More than 6,300 objects from Cameroon sit in the storerooms and galleries of nine Swiss museums. How did they get there? A joint research project, backed by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, will now try to answer that question object by object.
The project was among 26 provenance studies the federal office announced on 29 September, with total funding of 1.95 million Swiss francs for 2027 and 2028. The Cameroonian study receives 100,000 francs. It involves museums in Basel, Bern, Burgdorf, Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Winterthur and Zurich, including the Museum der Kulturen Basel, the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève and the Bernisches Historisches Museum.
Switzerland never had colonies, but Swiss actors operated inside European colonial systems. The Basel Mission worked in Cameroon under German rule and supplied Swiss collections; other objects arrived through expeditions during the French and British mandates, or through the art and ethnographic trade. The holdings are linked to more than 320 communities.
In 2024, a visit by a Cameroonian delegation, according to Isabella Bozsa of the Basel museum, "highlighted the urgency of conducting research into these collections". Work is planned both in Swiss museums and in Cameroon. Legrand Tchatchouang, a prince of the Bangoua chiefdom who sits on Cameroon's inter-ministerial committee on repatriation, has warned against a study conducted from European viewpoints alone.
No restitution has been announced. The project lays a foundation of knowledge, and that is where its value will be measured: in whether Cameroonian voices shape the questions, not only the answers.
