Profits extracted from plantation workers provided critical funding for the Ludwig Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Tate Britain, Van Abbemuseum, and many others. Yet programs to “decolonize” the museum or even return looted objects have had proportionally little impact on those communities whose involuntary investment financed — and, in some cases, continues to finance — these institutions. Present “decolonization,” restitution, and repair initiatives primarily advantage the institution. As a result, museums continue to benefit from systems of extraction, while plantation communities remain excluded from the institutions their labor helped create.
Developed by the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) and Human Activities, this toolkit draws from the perspectives of plantation worker communities and Western art institutions to help museums rethink their origins, responsibilities, and futures. A shorter A4 handout version can be downloaded here.
Step 1: Identify the Debt
Research how plantation profits — past and present — funded your museum.
Map past and present funding streams, donations, endowments, and sponsorships tied to plantation profits. Quantify plantation worker communities’ investments in the museum.
Pitfalls: Treating contributions of plantation worker communities as if they were confined to the past, rather than as part of an ongoing relationship that continues to inform the communities — and the museum — today.
Step 2: Publicize the Debt
Acknowledge publicly the contributions of plantation worker communities.
Educate audiences about the museum’s funding, as well as about present-day conditions on plantations.
Pitfalls: Hiding behind a lack of resources. Transparency and accountability do not require large budgets. A simple plaque acknowledging the contributions and present-day conditions of plantations costs little. Be transparent that a plaque alone does not change the lives of the communities involved.
Step 3: Establish Contact
Reach out to plantation communities.
Reach out directly to communities who live and work on the plantations in question. Visit in person, if invited. Recognize and navigate imbalances of power, agency, and wealth, possibly with the help of trusted intermediaries.
Pitfall: Outsourcing “decolonization” and repair to convenient partners who have already succeeded in navigating the art world and are amenable to the museum. This may create symbolic or reputational value for the museum but can undermine genuine engagement with the communities that live and work on the plantations that funded the museum.
Step 4: Enable Informed Agency
Inform the community of what your museum is: historically, artistically, financially.
For communities to engage meaningfully, they must understand both the museum’s origins and its current conditions, finances, and mission. Provide translation, legal advice, time, and resources. Only then, can the community make informed decisions about collaboration.
Pitfalls: When museums are seen through the eyes of those whose labor financed them, their meaning changes. This can be a disconcerting experience for museum personnel. Yet, “performing humility” can also obscure present-day imbalances of access, power, and agency. Make sure that both sides understand the framework in which decisions are made.
Step 5: Learn from Plantation Workers
Listen to the communities’ priorities, demands, and visions.
Each community has its own forms of expression, spirituality, and knowledge that cannot be anticipated. Plantation worker communities have survived expropriation, ecological disaster, and authoritarian regimes. For many communities, simply staying alive and transmitting ancestral knowledge to future generations has been a profound creative act. Listening to these key investors in the museum may offer lessons in endurance, ecology, and care that can also help museums reconnect with their own local working-class communities.
Pitfalls: Curators may lack the knowledge to recognize the art and visions of plantation worker communities. Their aesthetic and curatorial frameworks can blind them to other systems of value and meaning.
Step 6: Co-design a Program
Co-design programs that enable the community to begin reaping the benefits of their investment.
Harness the museum’s visibility, resources, and legitimacy to advance the community’s agenda.
Pitfalls: Plantation worker communities may find limited value in the museum itself and instead prioritize the reclamation and restoration of their land. Make sure that the museum’s structure serves the community’s liberation.
Step 7: Formalize Collaboration if Desired and Exit When Asked
Institute joint decision-making and shared ownership of outcomes.
Collaboration can end, and the museum must step back, when the community declares they have achieved a meaningful and sufficient return on their investment.
Pitfalls: Treating this as a one-off project. Avoid exiting prematurely once the museum has gained symbolic or reputational capital. The liberation of the plantation — and learning about the nature and future of the museum — will require sustained effort.
These seven steps foster concrete material, cultural, and ecological repair. By reconnecting with the communities who funded them, museums can help liberate the plantation — and, in so doing, rediscover their own purpose. If museums once grew from plantation extraction, now they can learn from their liberation.
About this Toolkit
The toolkit was launched by CATPC on 10 November 2025 at the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam by Matthieu Kasiama, Mbuku Kimpala, and Ced’art Tamasala from CATPC during a seminar for museum professionals. This event, entitled HERE: Heritage Reflections, is focused on restitution and is initiated by the Mondriaan Fund, the public fund for visual arts and cultural heritage in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom.
This toolkit is the result of the past eleven years of CATPC’s direct engagement with several museums built on plantation wealth — and with the communities still living and working on the concerned plantations. This toolkit directly follows CATPC’s recent solo exhibition Two Sides of the Same Coin at the Van Abbemuseum (Netherlands), a museum funded by tobacco plantations in Indonesia. This was the first solo exhibition of a community of plantation workers in a European contemporary art museum. The Toolkit was further informed by the presentation of CATPC’s member Ced’art Tamasala in collaboration with Renzo Martens at the annual “Bathtub Lecture” at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, an institution that was also funded by plantations in Indonesia.
After their invitation to exhibit at the Van Abbemuseum, CATPC members Mbuku Kimpala, Ced’art Tamasala, and Matthieu Kasiama traveled to the plantations that helped build this museum, and asked the communities still living and working on the plantations for permission to exhibit at the museum. They then elaborated, what could be the steps forward for museums to help liberate the plantations
