Collaborative photoarchive project between Greenland & The Netherlands in preparation

The National Museum of Ethnology (Leiden), the National Museum of Greenland (Nuuk), the Tasiilaq Museum (Tasiilaq), and the Museon (Den Haag) will start a joint project in which photocollections from Dutch scientists and anthropologist will be made available to the people of Greenland. In return the Dutch institutes will be able to gain additional knowledge and insights into their collections and what they contain. It will be the first project in The Netherlands in which a museum’s photocollection will be so radically reviewed and being ‘repatriated’ to it’s original site of production (Large collections on the former Dutch East-Indies, now Indonesia, still await disclosure and research based on sharing heritage principles).

The aim of the Greenland project is to share information on collections of material culture and especially photographs from Greenland housed in the Netherlands. The first steps were taken in 2003 with the exhibition of Dutch photographs by Jacob van Zuylen taken in 1932-34 in East Greenland, it was held in the Grønlændernes Hus in Copenhagen (2003), the National Museum in Nuuk (2005) and at the Ammassalik Museum (2005), the region were the photographs were taken. 

In 2008 – with funding by the Dutch Embassy in Copenhagen – the exhibition traveled to the Narsaq Museum in South Greenland, and after that to the small settlements of the district.

On October 12, 2007, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition ‘When the ice melts’, the directors of Nuuk and Leiden signed a Memorandum of Understanding and shared the intension to start a joint partnership based on sharing knowledge on Greenland collections in mutual cooperation based on equality and respect.

Selections of photographs, translations of original captions into Greenlandic (Kallaalit), and additional information will be published thru the means of a website, cd-roms, booklets, and traveling exhibitions.

A joint scientific report of the project is scheduled to be completed in 2013.