Public Symposium: After Valkenburg

What does it mean to inherit the wealth amassed by making people into property? Dutch identity and self-conception have, for centuries, been founded on unacknowledged colonial exploitation and slavery. Visual culture played a key role in engraining the values underlaying the colonial project. In the present moment, following a period of apologies, Dutch civil society more readily acknowledges the cruelty and extractiveness that mark the colonial past. Similarly, in what Ciraj Rassool calls the “restitutionary moment”, those institutions that are charged with “caring” for colonial art and material culture are more actively engaged in the questions of return and repair. But what does this inheritance, and the role it played in shaping visual culture through the centuries, demand from these institutions beyond “mere” acknowledgement? How do the disciplines that were complicit in rendering colonial oppression as natural—even desirable—for the opulent fruits it yielded, need to shift their foundational ideas? Which strategies are being mobilised to make visible erased worlds, to reframe what life looked like under colonialism and slavery and hold the present to account for its unjust roots? 

Willem de Rooij’s installation Valkenburg (on display until 25 January) at Centraal Museum Utrecht dissects how eighteenth Century painting promoted colonial values. It is the culmination of many years of work on the Dutch artist Dirk Valkenburg, and focuses on the entanglements of seventeenth century Dutch art with colonialism and slavery. On January 19, as part of the series of events around the exhibition, the RCMC (the research institution of the Wereldmuseum) in collaboration with De Rooij, Karwan Fatah-Black and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, is organising a symposium in which artists, scholars and workers in memory institutions will pursue conversations on the how artistic practice, museum operations and art history knowledge work are responding to these challenges, and what remains to be grappled with. We want to start by looking closely at the paintings of Dirk Valkenburg, what they make visible and what they obscure, as well as the implications of this period of Dutch art for the discipline of Art History and museum collections in the face of demands for restitution, decolonization and repair.

Schedule of event on 19 January at Wereldmuseum Leiden

Please note that the programme will be in English

We are committed to making this event accessible to everyone. If you require specific accommodations to participate fully, please reach out to us at rcmc@wereldmuseum.nl

Provisions for people with reduced mobility

• Stairs with handrail
• Accessible lift
• Barrier-free building and passageways that are sufficiently wide
• Wheelchair-friendly restroom

Quiet rooms

There are two quiet spaces which can be used by conference attendees to take a break at any point. Directly opposite the conference room on the first floor, the Buddha Room offers a tranquil space. On the ground floor, at the end of the museum café, the Museum Lounge can be used to take a break. We cannot guarantee complete silence due to other visitors in the museum.