Colonial Contexts Funding Committee is formed

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s Colo­nial Con­texts Fund­ing Com­mit­tee gath­ered to­day, Mon­day, for its in­au­gu­ral meet­ing at the State Rep­re­sen­ta­tion Of­fice of Sax­ony-An­halt in Berlin. The Fund­ing Com­mit­tee elect­ed Prof. Bar­bara Planken­stein­er as its chair and Prof. Mon­i­ca June­ja as its deputy chair.

The chair of the Foun­da­tion Board, Min­is­ter of State Prof. Moni­ka Grüt­ters, said: “In es­tab­lish­ing the new fund­ing pri­or­i­ty of colo­nial con­texts at the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, we have ad­dressed an im­por­tant con­cern of the coali­tion agree­ment. To­day’s in­au­gu­ral meet­ing of the Fund­ing Com­mit­tee puts the Foun­da­tion in a po­si­tion to per­form its du­ties ef­fi­cient­ly in this area, and help in­sti­tu­tions in­ves­ti­gate items from colo­nial con­texts in their hold­ings. The in­ter­na­tion­al and trans­dis­ci­plinary com­po­si­tion of the com­mit­tee re­flects the di­verse na­ture of this sub­ject area. Its mem­bers have a wide range of per­spec­tives and ex­per­tise, which means they will be able to pro­vide ex­cel­lent ad­vice to the Foun­da­tion.”

Prof. Gilbert Lupfer, mem­ber of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board, is look­ing for­ward to the next meet­ing be­cause it is im­por­tant “for an ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sion to take place among com­mit­tee mem­bers, so that the re­search projects can be func­tion­al­ly cat­e­go­rized and as­sessed. This ex­change is a cru­cial el­e­ment of the fund­ing de­ci­sion. The rec­om­men­da­tion to the Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board that is de­vel­oped in this way en­sures the sci­en­tif­ic qual­i­ty and the­mat­ic va­ri­ety of the in­ves­tiga­tive projects se­lect­ed for fund­ing. Even at the first meet­ing, there was a live­ly pro­fes­sion­al ex­change of views on the ethos and tasks of the new com­mit­tee.”

The com­mit­tee con­sists of nine mem­bers: Prof. Wiebke Ahrndt (Übersee-Mu­se­um Bre­men), Prof. An­toinette Do­minicé (LMU Mu­nich), Prof. Al­bert Gouaf­fo (Uni­ver­sité de Dschang, Cameroon), Prof. Mon­i­ca June­ja (Uni­ver­si­ty of Hei­del­berg), Prof. Ul­rike Lind­ner (Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne), Prof. Bar­bara Planken­stein­er (Mu­se­um am Rothen­baum, Ham­burg), Prof. Béné­dicte Savoy (Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­sität Berlin), Un­der­sec­re­tary Ma­ja Schweitzer (BKM, Berlin), Dr. Stephanie Tasch (Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion of the Ger­man Fed­er­al States, Berlin).

The Colo­nial Con­texts Fund­ing Com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed af­ter the Foun­da­tion Board as­signed the Foun­da­tion a key role in reap­prais­ing the ori­gins of cul­tur­al goods from the colo­nial era in 2018 as an ad­di­tion­al task in the fu­ture. In the wake of this, the fund­ing guide­line for the new fund­ing area came in­to force on Jan­uary 1, 2019. Since that date, it has been pos­si­ble to sub­mit ap­pli­ca­tions to the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion for fund­ing for projects in­volv­ing prove­nance re­search and ba­sic re­search in­to col­lec­tion items and cul­tur­al goods from colo­nial con­texts. Now that the Fund­ing Com­mit­tee’s in­au­gu­ral meet­ing has tak­en place, it can pro­ceed to as­sess the project ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived by the first ap­pli­ca­tion dead­line of June 1, 2019, and make a fund­ing rec­om­men­da­tion to the Ex­ec­u­tive Board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion.

A new de­part­ment led by Dr. Laris­sa Förster will be set up at the Foun­da­tion to re­al­ize the new tasks. Ad­di­tion­al re­sources amount­ing to near­ly €2 mil­lion will be pro­vid­ed from the bud­get of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and Me­dia for this de­part­ment and for the new fund­ing area. Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the fund­ing area of Cul­tur­al Goods and Col­lec­tions from Colo­nial Con­texts can be found here.