Digital repatriation of art and revenue sharing

Mulenga Kapwepwe

Mulenga Kapwepwe is co-founder of the Women’s History Museum of Zambia. There are many African artifacts in museums around the world, but rarely do those items have a tangible connection to the people and communities who created them. For her Fellowship, Mulenga is working with the Zambian web3 community to create a tokenized artifact registry, experimenting with museum revenue sharing for community documentation of art, customs, and crafting methodologies still practiced by the descendants of those items on display in museums around the world. Even if the items won’t return to their places of origin in the near future, it’s a small step toward bridging a gap of ownership that spans centuries.

SummitShare

In December, Mulenga and her team launched SummitShare(opens in a new tab), a platform that enables digital exhibitions of art and artifacts. Through a collaboration with the Sweedish Ethnographic Museum(opens in a new tab), SummitShare will host a first exhibition titled "The Leading Ladies", which distributes proceeds to communities in the Gwembe Valley in Zambia with connection to the artifacts on display.

Interview at Devconnect 2023(opens in a new tab)