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 (Museum am Rothenbaum, Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Dr. Antoinette Dominicé (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich), Prof. Dr. Albert Gouaffo (Dschang University, Cameroon), Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Savoy (Technische Universität Berlin), Dr. Stephanie Tasch (Cultural Foundation of the Länder).

Monika Grütters said: “For many years, Germany’s colonial history was a blind spot in our culture of remembrance. Provenance research on collections from colonial contexts plays a major role 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. It will provide publicly funded museums and collections, libraries, archives, and research institutions throughout Germany with financial support for 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.kulturgutverluste.de