The Restitution of Knowledge

By looking into museum inventories and archives, The Restitution of Knowledge wishes to document and rethink the history of "plunder" in ethnological collections. The project ultimately wants to tell untold histories of colonial spoliation out of their material evidence. Looted African cultural belongings are more relevant than ever for future transnational partnerships in the cultural sector and this project believes in an urgent need for the museum sector to work through the difficult history of wars and colonial expeditions. At the same time, this history should also be told from the perspective of descendants of colonized people and members of civil society. Even though descendants usually know about the past and this history of oppression, many still ignore the presence of those artefacts in European museums.

This project combines different fields of research (history of collections, cultural institutions, the displacement of cultural heritage and provenance studies) and distinguishes colonial plunder from scientific undertakings, gifts, purchases, commissions, and so on. A thin line separated the military from scientific expeditions and their often violent or coercive methods of collecting. This is why this research project on events of colonial spoliation shall reveal detailed information of provenance that can influence new practices in museum anthropology.

Stitching together fragmented histories and legacies of plunder across museums, archives and borders, as well as cooperation with researchers and source communities in the Global South shall also bring about a deeper engagement with how to deal with these belongings in the future.