Here we collate some of the publications emerging from the CHEco initiative.
Sterling, C. 2025. Reparative Museology and Its Limits. Social Text 43(4), 33-57
Abstract
In recent years the notion of repair has taken center stage in many artistic projects, curatorial programs, and wider museological initiatives. This turn to repair encompasses sometimes conflicting issues and agendas, from object restitution and demands for restorative justice to well‐being programs and remedial approaches to ecological harm. This article maps and critiques the turn to repair in the museum world, examining both the potentials and limitations of this framework for critical museological thinking and practice. Drawing on a series of case studies connecting European and North American museums to other contexts globally, the article highlights how reparative initiatives — while often framed as transformative — are routinely constrained by institutional logics that prioritize reform over meaningful or lasting systemic change. To understand these dynamics, the article moves from material conceptions of repair through psychoanalytic notions of the reparative and on to decolonial mobilizations of repair as a worldmaking project. The article concludes by theorizing reparative abolition as a new horizon for critical transformative praxis within and beyond museums.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-11960446
Sterling, C., Bauduin, T., & Caicedo, M. S. (2024). Critical Heritage Ecologies. AHM Conference 2024: “Heritage, Memory and Material Culture,” 105–108. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789048567638/AHM.2024.017
Abstract:
This short essay outlines some of the main dimensions of ecological thinking and explores the different ways in which heritage scholars might engage with ecological ideas and approaches from a critical perspective. The paper offers an overview of the emergence of ecology and ecologies across the sciences and the humanities, highlighting the need to consider such work alongside and in conjunction with Indigenous ecological approaches. Finally, the paper serves as a position statement for the Critical Heritage Ecologies initiative, which began in 2024 and is situated in the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.
Read and download the full article on the University of Amsterdam Press website.
Bauduin, Tessel M. ‘Little-known but Persistent: Surrealism in the Netherlands’. Simiolus Netherlands quarterly for the history of art 45, 3/ 4 (2023-24): 262-273.
Bauduin, Tessel M. ‘Mystiek Bauhaus’. Tussen Hemel en Oorlog. Kunst en Religie in het Interbellum, ed. Rozanne de Bruijne, 105-113. Utrecht: Museum het Catharijneconvent, 2025.
Bauduin, Tessel M. ‘Surrealisme: Een terugkeer naar onszelf?’ De Witte Raaf 39, 233 (jan-feb 25): 12.
Read this essay here.
Sterling, C. & A. Komarova. 2023. Forgotten Worlds: Cultivating Museums Otherwise. Stedelijk Studies #13. Online: https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/forgotten-worlds-cultivating-museums/
This article explores the long history of museums and the emergence of new ecological museum practices, with a key focus on the work of the Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills.
Critical Heritage Ecologies 