The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum is a museum of ethnography in Cologne, Germany. It was reopened in 2010. The museum arose from a collection of over 3500 items belonging to ethnographer Wilhelm Joest. After his death in 1897, the collection was left to his sister Adele Rautenstrauch.Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum (history)
In 2018, the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum returned a tattooed Māori skull, which had been in its collection for 110 years, to a delegation representing the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington; the skull was purchased in 1908 by the first director of the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Willy Foy, from a London dealer.Catherine Hickley (July 13, 2018) German museum returns tattooed Maori skull to New Zealand The Art Newspaper.
In 2021 the museum held RESIST! The Art of Resistance, an experimental decolonial exhibition featuring activists and artists from the Global South diaspora.
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