Decolonial Museology Recentered

Debates on decolonizing museums often neglect East-Central Europe (ECE) on the grounds that its countries “had no colonies.” Yet recent scholarship shows the region’s deep entanglement in the global colonial matrix of power. ECE was shaped both as colonizer and colonized, and its museums house overlooked collections of overseas objects. Today, curators and activists are uncovering these histories and experimenting with decolonial approaches in their institutions. This volume surveys this understudied terrain, highlighting the ethical challenges of museum practice in a region uniquely positioned as both victim and beneficiary of (post)colonial conditions. By bringing together scattered scholarly and cultural initiatives, it offers a new conceptual framework grounded in ECE’s specific historical, cultural, and political realities, while linking them to the wider global debate on decolonial museology.