Many museums are now struggling with how to think about their previous interpretations of colonial era collections and collecting practices. This talk by Dr Nadine Engel, Curator of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century collections at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, will focus on her preliminary efforts to decolonize this museum.

Biography: Dr Engel received her PhD in 2014 from the University of Mainz with a thesis titled “Surrealism and Wunderkammer”.  She was a Research Assistant at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungern from 2017 to 2018 and joined the Folkwang Museum in June 2018 as the Curator of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century collections. In this role she is responsible for the museum’s collection of „Archaeology, World Art, Arts & Craft“.  She is the author of „Resonance Chamber. Museum Folkwang and the Beginning of Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza’s German Expressionist Collection“ and has organized exhibitions at the museum including the series „Bauhaus am Folkwang“, the presentation of ceramics by Young-Jae Lee in 2019, as well as two centenary exhibitions planned for 2022, for which she is currently conducting research on the core parts of the collection.