”A Picture Book from Faraway Lands”

Missionary Exhibitions in Denmark

Abstract

Between 1908 and 1958, the Danish missionary organizations displayed ethnographic objects, built dioramas, and gave appealing speeches, while missionaries at times dressed as the peoples they used to work among. This article analyzes the role of the structural/organizational conditions, the communication practice, and the ideological/theological interpretation with regard to missionary exhibitions as an independent practice. Now more or less forgotten, these missionary exhibitions constituted a major and well-known phenomenon in Denmark with probably well over one million visitors to 173 exhibitions in 81 different cities around the country. The practice originated in Britain, and similar exhibitions were organized in several other countries. However, Denmark seems to be the only Protestant country in which they continued to attract large segments of the population from the heydays of colonialism well into the post-war decolonization and cold war.