AhoraEG News: "Culture and tourism acquires the ethnological collection of Felipe Osa Angüé"

Introductory Remarks

The digital exhibit "Reframing the Colonial Library: Equatorial Guinea Archives in the Museum" engages with the country's colonial library. Following the approach of Benita Sampedro Vizcaya, the re-evaluation of the colonial library demands “dislocating the traditionally central and privileged role of metropolitan texts and neo-colonial discourses in order to engage, instead, with the cultural and intellectual production of Guinean intellectuals themselves (341).” The project embraces her emphasis on re-locating canonical texts and privileged categories of analysis such as race, capitalism, empire, or nation. This way, the exhibit attempts to reconfigure, appropriate, transform, and transgress the colonial, historical, and linguistic inheritance of which 'the local' is also a conduit, as explained by Sampedro Vizcaya. The revision of the colonial library requires “awareness of the power of those sites, not only in terms of the day-to-day functioning of the empire-colony relationship but also in regard to the epistemic and representational weight they carry in broader cultural and political practices and projects, both colonial and neocolonial (343).” This way, the exhibit turns “to the potential of the archive and the colonial library as sites from which the seemingly irreversible power of colonialism can simultaneously be enacted and contested (343).”

This exhibit is divided into three parts, chronologically interconnected, that cover Equatorial Guinean colonial and neocolonial history. The sections are: "The Temptation of Empire", “Neocolonial Politics in the Museum and Conflicting Identities in Eguatorial Guinea" and “Alternative Conservation and Heritage Practices in Equatorial Guinea. The Case of the Museum Felipe Osá Angüé." This organization aims to deconstruct visitors' perception of the colonial archive and its uses from a transhistorical and global angle. Each section addresses the ideological uses of the archive both in the metropolis and the former colony, questioning the Spanish civilizational mission that still persists beneath the language of institutional collaboration and modernization in cultural spaces.

The completion of this digital project has been made possible through the 2024 Mellon Doctoral Summer Fellowship awarded by the Price Lab for the Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. The exhibition portal will be available indefinitely thanks to the support of Van Pelt Libraries.

Bibliography:

Sampedro-Vizcaya, Benita. "Rethinking the Archive and the Colonial Library: Equatorial Guinea." Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, 2008, pp. 341-363.

AhoraEG News: "Culture and tourism acquires the ethnological collection of Felipe Osa Angüé"

Title: AhoraEG News: "Culture and tourism acquires the ethnological collection of Felipe Osa Angüé"
Subject: The Aftermath of the Museum Felipe Osa Angüé
Description: The fate of Felipe’s collection after his death in 2017 marked a significant shift from his original vision. The collection was transferred to the Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Artisan Promotion of Equatorial Guinea, with plans to integrate it into a national ethnographic museum in Malabo. While this move was intended to preserve the collection and ensure its continued accessibility, it also meant that the objects would be subjected to the institutional practices of conventional museology. This transformation raises critical questions about the future of the collection and the potential loss of the dynamic, context-rich narrative that Felipe had cultivated.

The terms "ethnographic" and "ethnologic" themselves are problematic within the context of Felipe’s vision. These terms, rooted in colonial frameworks, often imply a distancing and objectification of cultural artifacts, stripping them of their original context and reducing them to mere examples of "primitive" or "exotic" cultures. This is precisely what Felipe sought to avoid in his museum, where the objects were not just relics of a bygone era but were imbued with life and meaning through his storytelling and engagement with visitors. The transfer of the collection to a national ethnographic museum thus risks undermining the very principles that Felipe's museum stood for, transforming a space of cultural activation and resistance into one of institutional conformity and potentially decontextualized exhibition. This transition underscores the need for a continued conversation about how these objects will be conserved, presented, and interpreted, to ensure that Felipe’s legacy is not lost in the process.
Creator: Digital Newspaper AHORAEG
Source: https://ahoraeg.com/cultura/2022/08/02/cultura-y-turismo-adquiere-la-coleccion-etnologica-de-felipe-osa-angue/
Publisher: AHORAEG
Date: August 2nd, 2022
Rights: AHORAEG
Format: Written text
Language: Spanish
Coverage: Equatorial Guinea

Original Format: Digital News

Files

Ahora EG.jpg

AhoraEG.jpg

Collection

3. Alternative Conservation and Heritage Practices in Equatorial Guinea. The Case of the Museum Felipe Osá Angüé

Citation

Digital Newspaper AHORAEG, “AhoraEG News: "Culture and tourism acquires the ethnological collection of Felipe Osa Angüé",” Reframing Archives: Equatorial Guinea's Colonial Library, accessed November 3, 2026, https://hernando.upenn.domains/items/show/65.

Introductory Remarks

Dublin Core

Still Image Item Type Metadata

Files

Collection

Tags

Citation

Output Formats