Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum

About

The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum is a museum of ethnography in Cologne, Germany. It was reopened in 2010. The museum arose from a collection of over 3500 items belonging to ethnographer Wilhelm Joest.

After his death in 1897, the collection was left to his sister Adele Rautenstrauch. In 2018, the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum returned a tattooed Māori skull, which had been in its collection for 110 years, to a delegation representing the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington; the skull was purchased in 1908 by the first director of the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Willy Foy, from a London dealer. In 2021 the museum held RESIST!

The Art of Resistance, an experimental decolonial exhibition featuring activists and artists from the Global South diaspora.