Foundation Board establishes basis for project funding in the field of cultural goods from colonial contexts

At its meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 30, 2018, the Foun­da­tion Board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion agreed that a new fund­ing guide­line on re­search in­to the prove­nance of cul­tur­al goods from colo­nial con­texts and on rel­e­vant ba­sic re­search will come in­to ef­fect on Jan­uary 1, 2019. As a re­sult, it will be pos­si­ble to fund the first projects in the course of 2019.

An ex­pert Fund­ing Com­mit­tee will be new­ly ap­point­ed to eval­u­ate the re­search pro­pos­als re­ceived. The re­sources re­quired for the fund­ing pro­gram will be pro­vid­ed as new and sep­a­rate fi­nanc­ing from the bud­get of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and Me­dia, Moni­ka Grüt­ters. The Foun­da­tion’s ex­ist­ing core mis­sion—in par­tic­u­lar the fund­ing of projects in the field of Nazi-con­fis­cat­ed prop­er­ty—will re­main un­af­fect­ed by this.

Moni­ka Grüt­ters, chair of the Foun­da­tion Board, said: “In its coali­tion agree­ment, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment has un­equiv­o­cal­ly stat­ed its com­mit­ment to in­ves­ti­gat­ing the prove­nance of cul­tur­al ob­jects from colo­nial con­texts. With its fund­ing pro­gram to in­ves­ti­gate such col­lec­tion hold­ings, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion—as an in­sti­tu­tion that is well es­tab­lished for this pur­pose—re­mains ful­ly com­mit­ted to pur­su­ing this im­por­tant goal. That will pro­vide fresh im­pe­tus for the deep­er crit­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion that is nec­es­sary. Pub­lic mu­se­ums and re­search in­sti­tu­tions through­out Ger­many will thus re­ceive sup­port for the com­plex task of clar­i­fy­ing the ori­gins of their works.”