Project is launched to study the Sámi collection at the Museum of European Cultures Berlin
From December 2022, the Museum of European Cultures (MEK) Berlin will begin investigating and processing the Sámi collection together with Sámi researchers, artists and other community representatives as part of a provenance research project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation.
The museum houses one of the most important Sámi collections outside Northern Europe. Most of the holdings were collected at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The indigenous Sámi communities consider this period as the peak of an inner-European colonialism in which they were oppressed by majority societies in the northern regions of Norway, Finland and Sweden as well as on the Kola Peninsula in Russia.
By recording object and actor data and establishing an international network, the project aims to set an example for further provenance research in German, European and worldwide collections with Sámi holdings.
