The research project Cabinet of Colonies examines how Pacific art objects, labelled as ‘curiosities’, circulated through Surrealist collections and into modern museums in the Global North. It traces the biographies of specific artworks from their original procurement through Surrealist ownership to their current institutional homes. Cabinet of Colonies highlights that while Surrealists were vocally anti-colonialist, their collection practices often perpetuated colonial power structures and appropriation. This modernist paradox still persists in institutional collections today. The project focuses on objects from Oceania and the American Northwest Coast that were integrated into Surrealist “cabinets of curiosities,” exploring how these works were culturally reinscribed. Using methodologies from museum studies, art history, and visual anthropology, the project aims to provide thoroughly researched object stories that facilitate decolonial repair. It addresses knowledge gaps in understanding how modern artist-collectors and their networks participated in systems of cultural dispossession.
Image: Mask (Buk, Krar, or Kara), photograph by Steven Zucker via OpenVerse. Mid to late 19th century, Mabuiag Island, Torres Strait, turtle shell, wood, cassowary feathers, fiber, resin, shell, paint, 54.6 x 63.5 x 57.8 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Critical Heritage Ecologies 