Events about restitution

RM* selects the most important events in the field of colonial collections and restitution. Events in the future are listed as much as events from the recent past, provided the latter are of interest to users of the website.

Every event item is provided with

  • a short summary in English, also if it appears in another language
  • weblinks to the organizers or other sources
  • tags and attributes to easily find connected publications, news and events
African and European professionals with at least two years of practical experience in a museum, heritage site or art space are invited to apply for a TheMuseumsLab 2026 Fellowship.
Swiss citizens and companies were heavily involved in the colonial system from the 16th century onwards.
The Institute of Benin Studies in Benin City, Nigeria calls for paper for a conference from 22 to 25 January 2026. Deadline drafts 31 October 2025.
The Congo Research Network (CRN) is pleased to announce its fourth PhD workshop, which will feature a broadened regional focus on Central Africa.
The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) invites you to apply to its Open Call and spend 5 or 10 months in Amsterdam, immersed in an interdisciplinary community that values curiosity-driven research in the humanities, social sciences and beyond.
The Latin America and the Caribbean chapter of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (LAC-ACHS), together with Centro de Patrimonio Cultural and Núcleo Milenio Nupats of Universidad Católica de Chile and the Department of Arts and Culture Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, warmly invites abstracts for its inaugural conference “Encounters. Collaborative Approaches to Heritage in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
[ in English and in German ] Together with the Deutsches Historisches Museum, the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin is organising the international symposium “Tenacious Tropes: Colonial Narratives in Visual Advertising” on 21 and 22 November 2025 at Kulturforum Berlin.
[ in French ] The Study and Research Centre for Administrative and Political Sciences (CERSA) organizes a conference entitled “Restitutions of cultural heritage: trends, challenges, perspectives” on November 14, 2025 in Paris.
HERE is a seminar for new and experienced heritage professionals. The aim is to bring professionals together in order to stimulate knowledge exchange and innovation. HERE is on 10 November in Wereldmuseum Amsterdam.
This knowledge exchange programme brings together a group of young professionals from around the world working in museums or collection-managing organisations to reflect on these questions and to exchange knowledge and experiences regarding their working practices.
This kick-off seminar, led by Pietro Sullo, discusses the legal status of colonial artefacts from Africa held in European museums, clarifying whether there is a duty to repatriate them. The research hypothesis is that European states have a legal duty to return colonial artefacts acquired without the consent of the communities of origin.
In this Spark Session Made Naraya Sumaniaka presents his thesis work, which recentres community agency by examining how digital spaces enable participation and contestation using the newly established Colonial Collections Datahub and TikTok as case studies.
In this exhibition, a group of artists examines how colonialism has shaped the ways museums, archives and other institutions of knowledge are perceived and understood, revealing the (im)material scars imposed by systemic violence.
Saturday 11 October, 14.00 - 16.00: Have you come to see the shrunken heads - Oxford University Museum of Natural History Lecture Theatre
Our third In Conversation considers restitution from an ethnographic perspective. Charlotte Joy will discuss the research for her upcoming book, drawing on interviews and her work with UNESCO, with Mirjam Shatanawi and Katarzyna Puzon. We invite you to join our conversation.
The Japan-Netherlands Symposium International Training Program in Museums: Exploring Inclusive and Collaborative Engagement focuses on international museum training programs conducted by the Netherlands and Japan, exploring new approaches to international museum collaboration that transcend the traditional hierarchy between “trainers” and “trainees.”
[ in Spanish ] The exhibition recovers key moments from the decades of 1880 and 1990, when the first restitutions of human remains and the demands for patrimonial return to our context were produced.
The Colonial Collections Datahub is a digital platform that brings together, enriches and provides insights into collections from colonial contexts.
The conference “Colonial Pasts and Contempo­rary Search for Justice: Inter­disciplinary Perspec­tives on the Politics of Restitution and Redress for Colonial Violence” brings together experiences from different parts of the world, and perspec­tives in the field of transitional justice and (post-)colonial studies.
This workshop marks the conclusion of the interdisciplinary provenance research project "Human Remains from Colonial Contexts: Provenance Research in the Anthropological Collections of the University of Göttingen and MARKK Hamburg".
Many museums and institutions across Europe are custodians of objects and collections originating from colonial contexts. As professionals managing these collections, and recognizing our shared responsibility in addressing historical injustices, how can we best fulfill this role? What can we learn from each other’s experiences?
The Ethnographic Museum Zagreb presents the exhibition “Travellers” – Collection of Non-European Cultures, tracing the journeys of people and objects from colonial times to the present day.
This year’s theme explores the material return, digital reunification, and recontextualization of Philippine artefacts, manuscripts, and sound heritage kept in institutions outside of the Philippines.
Join us on Sept 16 | 16:00–21:30 | Kulturhaus Brotfabrik - World Premieres of Eternos Retornos and other films, with installations by Repatriates, and a dinner ritual inspired by the counter vibration physics of the headdress. This is more than art. It is a call to return what was taken.
This workshop brings different approaches to historical data modelling around the history of looted African heritage found in German museums.
For several years, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) have been discussing returns of cultural heritage to Australia. This event will reflect on those discussions with community members and AIATSIS staff.
Kone Foundation supports Global South researchers’ visits to the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. The programme aims to strengthen research cooperation between the global South and North.
[ English ] The exhibition "Benin Dues" --> Guided Tour in English with curator Alice Hertzog on 24 August 2025 [ German ] Vom Umgang mit historisch belastetem Kulturerbe – in Ethnologie und Recht on 30 September 2025
On Monday, 14.07.2025, at 6 pm, we are pleased to present the Working Paper “Missionary Societies and Religious Orders in German Colonies and Their Contribution to Ethnographic Collections” by Jan Hüsgen
The Tsilhqot’in National Government has launched its first major repatriation exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver, following the return of over 60 ancestral belongings—including baskets, tools, and cultural items—that had been held in museums and private collections for more than a century.
The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign is, in coordination with the Government of Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, organising the ‘International Conference on Recovery of Cultural Heritage’ in 16-18 June 2025.
80 Delegates from all over the world will gather at the Humboldt Forum and engage in dialogue about future collaboration and to contribute to the development of a Global Cultural Embassy (GCE).
Why should internationally active organisations concern themselves with decolonisation? How can transnational institutions meaningfully shape this process? What challenges, responsibilities and opportunities arise from this?
[ in German ] Provenance research is becoming increasingly digital: be it in the cataloguing of source material, in the use of the numerous existing databases for research or in the visual analysis of research data.
[ in French ] Conference at the occasion of the launch of the 2nd Dictionaire comparé in the Musée du quai Branly.
This conference explores how colonial histories continue to remain deeply embedded in the structures of today’s crises, shaping geopolitical conflicts, patterns of violence, systemic inequalities, and struggles for justice. It aims to critically engage with the intersections of colonial memory and historical narratives in relation to the pressing political and ethical dilemmas of our time.
The Atelier KITLV-Framer Framed Artist Residency programme supports innovative and societally relevant projects at the intersection of art and academic research in Southeast Asian and/or Caribbean Studies, with a focus on (post)colonial theory and discourse.
This conference will explore how accessing archives and museum collections can enable communities to recover their past and rekindle “alternative stories” as well as disrupt the discourses constructed by Western views.
Legacies of colonialism in museum collections: The (un)making of Indonesian Islam in the Netherlands tells the untold story of Indonesian Islam in museums. Often overshadowed by Hindu-Buddhist art, Indonesian Islamic heritage rarely receives the attention it deserves in museum collections and exhibitions.
At the global Museum & Heritage Awards 2025 the Pitt Rivers Museum won Partnership of the Year for the Maasai Living Cultures Project. The annual award celebrates the best in the world of museums, galleries plus cultural heritage visitor attractions.
The exhibition explores the current debate surrounding collections gathered during the colonial period and the question of restitution. Visitors not only learn about the provenance of cultural objects but also to reflect on ownership, value, and the ethical implications of a colonial history that continues to resonate in museum collections today. [ English version and Dutch version ]
Restitution and repatriation are topics of much attention and debate in the world of museums, archives, and cultural heritage institutions. How do music, intangible heritage, and historical sound recordings from colonial contexts fit into these debates?
The International Conference on Cultural Heritage in Africa: A Dialogue on the Concept of Authenticity will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 6 to 9 May 2025.
International Conference. - Decolonising Cultural Heritage: State of the Art, Methodologies, and Practices”. University for Foreigners of Siena, Italy.
A 1000-year-old statue of the Boddhisattva Guan Yin lives in The British Museum. When it emerges that the statue was stolen from its original home, the museum attempts to deflect both the public response and controversial repatriation claims from the Chinese government.
The Paris museum has invited African researchers to study the archives of the expedition, which took place between 1931 and 1933, and to carry out field studies to retrace the conditions of the undercover raid on artifacts.
[ conference in French ] Germany, Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Mali, Sénégal, Switzerland - Academics, activists, artists, experts from communities and museum actors debate the future of museums in Africa and in Europe.
The Memory & Heritage Network of Utrecht University and the ERC project Ecologies of Violence: Crimes Against Nature in the Contemporary Cultural Imagination (Eco-Violence) are organizing a workshop on the representation of colonial and ecological violence in museums.
[ simultaneous translation into German, French and English ] 'Hidden paths and emerging networks - Provenance research between memory and responsibility' is the title of the event on the occasion of the 7th International Research Day on the Provenance of Cultural Objects, the Franco-German Research Fund on the Provenance of Sub-Saharan African Objects invites leading scientists and experts working at the intersection of provenance research, restitution issues and museum practices.
The 2025 Kenneth Kirkwood Day will explore the theme of repatriations, looking at how different museums are approaching this, the language used and if, how and why returns should be made.
[ in French ] Study day organised as part of the PRD-ARES project (ULB-UNILU-UCLouvain) ‘Towards the psychosocial reappropriation and resocialisation by the source-communities of Katanga of the remains of former soldiers to be repatriated and the cultural objects to be recovered’.
The 41st anniversary of the Mary L. Cornille (GRS ’87) Boston University Graduate Symposium in the History of Art & Architecture invites proposals for papers exploring themes of alterity through critically interrogating dominant historical narratives, canonical art prejudices and hegemonic power structures in visual and material culture, and in the field of art history. Deadline 01 February 2025.
How can academics and museum professionals research the provenance of a colonial museum collection? And can we trace possible ‘involuntary loss of possession’ or looted objects?
“Black Paris” retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. The exhibition celebrates 150 black artists coming from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.
[ in English and in Dutch ] Science museums are full of skeletons, skulls and other human and animal remains. How were these obtained? Colonial heritage researchers shed new light on that question and come to painful conclusions.
Open Restitution Africa is undertaking a large-scale research project to map past and current restitution undertakings for belongings (material heritage) and human ancestors from the African continent. Deadline 14 March 2025.
TRANSMAT | IN2PAST 2025 Conference set to take place in March 2025, in Figueira da Foz (Portugal), this international conference is a collaborative effort between colleagues from Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA University, and Évora University (Portugal), Queens College, City University of New York (USA), University of São Paulo (Brazil), and Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (UK), supported by TheMuseumsLab.
The Symposium will draw together discussion of Holocaust-era looted art and cultural property, antiquities taken in the Colonial-era and subsequently, as well as Native American cultural and religious artifacts, ancestors, and repatriation.
The Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group and the Interest Group on International Law of Culture of the European Society of International Law invite members and interested individuals to a webinar exploring the meanings and significance of provenance research in the current legal debate on the return and restitution of looted cultural objects.
The team of the French-Romanian MA "Politics in a Global Age: States, Borders and Societies", in collaboration with lecturers and researchers from Senegal, Switzerland, France, Belgium is organising a training programme that will take place online and in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence.
Who owns stolen art? Today on the show, the bloody journey of a Benin Bronze from West Africa to the halls of one of England's most elite universities — a tale of imperialism, betrayal, and the making of the modern world.
After receiving a letter from the Thai government, it was not difficult for the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco to determine it was showing looted objects. Before their return the museum holds an exhibition. Is this becoming a trend?
UNESCO, in collaboration with the AfricanUnion and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, is hosting a regional dialogue in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the new forms of cooperation and agreements in the field of the return and restitution of cultural property in Africa.
Annual Lecture: Centre for Religion and Heritage by dr. Mirjam Shatanawi
January 15 2025, 14.00-15.30 (coffee and tea, from 13.30)
The “De Grote Indonesië Tentoonstelling” at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam has faced scrutiny due to its display of seven Buddha heads, allegedly from the Borobudur, lacking contextualisation.
Twelve dadikwakwa-kwa given to Manchester Museum on condition they are not permanently kept behind glass.
This project explores the colonial framework that has shaped our understanding and knowledge of historical objects, focusing on the Lombok Treasures looted from Cakranegara Palace in 1894. Adopting a decolonial perspective, this project reframes these heritage objects as living entities endowed with knowledge and cultural significance, rather than mere relics.
Author Henning Melber in conversation with René Aguigah about his new book "The Long Shadow of German Colonialism".
Conference Sensitive Legacy in University Collections: Adaptation and Restitution, organized by the ANU Centre for European Studies in collaboration with The Urban Memory Foundation and the University of Wroclaw, Poland.
Exactly 130 years ago, the World Exhibition took place in Antwerp. For that occasion, 144 Congolese were exhibited at the KMSKA. Seven Congolese died. The AfricaMuseum, which has a similar colonial history in Tervuren, organizes an online MuseumTalk about the memory and commemoration of this tragedy. The speakers are a researcher, an activist and an artist.
Special exhibition running from 8 November 2024 until 18 May 2025 in Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich
ETH Zurich's natural history collections house thousands of artefacts from former overseas colonies, including rocks and minerals, insects, animal and plant specimens.
The workshop “People, Objects and Ideas Circulation: Transnational Entanglements between Brazil and Germany”, held in the context of the 200th anniversary of German-speaking people’s immigration to Brazil, offered a fresh perspective to reflect upon the relations between Brazil and Germany.
How did Geneva live through the colonial period? In what ways was the Ethnography Museum a major cultural actor in the colonial context? What is the future of the collections held there? Can we understand today the real identity of an object, sometimes centuries after it entered the Genevan museum collections?
His curation of Benin's Venice Biennale pavilion will draw on the ancient Gelede philosophy of Yoruba Feminism. Beninois artists will produce site-specific works for Benin’s debut pavilion, which will be co-curated by Madame Yassine Lassissi and Franck Houndegla.
The Friends of African and African American Art of the Detroit Institute of Arts’ 2023 nominee for the Margaret Herz Demant African Art Award, Dr. Kwame Tua Opoku, is a retired United Nations Legal Advisor and a recognized voice in African repatriations.
Timor-Leste has a long and complex history of colonial entanglements with the Portuguese, and the number of Portuguese documents related to this is rather big. Their digitalisation will help on both sides.
By looking into museum inventories and archives, The Restitution of Knowledge wishes to document and rethink the history of ‘plunder’ in ethnological collections.
[ in German ] The Roman-Catholic (RC) Institute for World-Church and Mission (IWM) in Frankfurt am Main is running a two-years pilot-project "Mission-History Collections", funded by two RC organisations.
 Françoise Vergès asks if we would not imagine something else for the 21st century that can answer current challenges – climate disaster, neoliberalism, imperialism, financialisation, increasing poverty, new forms of looting and destruction of art – that would not be on the hegemonic model of the Western museum.
At Galeria Avenida da Índia in Lisbon, Uriel Orlow’s exhibition Memória Colateral unfolds like a sensory mapping of historical violence and of how memory is inscribed – or erased – within Western structures.
The Saba Archaeological Center Foundation and the St. Eustatius Department of Culture is looking for a passionate Archaeologist to join our team! Application deadline 25 May 2025
Earn a graduate qualification in Heritage and Memory Studies, and explore issues of remembering the past in the modern world.
[ in Dutch ] As project coordinator participatory appreciation path in Kina museum, Ghent,, you will set up a process that creates space for reflection, discussion and future-oriented proposals that the museum can take forward.
The Franco-German Fund for Provenance Research on cultural belonging from Sub-Saharan Africa has announced the funding of networking and parthership initiatives aimed at fostering the creation of international research teams and strengthening existing partnerships between Germany, France, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
[ in French ] Are you an academic researcher, a person from the museum, private or public, political-diplomatic, community and government sectors, or from the sphere of regional and international cooperation?
This call for contributions to Terroirs, African Journal of Social Sciences and Philosophy, aims to give greater consideration to African perspectives by analyzing citizen mobilizations, artistic initiatives, state strategies, and community practices that shape the return of heritage.
The Allard Pierson is conducting research into the provenance history of the archaeological collections over the period 2023-2027. There is little or no information on the provenance of many of these approximately 19,000 artefacts.
PhD grant associated with the project "Beyond Restitution: Appropriation, Replication, Life, and Exhibition of Colonial Objects in Latin America" in Barcelona. Focus: Colonised countries.
This is a double call: one for Provenance research projects, and one for Networking and partnerships.
The Restituting, Reconnecting, Reimagining Sound Heritage (Re:Sound) project invites applications for three short-term research fellowships aimed at scholars, curators, artists, and source community members from Southeast Asia.
[ in Portuguese ] The exhibition "The Photographic Impulse. (Dis)arrangement of the Colonial Archive" proposes a decolonial reading of the images and scientific objects from geodesy and anthropology expeditions carried out in territories colonized by Portugal.
The lecture series “Heritage and Justice: Unpacking Legal Narratives in Natural History” brings together international scholars with diverse perspectives across legal, ethical, and professional frameworks. It aims to open up a research field and map the complexities that lie at the intersection of law, ethics, politics, sovereignty, and natural history collections.
Join the Association on American Indian Affairs virtually for the 11th Annual Repatriation Conference! We are looking for presenters, trainers, and speakers! Submit your proposal by November 10!!
Event type
Organiser
Collection
Origin
Currently in
Ownership
Restitution mode
Stakeholders
See More See Less