Institution Building: David Adjaye in conversation with Nikolaus Hirsch

In the context of ‘Collection’, the second chapter of ‘Institution Building’, Nikolaus Hirsch talks to Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye about the Edo Museum Of West-African Art in Benin City. As an exemple of a museum founded by processes of restitutions, it finds itself a the forefront of a new institutional paradigm. What does the restitution of artefacts and collections mean for a community, for a museum and for the architecture of a museum?

Adjaye talks about the changing role of the museum: a museum as a return to cultural values, a palace of culture for the community, a reminder of the dignity of their past but also an opportunity to use that platform to imagine a possible future.