‘Facing colonial legacy in the Museum’ is an intervention in the present museography of the Ethnography Room at the Santos Rocha Municipal Museum, in Figueira da Foz, Portugal, which reflects part of the results of research project ‘TRANSMAT – Transnational materialities (1850-1930): restoring collections and connecting stories’. The inauguration takes place on March 12^th, 2025, at 6 pm, the first day of the TRANSMAT | IN2PAST 2025 International Conference: ‘Decolonising Museums and Colonial Collections: Towards a Transdisciplinary Agenda and Methods’.

The Ethnography Room at the Santos Rocha Municipal Museum (SRMM) displays part of the collection of 250 artefacts brought from Timor and Angola by a military man, benefiting from the contexts of colonialism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the intervention, which will be on display until October 31st, the glass of the display cases that contain the artefacts, and now tell part of their stories, is used as an opening front for public dialogue on the colonial legacy in museums in Portugal.

Designed by architect Miguel Figueira, the installation is ‘purposely “unfinished” or in progress’, explains Elisabete Pereira (IHC – University of Évora / IN2PAST), TRANSMAT’s principal investigator: participants and the museum’s public will be asked to write their comments about the objects, the exhibition, the contents of the research project and the contents of the 2014 museography on the glass.

Transdisciplinary methodologies in action

Until the end of October there will be educational activities, talks and sessions inviting the participation of all audiences in the construction of new approaches to the SRMM ‘s collections.

The intervention proposes a reflection on the history of the SRMM’s ethnography collection, its complex construction process, the people involved and their contexts, the identification of the various levels of cultural and scientific practices, the understanding of the objects through their itineraries and the multiple meanings they have received over time in the spaces where they have circulated. More than just an exhibition of objects, it presents their history and the questions raised by the process of knowledge production.

Project TRANSMAT, a partnership between IN2PAST Associate Laboratory, the Institute of Contemporary History and the University of Évora, with the National Archaeological Museum and the SRMM, aims to document the transnational collections of archaeological museums founded at the end of the 19th century, where ethnographic collections were interpreted according to Western scientific practice, which used an evolutionary and racialised narrative.