Pode uma "máscara africana em madeira" continuar a figurar como tal numa coleção e/ou exposição museológica hoje?

Abstract

Regarding the extra-European collections held by Portuguese museums for a long time, the article seeks to broaden the debate beyond the topic of their possible restitution to communities of origin. In Portugal, offi - cial guidelines on how to act in relation to colonial collections are late and many museums seem to see immobility as the perfect strategy to escape to the approach of a controversial topic. Using the latest developments at international level as support and, in particular, providing a detailed knowledge of Macron Report and recommendations of Deutscher Museumbund (German Association of Museums), this article seeks to provide material for refl ection that will serve a conscientious and wide-ranging debate about colonial collections. Admitting that colonialism has penetrated all modern institutions, including the museum, and that many of the objects located in Western museums are historically and culturally 'sensitive' makes evident the moral and ethical obligation that each museum must face, among other things, as way of contributing to the deconstruction of a colonial ideology that is perpetuated far beyond the formal end of colonialism. The article seeks to demonstrate how research is the cornerstone of the process that will allow us to rethink colonial collections and document them in a less incomplete and dated way. In addition to other dynamics through which they can be approached, colonial collections need that their treatment and display be complexifi ed, and this implies extensive and deep processes of reanalysis and reassessment.