Wereldmuseum Amsterdam

Today's Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, which before was called the Tropenmuseum, has it's origins in the 19th century. The collection of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam includes objects from several other museums, including the former Artis Ethnographic Museum.

Description

The current Wereldmuseum Amsterdam emerged from the Colonial Museum in Haarlem, founded in 1871. This Colonial Museum, located in the Paviljoen Welgelegen was initially mainly a products museum, where a variety of colonial goods were displayed. This museum served as a resource for colonial entrepreneurs, providing them with knowledge about, among other things, minerals and natural resources. Important donors of objects were government officials, such as Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and the former governor of Suriname, Johand von Schmidt, the Dutch East Indies Government, 's Lands Plantentuin in Bogor and several other trading companies and businesses.

Due to lack of space in Haarlem, it was decided in 1913 to transfer the collection to the recently founded Vereeniging Koloniaal Insituut, which would open its own museum on Mauritskade in Amsterdam in 1926, in the building where Wereldmuseum Amsterdam is still located. The collection of the Artis Ethnographic Museum was also incorporated into the Colonial Institute's museum. In 1926, the collection consisted of around 30,000 objects, 10,000 of which were from the Artis collection. The Colonial Institute was divided into three departments, Tropical Products, Tropical Hygiene and Ethnography, all of which had their own exhibition rooms at their disposal. The Tropical Products Museum was disbanded in the 1960s and several of its objects were transferred at later times to the then Agricultural University of Wageningen (now Wageningen Univeristy & Research) and the Rijksmuseum Natural History in Leiden (nowadays Naturalis Biodiversity Center).

After the Second World War, it was decided to rename the Colonial Institute the Indisch Instituut and its museum into the Indisch Museum, focusing entirely on relations between the Netherlands and its colonies in the East and West. For this reason, it was decided in 1947 to transfer the museum's African collection to the then Rijksmuseum voor Volenkunde in Leiden. When the transfer of sovereignty took place after the Indonesian war of independence in 1949, the Indian Museum was in a quandary. It was decided to broaden its focus to the entire 'tropical realm'. From 1950, the East Indies Institute was called the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and its museum henceforth the Tropenmuseum. Because of this change in perspective, the focus in the second half of the 20th century was on collecting objects from the various tropical corners of the world. Many objects also came to Amsterdam from West New Guinea, which remained a Dutch colony until 1962.

In 2014, the Tropenmuseum, Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden, the Afrika Museum in Berg and later the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam merged to form the National Museum of World Cultures. Since 2023, these museums have continued under the joint name Wereldmuseum.

Provenance research

The collection of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam can be found within the Wereldmuseum collection with the attribute TM', with 'TM-H' standing for the former collection of the Colonial Museum in Haarlem and 'TM-A' for the collection of the Artis Ethnographic Museum. The archives of Wereldmuseum Amsterdam up to 1995 are available at the National Archives in The Hague via the archive 2.20.69 (The archives of the Royal Tropical Institute). This includes the archives of the Koloniaal Museum in Haarlem and the Ethnographic Museum Artis. The archive description from the National Archives contains detailed information on the genesis of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam and how its archive is composed. The archive up to 1950 has been digitised by KIT itself and is available through the Wereldmuseum's collection database. Archives after 1995 are still at the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam itself. For more information on the museum archives up to 1995, see the search help on the Royal Tropical Institute. The City Archives of Amsterdam also contains archive material relating to the current Wereldmuseum Amsterdam within the archives of the Koninklijk Zoölogisch Genootschap Natura Artis Magistra, the archives under inventory numbers 1876 to 1919 are particularly relevant. For more information on the Etnografisch Museum Artis, see the relevant research aid.

Resources

• Jans, Huub, Hans van den Brink, and Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen. Tropen in Amsterdam : 70 Jaar Koninklijk Instituut Voor de Tropen. Amsterdam: Terra, 1981.
  Book from 1981 describing the history of the Royal Tropical Institute up to 1950. The book contains many photos and also provides detailed descriptions of external and internal characteristics of the current Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. It also focuses on how the organisation of KIT was arranged during the first decades of its existence. — https://search.worldcat.org/title/899009074?oclcNum=899009074
• NL-HaNA, KIT Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, 2.20.69
  Archives of the Royal Tropical Institute up to and including 1995 deposited at the Dutch National Archives in The Hague. Archives after 1995 are still physically on file at KIT. The archive description contains detailed information on the history of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam and the structure of the archive. — https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/archief/2.20.69
• 395 Archief van het Koninklijk Zoölogisch Genootschap Natura Artis Magistra
  Archief van het Koninklijk Zoölogisch Genootschap Natura Artis Magistra, de tegenwoordige dierentuin Artis. Met name de archieven onder de inventarisnummers 1876 tot en met 1919 zijn interessant in het kader van de oprichting van het tegenwoordige Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. — https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/details/395/
• Woudsma, J. (Jacobus), en Hansje Galesloot. Een markant gebouw in Amsterdam-Oost: het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, 1990.
  Like Jans' book, this 1990 book focuses mainly on the external characteristics of the current Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. The book contains detailed information on the facades, rooms, materials used for the building and colonial symbolism of the decorations found around the building. — https://search.worldcat.org/title/905775747?oclcNum=905775747
• Duuren, David van. 125 Jaar Verzamelen : Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Museum voor de Tropen, 1990.
  Book from 1990 in honour of the eightieth anniversary of the Association the Royal Tropical Institute. Describes the then 125-year history of the collection of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam from the perspective of that time. The book gives a general overview of the genesis of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam and pays extra attention to several individual objects. — https://search.worldcat.org/title/902015409?oclcNum=902015409
• Jans, Huub. Honderdzestig Meter Mauritskade : Vier Eeuwen Tropenervaring Allegorisch Weerspiegeld in de Huisvesting van Een Wetenschappelijk Instituut. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, 1976.
  Thin booklet from 1976 that mainly focuses on the building of today's Wereldmuseum Amsterdam and the KIT. Attention is paid to the construction of the Wereldmuseum's building, but the booklet also contains descriptions of several facade tiles characteristic of the European view on the colonial project in the 20th century. — https://search.worldcat.org/title/63449631