oa Access and transparency. A reflection on digital colonial collections

As the field of so-called ‘world museums’ is subjected to the “reparative turn” various projects emerge with the goal to increase the transparency and accessibility of colonial collections. In the wake of the Sarr-Savoy report, making these collections available through digital infrastructures has become a way to comply with this desire. Various examples of such platforms are realized across Europe, including Digital Benin, initiated in Germany, and the Colonial Collections Data Hub, created by a consortium of cultural institutions in the Netherlands. Although these projects have different approaches – Digital Benin focuses on the Benin Bronzes while the Dutch data hub aims to comprise all the colonial collections within the Netherlands – they have the mutual aim to provide more transparency and accessibility. This development raises various practical, theoretical, and conceptual questions about the digital availability of colonial museum collections. The current fragmentary and nation-oriented approach of the available databases, and their ambiguous interpretation of what a colonial collection comprises, can complicate the search of communities of origin for their lost heritage. This contribution offers a reflection on this current development within the field of world museums and examines how the Dutch Colonial Collections Data Hub tries to capitalize on the caveats of making colonial collections digitally available.