The Restitution of Knowledge: artefacts as archives in the (post)colonial museum, 1850-1939

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Bénédicte Savoy
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429041464

‘The Restitution of Knowledge’ is a new transnational collaboration between historical and curatorial approaches to European anthropological collections and (post)colonial legacies. It identifies, researches, documents and rethinks the history and ongoing contemporary significance of ‘plunder’ in ethnological collections. In doing so, it reimagines the anthropological museum storeroom as a unique archive for telling untold histories of colonial spoliation, thus making a major contribution to the development of new forms of (post)colonial remembrance and restitution. The project creates a new comparative resource that documents acts of colonial spoliation through an innovative collaborative methodology for reconnecting the historical knowledge held in the form of museum artefacts with a wide diversity of historical and contemporary perspectives. Making a major new intervention in the emerging field of (post)colonial provenance research, the project addresses an urgent need among museum professionals, historical researchers and Indigenous source communities alike for a systematic inventory of incidents where objects were taken in ‘punitive expeditions’ – an inventory that is at present entirely lacking. Perspectives from German and British scholarship and professional practice are brought together across colonial history, provenance studies, and the curation of world art, opening up a new resource for the significance of objects and histories for source communities and nations, including Indigenous groups from Africa and across the global south, to be explored in the future. Through this work the project adds a new dimension to current European, African and global debates about cultural restitution, developing a new reciprocal and comparative method for knowledge exchange and development. As well as making a primary contribution to the history of empire, the project revaluates the status of anthropological museums as places filled not just with objects but also with historical knowledge of conflict, violence and loss. The project thus reframes the European anthropological museum as places of cultural memory, at which restitution that can involve not just the physical repatriation of cultural property but also remembrance and the sharing of knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Dan Hicks