Confronting colonial history - the German Lost Art Foundation launches a new funding programme

A fund­ing com­mit­tee set up for this pur­pose will now be­gin as­sess­ing fundin­g ap­pli­ca­tions for prove­nance re­search on col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts.

From 2019, the Ger­man ­Lost Art Foun­da­tion will fund prove­nance re­search projects and ba­sic re­search fo­cus­ing on col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts. The Foun­da­tion has been ac­cept­ing ap­pli­ca­tions since the start of the year and will pro­vide €1.9 mil­lion this year for the new fund­ing pro­gramme. A fund­ing com­mit­tee set up for this pur­pose will now be­gin as­sess­ing fundin­g ap­pli­ca­tions for prove­nance re­search on col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts. Moni­ka Grüt­ters, chair of the Foun­da­tion Board, ap­point­ed the mem­bers of the com­mit­tee by let­ter.

The mem­bers will be: Prof. Dr. Mon­i­ca June­ja(Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty), Prof.Dr. Wiebke Ahrndt (Übersee Mu­se­um, Bre­men), Prof. Dr. Ul­rike Lind­ner (Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne), Dr. Bar­bara Planken­stein­er (Mu­se­u­mam Rothen­baum, Ham­burg), Prof. Dr. Dr. An­toinette Do­minice (Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­si­ty, Mu­nich), Prof.Dr.

Al­bert Gouaf­fo (Dschang Uni­ver­si­ty, Cameroon), Prof. Dr. Bene­dicte Savoy (Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­sität Berlin), Dr. Stephanie Tasch (Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion of the Län­der).

Moni­ka Grüt­ters said: "For many years,Ger­many's colo­nial his­to­ry­was a blind spot in our cul­ture of re­mem­brance. Prove­nance re­search on col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts plays a ma­jor­role in help­ing us to ex­am­ine our his­to­ry more close­ly. The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in get­ting to the bot­tom of the his­to­ry of works of art. The new fund­ing com­mit­tee is made up of re­spect­ed ex­perts and has an in­ter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive. lt will pro­vide pub­licly fund­ed mu­se­ums and col­lec­tions, li­braries, archives, and re­search in­sti­tu­tions through­out Ger­many with fi­nan­cial sup­port­for the com­plex task of as­cer­tain­ing the ori­gins of works from colo­nial con­texts."

By fund­ing this type of re­search, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, based in Magde­burg, is tak­ing on the im­por­tant task of reap­prais­ing the prove­nance of col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts. The Foun­da­tion's core mis­sion of fund­ing prove­nance re­search for Nazi-con­fis­cat­ed art will be un­af­fect­ed by this.

For more in­for­ma­tion, please vis­it: www.ger­man­lostart­foun­da­tion.org