National Museum of Ethnology (Netherlands)

Wereldmuseum Leiden

Werldmuseum Leiden
Former name	The National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Museum Volkenkunde
Established	1837
Location	Leiden, Netherlands
Coordinates	52°09′47″N 4°28′57″E / 52.163056°N 4.4825°E / 52.163056; 4.4825
Visitors	76,315 (2008)
Director	Wayne Modest & Marieke van Bommel
Website	https://leiden.wereldmuseum.nl/

Wereldmuseum Leiden (formerly known as Museum Volkenkunde), is a Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands located in the university city of Leiden. As of 2014, the museum, along with Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, in Amsterdam, and Wereldmuseum Rotterdam, together make up the National Museum of World Cultures.

First ethnographic museum in Europe

The institution was at first called the "Museum Japonicum". It was the first museum in Europe which was designed to demonstrate that collecting the artefacts of humans could mean more than the mere accumulation of curiosities. From the very outset, the institution incorporated at least four basic principles: collecting, scientific research, presentation to the public, and educational guidance.^[1]

In 1816 the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden was formed in the Hague as an attempt to start a museum of scientific artifacts from around the world, based on royal collections and a large group of Chinese artifacts from private collections. Thanks to the early efforts of this organization, in the early 1830s, when

In 1843, Siebold also encouraged other Europeans to create ethnographic institutions similar to what was developing in Leiden. He urged "the importance of their creation in European states possessing colonies because these institutions could become a means for understanding the subject peoples and of awakening the interest of the public and of merchants -- all of which are necessary conditions for a lucrative trade which benefits all."[5]

Museum holdings

The collection today contains a large number of objects from Africa, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Latin America, North America, Oceania, and Asia. In developing the collection, the museum has devoted significant attention to acquiring material which illustrates the historical development of world cultures; but the genesis of the museum's holdings began with material garnered during the years Japan was officially closed except for one small island in Nagasaki harbor -- Dejima.

Blomhoff collection

As

Johannes Gerhard Frederik van Overmeer Fischer began as a clerk at Dejima and he was later promoted to warehouse master (pakhuismeester). During the span of his stay in Japan, Fisher's access to Japanese culture was limited; but within his universe of contacts, he was able to amass a considerable collection of "ordinary" objects which were plausibly overlooked by others. This material was brought back to the Netherlands in 1829. In 1833, he published Bijdrage tot de kennis van het Japansche rijk (Contribution to the knowledge of the Japanese Empire).[7]

Siebold collection

As a physician practicing Western medicine in Nagasaki (1823-1829), Philipp Franz von Siebold received payment in kind with a variety of objects and artifacts which would later gain unanticipated scholarly attention in Europe. These everyday objects later became the basis of his large ethnographic collection, which consisted of everyday household goods, woodblock prints, tools and hand-crafted objects used by the Japanese people in the late Edo period. Further information relating to this material was published in Siebold's Nippon. His professional interest was especially drawn to implements used in the practice of traditional Japanese medicine.^[8] As of 2005, a separate museum located in one of Siebold's former houses, the SieboldHuis, houses part of the collection.

"Decolonizing" the collections

In 2023, the Leiden "World Museum" was in the process of getting rid of some of its most impressive and best known Indonesian art works.

Gallery

• 
  Stone Ganesha, sitting on a ring of skulls; removed from the collections
• 
  Buddha statues from Japan

  , acquired by the museum in 1883 at the International Colonial Trade Exposition in Amsterdam
• 
  Yakushi Nyorai (the Healing Buddha) – This Buddha (and two other center pieces) originate from a mausoleum for the Togukawa shoguns at the Zōjōji temple in Edo.
• 
  "Mountain of the Immortals", from China
• 
  Pueblo Kachina dolls, southwestern United States
• 
  Nkisi nkondi, (Mangaaka), Central Africa, 1880–1900 CE
• 
  Nkisi nkondi
• 
  Batak Toba people

  of Indonesia
• 
  Men with a live lion in Iran. Photograph by Antoin Sevruguin (1830s–1933)

See also

• Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
• Wereldmuseum Amsterdam
• Wereldmuseum Rotterdam
• Edo-Tokyo Museum
• National Museum of Ethnology, Japan
• The Virtual Collection of Masterpieces

References

• Alpen, Jan van and Anthony Aris. (1995) Oriental Medicine: An Illustrated Guide to the Asian Arts of Healing. Chicago: Serinda Publications.
  ISBN 0-906026-36-9
• Bolitho, Harold. (2003) "Book Review: Titia: The First Western Woman in Japan by Rene P. Bersma," Pacific Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 4. pp. 662-663. University of British Columbia.
• Carbonell, Bettina Messias. (2004). Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts. New York:
  ISBN 978-0-631-22830-1
• (in Dutch) Frederiks, Johannes Godefridus and F. Jos. van den Branden. (1888). "Johannes Gerhard Frederik van Overmeer Fischer," Biographisch woordenboek der Noord- en Zuidnederlandsche letterkunde. Amsterdam: L.J. Veen.
• Otterspeer, W. (1989). Leiden Oriental Connections, 1850-1940, Vol. V: Studies in the History of Leiden University. Leiden:
  ISBN 978-90-04-09022-4
  (paper)
• (in French) Siebold, Philipp Franz von. (1843). Lettre sur l'utilité des Musées Ethnographiques et sur l'importance de leur création dans états européens qui posèdents des Colonies. Paris: Librarie de l'Institut.
• Rudolf Effert: Royal cabinets and auxiliary branches : origins of the National Museum of Ethnology, 1816-1883. Leiden, 2008.
  ISBN 978-90-5789-159-5
• National Natuurhistorisch Museum and the National Herbarium of the Netherlands in Leiden, the Netherlands
  . Tokyo.
• (in Dutch) Topstukken van Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde. KIT Publishers, Amsterdam, 2013.
  ISBN 9789460222535

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Museum Volkenkunde (Leiden).

• Website for Wereldmuseum Leiden (in English)
• International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM)