What does it mean to bring the term ‘design’ into the Wereldmuseum? What does design history look like from the category of the ‘ethnographic’? Grappling with these questions, this research project sought concepts and frameworks that could connect design discourse to the colonial project, through and along objects from the Wereldmuseum’s collection. Departing from conversations with curators of the Wereldmuseum, the project aimed to develop an approach that would be helpful in shifting an understanding of the museum’s collection, whilst also establishing a framework that could contribute to designers and design students’ understanding of design and material culture. The project resulted in a series of conversations and texts written with and by the curators of the Wereldmuseum and historians outside of the museum. In this text, Rosa te Velde, designer, researcher and educator, reflects on the project.
Rosa te Velde is a designer, researcher, and educator. She works as a researcher at the Amsterdam University of the Arts and teaches in the MA Industrial Design program at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Her practice explores the intersections of design, politics, and decoloniality through critical and cross-disciplinary approaches.