Perspektiven für Dialoge der Reparation zwischen Museen, Stätten und Herkunftsgemeinschaften
This project investigates the Khmer sculptures in the Tokyo National Museum, particularly those transferred from the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) offices in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Japan during the Japanese occupation in Cambodia (1941–1945), to explore how colonial-era displacements have shaped contemporary understandings of cultural heritage. While previous scholarship has focused on diplomatic and institutional exchanges between France and Japan, this study examines the irreparable dimensions of loss and the possibilities of cultural repair. By reconstructing provenance histories, revealing the limited presence of local memories within Japanese museum contexts, and rethinking exhibition ethics, the research seeks to transform museum practice into a site of reparative engagement rather than purely restitutive closure. Through archival analysis, local collaboration, and joint workshops, the project reconnects the historical movement of objects with embodied and relational experiences of memory and care. Engaging CURE’s central question – how to live with the irreparable – this research reframes provenance as an affective and ethical process, opening new dialogues between museums, source communities, and the shared futures they might co-curate.
DR. MIZUHO IKEDA
CURRICULUM VITAE
Mizuho Ikeda is a research associate at the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, SOAS University of London, and serves as a curatorial consultant for exhibitions at the Museum of World Cultures, Riyadh. Her research focuses on museum collections and cultural heritage in Southeast Asia, with particular interest in religiosity, diverse voices, representation, and the process through which decisions are made about what is preserved, recognised, and remembered. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Waseda University in 2018. Previously, she was a research fellow at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, where she examined the display of Hindu and Buddhist art within the context of the universal museum. She also served as project curator for the Burma to Myanmar exhibition at the British Museum and as heritage documentation manager for the curation of the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey at Kyoto University.
