In the past, in Europe as much as in Africa, many museums and their exhibitions were catering to white European publics. In the globalized and postmigrant societies of today the colonial collections, with their painful histories and controversial present, draw together actors and groups that are affected in different ways by their sheer presence in the museums, the histories they embody, and the controversies that unfold around them.

The shift from “serving” to “creating publics” is a radical one and has to take place across national, cultural and social boundaries. It demands to go beyond hegemonic notions of inclusion and asks to transform the museum into a space of new epistemic and ontological happenings.