The National Museum of World Cultures, comprised of the Tropenmuseum, the Afrika Museum and Museum Volkenkunde has one of the largest and most important collections of art and material culture from Indonesia. Despite this long history, few objects in the collection have been classified as ‘Islamic’ and there is no terminology to denote ‘Indonesian-Islamic’ stylistic influences. The situation in other museums with Indonesian collections – be it in Europe or Indonesia itself – is not much different.
The exclusion of Indonesia from the field of Islamic art can be traced back to the late 19th century when Western art historians and museums started to study the artefacts they collected from Muslim regions, and Islamic art as a field of enquiry emerged. Framing Indonesian Art: Colonial Discourse and the Question of Islam will focus on a group of objects from Indonesia, that were collected during the colonial period, as a case study to understand the historical conditions leading to the Western disregard of Indonesian Islamic art and to investigate alternative approaches to the concept of ‘Islamic art’ in an Indonesian context.