration that we hosted at the museum in May 2024 to show how we openly engaged with African diaspora community members using the collections as a point of contact and dialogue. In discussing this example as a decolonial practice - I relate with what Message (2018) defines and characterises as the “disobedient museum,” – one which prioritises engagement with formerly ostracized communities outside dictates of instrumentalised forms of knowledge production informed by scientific studies in disciplines such as anthropology and ethnography. The disobedient museum is a model which Manchester Museum adopted in collaborating with African diaspora communities in a non-disciplinary or undisciplined way during Africa Day celebrations. This disobedient approach as both a concept and a methodology essentially rethink various ways in which museums can engage with contemporary social/political issues in the environment in which it is located.

Bio

Njabulo Chipangura is Assistant Professor of African Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where he specializes in museum anthropology and heritage studies. He joined the National University of Ireland in February 2025, following his role as Curator of Living Cultures at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester (2022–2025). Prior to that, he spent over a decade as Curator of Archaeology at the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, based at Mutare Museum (2009–2020).He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His work critically engages with the coloniality embedded in museums and advocates for collaborative, community-based methodologies. He is widely published in journals such as African Arts, Museum Worlds, Museum Anthropology, Museum International, Curator: The Museum Journal, Social Dynamics, Journal of Southern African Studies, Development Southern Africa, Museum Management & Curatorship, Journal of Community Archaeology and Museums & Social Issues. His first book, Museums as Agents for Social Change (Routledge, 2021), explores collaborative programming at Mutare Museum, and his forthcoming co-authored book Race, Genetics, History: New Practices, New Approaches is set to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. He serves on the editorial boards of Museum International and Museum and Society(Managing Editor), and is a board member of ICOM’s Collections Committee (COMCOL). He is also a curatorial advisory committee member for Museum Lab, Nat Kunde Museum in Germany.

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