Restitution: How Austria intends to deal with colonial objects in the future

2023-06-21 01:20:01

Yesterday, after a year of work, an international panel of experts chaired by Jonathan Fine (Director of the Weltmuseum Wien) presented 20 recommendations for dealing with art objects from a colonial context that can be found in Austrian federal museums. On this basis, a draft law is now to be drawn up by the first quarter of 2024. Austria is thus taking an “important step towards becoming aware of its own past and also taking responsibility for suffering and injustice,” said Secretary of State for Culture Andrea Mayer (Greens).

At the beginning of 2022, the international committee, chaired by Weltmuseum director Jonathan Fine, began its work on behalf of the Ministry of Culture. “European rulers viewed large parts of the world as a self-service shop during the colonial era. It is our responsibility to describe this as injustice and to follow up the serious debate with concrete action,” said Mayer.

Although Austria was not a colonial power in the narrower sense, it benefited from the system and was involved in colonial activities.

The recommendations that have now been developed focus on various aspects. A return should be made possible if a country of origin requests it and the object in question was stolen in a colonial context against the will of the previous owner. According to Fine, provenance research should play a central role in pursuing these questions. This should take place in cooperation between museum employees and experts from the respective country of origin, with an independent advisory board evaluating the results and making a recommendation to the ministry in a further step.

A return must take place on a bilateral level from state to state. “Cultural assets are owned and used in different ways. It is not our job to decide who are the right people to return them to,” Fine said. “The state-to-state principle means that we do not act behind the backs of other countries’ governments.”

Budget is doubled

State Secretary Andrea Mayer wants to double the annual budget for postcolonial provenance research to 320,000 euros. How many objects in the collections of the federal museums come from a colonial context is an open question. Fine assumes that “many objects” in his house would meet this criterion. In total, the World Museum has around 200,000 objects. Among them is the penacho, a feather headdress from Mexico that has been the subject of a struggle for years.

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