We are delighted to announce that our special issue (ed. Birgit Meyer & Peter Pels) “Unpacking Missionary Collections” appeared in the latest issue of Material Religion – Vol 21 (3) 2025-, with articles by Amélie Roussillon, Benjamina Efua Dadzie, Ana Rita Amaral and Marleen de Witte (all open access, see below). It also includes an In Conversation section addressing the question of “spirits in the museum”, with essays by Edith Franke & Susanne Rodemeier, Claudia Augustat and Kodzo Gavua.
This is the outcome of longstanding research conducted on Catholic and Protestant missionary collections in the context of the Pressing Matter research program (https://pressingmatter.nl) and of our Religious Matters research program. The key concern of the special issue, as pointed out by the editors in their abstract, is as follows:
Christian missionary collections have contributed much to the development of the exhibitionary complex, but have received significantly less notice than imperial states using violence to acquire collections, and subsequent demands for restitution. This introductory essay argues that researching missionary collecting and exhibiting requires a broad approach to the materiality of collections, to recognize the multilayered biographies of artifacts, the coeval relations between missionaries and (future) converts in the mission field, as well as how archives and collections form part of technologies of empire. This “unpacking” leads to a recognition, firstly, of the salient position of religion in those processes of collecting and exhibiting; secondly, the realization that converting people was accompanied by multitemporal and multidirectional processes of converting goods; and thirdly, that despite public assertions of Christian iconoclasm, these conversions always also included turning artifacts into desecrated, secular, or even commercial goods. We conclude by arguing that these processes, including their potential reversal, need to be taken into account when considering the future of these collections.
It contains the following articles (all open access):
Unpacking Missionary Collections (Birgit Meyer & Peter Pels)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505307
Exhibiting the Mission: Display Lives of the Utrecht Missionary Society Collection (Amélie Roussillon)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505311
Collecting Abeokuta: Training the Provenance of Egba Material Culture from the Church Missionary Society Yoruba Mission (Benjamina Efua Dadzie)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505313
Faith, “Fetish,” and the Making of Kongo Christianity: Missionary Collecting and the Shifting Meanings of Kongo Crucifixes in Late Colonial Northern Angola (Ana Rita Amaral)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505316
Converted Gods: Lives and Travels of Asante Abosom and Asuman Figures (Marleen de Witte)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505321
In Conversation (alas not oa)
Spirits in the Museum (Birgit Meyer & Peter Pels)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505325
Revealing Missionary Entanglements with Religious Objects: Examples from the Museum of Religions, University of Marburg (Erika Franke & Susanne Rodemeier)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505327
There is Always Someone in the Storage (Claudia Augustat)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505331
The Fate of African Collections in European Museums (Kodzo Gavua)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17432200.2025.2505335
