Zwarte pijn, witte schaamte. Drie musea en hun omgange met slavernij

Samenvatting

 Societal changes have recently made slavery a hot topic in both public debates and museum displays. This article compares three exhibitions centred around colonialism: ‘Good Hope, South-Africa and the Netherlands since 1600’ by the Rijksmuseum, ‘Afterlives of
Slavery’ in the Tropenmuseum and the permanent exhibition of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. The museums are completely different: The Rijksmuseum is seen as an elite ‘national’ museum, the Tropenmuseum is an ethnological museum with origins in colonial relations, and the International Slavery Museum holds an activist’s perspective. These identities, as well as the way the museums position themselves in museological developments, are reflected in the display choices. Bearing that in mind, this article considers how these three museums deal with the sensitive topic. The article then shows which lessons can be drawn from the different perspectives of these museums for the Slavery Museum in Amsterdam, which is still in a conceptual stage.