Six museums across Catalonia hold 3,397 objects of colonial origin, according to a new research project called (Tr)african(t)s. The study, set out in the book Espectres de la vitrina (Manifest), asks museums to review how these collections were formed and how they are presented today.
The research highlights one case from Barcelona’s Ethnological Museum, where sculptor Eudald Serra made a nude bust during a 1954 expedition to the Moroccan protectorate. The study says he used women from prisons, reformatories and public houses as models, with help from Spanish colonial authorities. It also says August Panyella, then director of the museum, praised Serra’s work and noted that he sought models without mixed heritage.
The objects identified in the study include photographs, hunting traps, musical instruments, funerary items, tools, masks and sculptures. They mainly come from former Spanish Guinea, Morocco, the Philippines and the Sahara. The research team says the key issue is not only what is in the museums, but the unequal colonial context in which many of the pieces were obtained.
Some of the examples are tied to specific institutions in Catalonia. The Víctor Balaguer Museum in Vilanova i la Geltrú holds Filipino weapons taken by Spanish forces during combat. The Ethnological Museum bought an Ngombi harp, used in the Bwiti religion, from a colonial administrator in Spanish Guinea. Researchers believe it was likely confiscated from believers, who were often imprisoned by Spanish authorities.
Other pieces also raise questions about how they entered public collections. The study says some Fang bracelets arrived through Claretian missionaries, and that they were sometimes removed in public acts presented as liberation, even when women were forced to take part. It also points to a carving attributed to the workshop of Fang master Ndutumu Singó, which passed through Miguel Núñez de Prado, governor of Spanish Guinea from 1925 to 1931, before the Generalitat bought it in 1936 from his widow.
The project argues for what it calls decolonising the gaze, including more involvement from communities of origin and a review of weak or incomplete documentation. Andrés Antebi, part of the project, says there is a more favourable climate for critical review in Catalonia than in Madrid, where public resistance is stronger. Some museums have already started review processes, and the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia has said it wants to collaborate.