O. Ekkelboom (Oscar)

Art historian Oscar Ekkelboom specializes in the relation between decolonial thought and the arts. He completed a Bachelor in Art History at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen and a Master in Curating Art and Cultures at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. In 2019-2020 he was Curator-in-training Twentieth Century Fine Art and History at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Oscar’s research project investigates curatorial practices in Dutch art museums in relation to decoloniality and memory studies. The interest goes out to how modern art (from 1500 until today) is contextualized in museum displays. How are museums implicated in de production of modern aesthetics and the erasure of worlds of sensing beyond western normativity? And to what extent are current social debates evolving curatorial practices in art museums? In order to understand the relation between art, museums, and modernity/coloniality, the project departs from the position of the “implicated subject”.