Emptying the Shelves

‘Emptying the Shelves’ traces how Dutch ethnographic museums, including the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures and its predecessors, have shaped and reshaped their displays over the past century. Drawing on a trove of archival exhibition photographs and contemporary essays, it charts the transition from cabinets brimming with cultural artefacts to austere white cube displays, with most objects now kept in storage facilities. With contributions by Tamarah Kerr de Haan, Clémentine Deliss, and Mirjam Shatanawi, the book examines what it means to engage with these objects today and how their silence is intimately connected to colonial legacies, restitution, and repair.