ABSTRACT
Oft ignored in anthropology is the importance of the ethnographic museum. Most recently, in a project Imagine-IC and the Research Center for Material Culture at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam ‘curated,’ we were confronted with the question of who had the appropriate expertise to determine which objects should be part of the project. Associated with the celebration of 60 years of Ghanaian independence, we asked members of the ‘community’ to look at the Ghanaian objects in the collection. One of the persons we consulted with chose a Fanti-canoe, which was stored in a depot. The question then became whose expertise to honour? That of the museum experts or that of the experts we had invited to advise us? Drawing on philosopher Lewis R. Gordon (2018), this paper then asks the question: Who decides what is ‘valuable’ and what is not, and how does such a decision affect our futures?
