ART on view Foreign Exchange (or stories you wouldn’t tell a stranger) 94 FIG. 1 (left): A Belgian colonial comparing himself to a native. DR Congo, 1930. Photo: Paul Schebesta. © Anthropos Institute, St. Augustin. FIG. 2 (lower left): Objects collected during the Sepik expedition, at Neckermann House, Danziger Platz, Ostbahnhof, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Gisela Simrock, 1961. © Weltkulturen Image Archive. By Yvette Mutumba Foreign Exchange is the fruit of reflections on the relationships between the origins of Frankfurt’s Weltkulturen Museum’s collection and the trans-oceanic trade that became increasingly important within the framework of colonialism. In its effort to establish contemporary references for the subject, the exhibition offers a subjective reading of the relations between German ethnology, global trade, and the museum’s collection. In the course of the show’s development, three thematic lines took shape that reflect on currents which remain relevant today, that is the circulation, both cultural and monetary, of people, merchandise, and capital. Foreign Exchange also sheds light on the life of an institution. The stories of individual people are equally important here since they are linked to the development of ethnological research and the materials it makes use of. The exhibition examines a variety of themes relating to all this: the disturbing ways in which people were viewed in the name of science, the metamorphosis of the human body into an object, the fascination that existed for the “other,” the passion for collecting, the mis- FIG. 3 (above): Transporting objects collected during the Sepik expedition. Ostbahnhof, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Gisela Simrock, 1961. © Weltkulturen Image Archive.
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