Van Beurden, Sarah. “Culture, Artifacts and Independent Africa: The Cultural Politics of Museums and Heritage.” In The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History, edited by Toyin Falola and Martin S. Shanguhyia, 1193-1212. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2018.

This chapter traces how, in the context of Western colonial knowledge cultures and regimes of value, certain objects from African material cultures were reinvented as art, and considers the impact of these changes on the development of museum and heritage cultures in postcolonial Africa, in which museums were seen both as subjects of, and tools for, cultural decolonization. African cultural institutions were confronted with the legacies of colonial regimes of value, but also with the physical legacies of colonial cultural infrastructures, in which large collections of what was now considered national heritage were located in the West. The chapter addresses the rising importance of international heritage and conservation regimes supported by organizations such as UNESCO, and their role in the negotiation of restitution claims.

[Source: abstract sourced from Springer].