Encountering cultures: What the objects in the Missiemuseum Steyl tell us about entangled histories and contact between missionaries and local societies
Externer Veranstaltungsort
A cooperative event with the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr-University Bochum, as part of the exhibition “Missionssammlungen ausgepackt” in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne
Speakers: Tim Karis (Bochum), Martin Radermacher (Bochum), Paul Voogt (Steyl), Oscar Ekkelboom (Steyl)
Missionary Collections and the objects they contain can be considered as testimonies of entangled histories. The objects and their presentation are silent witnesses of multi-faceted contact between missionaries and local societies – in positive and negative ways. To make them speak and tell their histories is one goal of an exhibition in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne that presents these collections and their stories (October 2nd, 2025, to February 8th, 2026). The Missiemuseum Steyl is one of the partners of this exhibition and a few of their objects are on display in Cologne. We take this opportunity to present the exhibition’s topic in Steyl. Experts from the Missiemuseum Steyl and Ruhr-University Bochum will introduce the exhibition’s general topic, and then guide visitors to a few selected objects whose biographies illustrate the idea of “missionary museums as contact zones.”
