Co-initiators Richard Kofi and Femi Dawkins explain their plans and talk about the spiritual repairs and community ownership that are central to their plans. They invite you to think about how art and heritage can break systems, and how we can repair past damage. What value does the museum concept still have today? And how do you create a museum about the future?

Richard Kofi creates the podcast Project Wiaspora together with Simone Zeefuik. Together they organized a panel discussion about a fictional museum that they would establish after receiving reparations to compensate for colonial exploitation, human trafficking, and slavery: The Museum of Black Futures. This was the start of an ongoing conversation about institutional innovation. To break with the colonial history of collecting, appropriating, and exhibiting, new ideas must be developed.

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_{Photo: Quinty Ophelia}

This development has allowed Kofi and Dawkins to move from imagination and fantasy to a more concrete exploration of innovative forms of ownership and capital. Join this sparring session in which we explore new terms.

The Arnhem artist and curator Richard Kofi (1988) investigates unfinished histories and gives them speculative futures. Kofi mainly makes drawings, collages, and video work, in which the present, past, and future merge. His drawings were published in De Groene Amsterdammer, OneWorld, and Het Parool, among others. In addition, he was the City Drawing Artist of Amsterdam in 2021.

Co-creation plays an important role in Kofi’s artistic practice. For example, together with choreographer Junadry Leocaria, he developed the interdisciplinary art project La Sirene at the Erasmus House in Jakarta. Kofi currently also works as a theater programmer at the International Theater Amsterdam. This autumn he will be on stage with the performance Mi Pret’i Wowo. Together with Simone Zeefuik, he presents the podcast Project Wiaspora about imagination, joy, spirituality, heritage, futurism, film, theater, art, and everyday life.

Interdisciplinary artist Femi Dawkins, born in Nassau and raised in Jamaica, has been active in Amsterdam since 1991. Femi was recruited at a young age to LaGuardia High School of Music & Art as well as Skidmore College. He recently obtained his MFA from Goldsmiths University and won the Gieskes-Strijbis Podium Prize in 2022. As a child of diaspora and migration, Dawkins travels between worlds.

With his art, he explores language, story, and narrative, and uproots the inherited dominant ideas that instruct and perpetuate identity formation. His stories and illustrations have been published in the South African magazine Chimurenga and the New York Times, among others. He is currently exhibiting his work at the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery as part of the group exhibition Black Joy. This exhibition was put together by the art and social justice organization Playing the Race Card.

The working language during this online session is English. It is possible to ask questions in Dutch.

This meeting is interesting for anyone who wants to (learn to) think differently about institutionalizing (colonial) heritage. This includes (directors and policymakers of) heritage institutions and cultural institutions such as museums, as well as provincial and metropolitan institutions that manage collections.

To register for LKCA meetings you need an LKCA account. This allows you to register or unregister for meetings easily and quickly. Are you new to LKCA? Then enter your email address once.
Would you like to register but prefer not to create an account? Please contact us via Lisa Boogaard (lisaboogaard@lkca.nl).

We will start this meeting at 3:00 PM Dutch time. In the Caribbean part of the Kingdom, it will be 9:00 AM when we start. Please let us know by email if you have any questions about this.

Afterwards, we share a report of this meeting. We share this report in both Dutch and English.