In this series of two webinars, we inquire into the University of Michigan’s archives, museums, visual and living collections to ask how they are implicated in the violent histories of settler colonialism in the United States and US colonialist rule over the Philippines. How can we carry these difficult archives and collections into the future? How do they intersect and in what ways do they differ? What are our responsibilities as researchers, curators, and archivists in relation to the collections, their histories, and their indigenous and national communities of origin?

February 19, 12:00 – 1:30 pm      (Click here to register via Zoom)

Colonial Archives and Decolonial Museology: The National Museum of the Philippines and Philippine Collections at the University of Michigan

Moderator: Kerstin Barndt, Director, Museum Studies Program

Panelists:

• Deirdre de la Cruz, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, Associate Professor of History
• Ana Labrador, Deputy Director-General, National Museum of the Philippines
• Ricky Punzalan, Associate Professor of Information, School of Information

This second panel in the series engages with UM’s Philippine Collections, which include everything from papers of US colonial officers in the Philippines to thousands of photographs, from funerary objects in the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology to type specimens in the Museum of Zoology and plants in the Herbarium. Deirdre de la Cruz offers a set of reflections and critiques on ‘epistemic’ decolonization and considers the pedagogies of imperial archives. Based on his work with Philippine archives and with digital curation projects in the US, Ricky Punzalan envisions welcoming museum and archival spaces and UM programs for Philippine scholars and visitors with the goal of sharing collection work and imagining international collaborations. Ana Labrador reflects on her perspective as Deputy Director of the National Museum in Manila and discusses decolonializing museum practice in the Philippines. 

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