The Non-Aligned Movement and Decolonization of the Museum Field: Yugoslav Anticolonial Museums (1961–1989)

• Applicant: Dr. Natasa Jagdhuhn
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 533698684

The recent awakening of academic interest in the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has coincided with a revival in public and scholarly discussions on the decolonization of the museum sphere. This project, which connects both academic areas, will show how NAM’s cultural diplomacy raised the profile of calls for the decolonization of museum theory and practice during the Cold War. The research focus is on Yugoslavia's advocacy of decolonization in the field of museum education. This project will analyse such advocacy in the speeches of its dignitaries at the NAM summits, the engagement of its museologists in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), as well as curatorial strategies related to the establishment of two museums: the Museum of African Art (MAA) in Belgrade and the Gallery for the Art of the Non-Aligned States in Titograd (Gallery). The following research questions form this project’s structure: 1) How have the NAM’s continued appeals for the decolonization of cultural heritage resonated across museological circles internationally (UNESCO and ICOM)? 2) On what curatorial principles were the anticolonial methodologies of collecting and communicating art from Africa (MAA - Case Study I) and exhibiting and communicating art from the NAM member states (Gallery - Case Study II) based? The first research part relies on a discursive analysis of archival material from the NAM summits as well as an intertextual analysis of selected literature regarding the influence of the NAM’s cultural politics on the development of an anticolonial museological discourse and the founding of the first "anticolonial museums" in Yugoslavia. It analyses the historical, political and museological entanglements in the institutionalization of NAM’s cultural politics and the "internationalization" of UNESCO and ICOM (that is, their increasing activities in "non-aligned" countries). This approach will be used to describe the unusual intellectual transfer of ideas from the Global South to the Global North. The second research part employs a combination of qualitative research methods (semi-structured interviews, critical discourse analysis, and exhibition analysis). It uses the interpretative framework of cultural transfer theory to focus on curatorial tactics in the translocation, meaning-making, and resignification of art objects from the individual NAM states, all of which resulted from the founding of the two case-study museums. The main objective in this part of the project is to identify the methodological challenges in translating NAM’s decolonial demands into museum practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants