Museums and Decolonisation

Proactively addressing decolonisation becomes essential for museums when fulfilling their mission to serving society.

In its Strategic Plan 2022-2028, ICOM recognised the role that museums have played in colonisation and outlined the objective of leading a global forum to explore the key issues and identify best practice on decolonisation and museums. The Strategic Plan further cites the following objectives:

• ICOM proactively addresses decolonisation, cultural rights and democracy, and the role that museums have played in colonisation.
• ICOM supports museums to engage with communities and highlights good practices in the field.

ICOM national and international committees have been engaged in activities around decolonisation in the museum field, some of them for decades. Topics include principles for the repatriation and restitution of cultural property, new governance models, reconciliation, reparations, Indigenisation, practices and processes of engagement with Indigenous peoples, minority and marginalised communities, mechanisms to empower local communities to lead museum activities, among others. In 2019, a global survey of ICOM members showed strong interest in advancing knowledge of the historical, ethical and methodological questions associated with decolonisation.

In 2023, ICOM established its first Working Group on Decolonisation, with the mandate to:

• Develop language and methodologies for an institutional approach for ICOM, addressing the role of museums in colonial histories and identifying the practices and forms in which colonialism is expressed in museums.
• Draft a framework institutional strategy and action plan on decolonisation, taking into account a diversity of approaches, including reconciliation, equity and inclusion, Indigenisation, as well as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other relevant international frameworks, including the ICOM Code of Ethics for Natural History Museums and the ICOM Guidelines for Deaccessioning. The Working Group may, for example, decide to amend or propose new guidelines in these areas.
• Collaborate with the ICOM Standing Committee on Ethics (ETHCOM) to propose amendments to the ICOM Code of Ethics, including by identifying lacunae in the abovementioned frameworks.

The Working Group on Decolonisation submitted their mandate report to the Executive Board (EB) in September 2025. The publication of the executive summary was approved at the 181th session of the EB.

Read the Executive Summary of the WGD report

On 14 November 2025, the 40th ICOM Ordinary General Assembly, held during the 27th ICOM General Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, adopted six Resolutions that will guide the organisation’s mission and help shape its policies over the next three years.

One of the resolutions called for the creation of a Standing Committee on Decolonisation to:

• promote cross-regional dialogue and the exchange of knowledge and best practices on decolonisation within the global museum community;
• ensure representation from former colonies, former colonial powers, Indigenous peoples, and legal experts.

Read the resolution

• Provenance Research 1, Volume 77, Issue 3-4 (2025)

The latest volume of ICOM’s peer-reviewed journal, Museum International, focuses on Provenance Research.

This issue is the first of two volumes addressing the challenges faced by museums today in establishing the provenance of their collections. Many objects, collections and ancestral remains found in museums today lack a clear or full provenance: conditions that reflect the historical conditions under which they were assembled. In this first issue, contributors were called upon to reflect on methods for reconstructing and examining the ownership, custody and contextual histories of objects, collections and ancestral remains with absent or incomplete provenance information. Such reconstruction can generate new and renewed meanings and significance for both materials and their source communities, while also engaging with the diverse ways in which provenance research itself is conceptualised.

The second issue on this topic, ‘Provenance Research 2’, will be published in the Spring of 2026.

• Towards Decolonisation, Volume 74, Issue 3-4 (2023)

In 2023, ICOM published its 74^th Volume of its peer-reviewed journal on Museum International, “Towards Decolonisation”, Issue 3-4.

Debates involving museums and practices of decolonisation are ongoing, and constantly evolving, taking into account the global consequences of colonialism in contemporary societies, including social and economic inequalities, the marginalisation of certain populations, the continuous threats to Indigenous peoples and their traditional lands, and institutional racism and sexism in all of their forms.

The volume faces this complex topic in a full issue, bringing together diverse perspectives on the subject to carry out reflexive analysis on the role and work of museums towards decolonisation.

• Contested Histories, Volume 67, Issue 1-4 (2015)

ICOM published in December 2018 an issue of Museum International on ‘Museums and Contested Histories’, which addressed a wide range of contested issues under three central themes: shifting/negotiating narratives, collective agency and museum activism.

The issues are available on the Routledge website.

Access Routledge website

ICOM members can access the full online issue free of charge through their member space on the ICOM website.

• ICOM 27^th General Conference in Dubai, 2025 : Panel discussion on “Reframing power: Whose Stories do Museums Tell?” with Farid Rakun, Dr. Natalie McGuire, Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, Nada Raza (moderator)

• Conference on the Decolonisation of Museums in Utrecht, 2024 : Conference organised by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, in collaboration with ICOM, ICOM Netherlands, DutchCulture, and UNESCO NL : View the recording of the conference

• The Working Group on Decolonisation in Marseille, 2024:  Pre-recorded case studies: View the presentations

• “Bridging Cultures – Moving Towards New Perspectives in Museums” at UNESCO, 2024
  Day of exchanges, featuring the ICOM Director General as speaker : View the recording
• ICOM-IMREC Conference in Shanghai, 2023
  Seminar on ‘Museums, Decolonisation and Restitution’ :  Read the proceedings
• ICOM 26^th General Conference in Prague, 2022
  Panel on ‘Decolonisation in museums: New perspectives on ownership, custodianship and restitution”
• ICOM 25^th General Conference in Kyoto, 2019
  Session on “Decolonisation and Restitution: Moving Towards a More Holistic Perspective and Relational Approach’