Throughout the 20th century, the Wereldmuseum (former Tropenmuseum)—Amsterdam’s most prominent museum of ethnography—has accumulated more than 150,000 objects from colonized regions worldwide. Today, these objects are obsessively polished, dusted, and neatly ordered, revealing an underlying anxiety connected to their violent removal. Artists Mirjam Linschooten and Sameer Farooq conclude their 4-year engagement with the museum tracing a heritage of theft from the last century to present-day acts of erasure and maintenance. With a focus on repair and restitution, the film asks: What if the museum visited a therapist?

The Museum Visits a Therapist follows the restoration of a series of bisj poles from the Asmat people of Papua, brought to the museum between 1959 and 1962. Structured as a conversation between a museum and a fictional therapist, the film weaves together fragments from journals, interviews and letters from Dutch veterans, missionaries and collectors, who each played a role in the accumulation of objects, juxtaposed with detailed images of the daily activities in the museum. The film also applies the formal qualities of therapeutic language as filmic elements, referencing EMDR-treatment through sounds and flashbacks, asking the viewer to participate in the session.

Offering a nuanced critique, The Museum Visits a Therapist navigates the history of violence, religion and trade that shaped the Tropenmuseum’s object collection, while imagining new forms of reparation within museum spaces.

With production support from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Mondriaan Fund and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.