Colloque: “The return of looted artefacts since 1945 -post-fascist and post-colonial restitution in comparative perspective” (hybride Rome/ distanciel, 16-18 mai 2022)

Au mois de mai prochain se déroulera un colloque organisé à la maison Goethe de Rome sur la thématique de la restitution, dans une approche comparée entre les spoliations fascistes et coloniales.

Bien que les différences entre les expériences fascistes et coloniales soient incontestables, enquêter sur les similitudes des pratiques et des discours des restitutions post-fascistes et post-coloniales apparaît crucial afin mieux comprendre la pertinence politique du patrimoine et son rôle dans la mémoire et la nation, ainsi que la persistance des stéréotypes anti-juifs et racistes dans l’ordre mondial post-1945, et enfin la récurrence des motifs de restitution dans la propagande nationaliste actuelle.

Nous nous permettons de relayer ici l’annonce du colloque.

La participation (en distanciel ou présentiel) est soumise à inscription (avant le 12 mai 2022) au lien suivant : https://event.dhi-roma.it/participant/create/d126b747-c1bb-4593-867e-eac3db19465a

PROGRAMME

Monday 16 May 2022

09.00 – 13.00 ICE-BREAKER OUTING [for speakers & chairs]
Walking tour of fascist Rome at EUR with F. Bartolini, followed by a visit to the installation Unveiled storages. How to imagine a decolonial Museum, former Colonial Museum, with G. Delpino & R. Di Lella

13.00 – 14.00 Informal LUNCH [for speakers & chairs]
14.00 – 15.00 REGISTRATION

15.00 – 15.30
Opening remarks
Hans van Ess (President, Max Weber Foundation)
Martin Baumeister (Director, German Historical Institute Rome)
Joachim Bernauer (Director, Goethe-Institut, Rome)
Bianca Gaudenzi (GHI Rome/Konstanz/ Cambridge)

15.30 – 17.00
Panel I: REDEFINING RESTITUTION ACROSS the 1945 DIVIDE
Chair: Thomas Kirchner (DFK Paris)

Lars Müller (Saxony-Anhalt Museum Association & Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig), Historicising claims for the return of cultural heritage from colonial contexts
Jason Lustig (Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, Austin), To the Victors go the Definitions? Looting, restitution, and the post-WWII US Culture Wars

17.00 – 17.30
AFTERNOON COFFEE/TEA in the garden [for speakers & chairs]

17.30 – 19.30
Panel II: SHIFTING POWER STRUCTURES & IDENTITY POLITICS
Chair: Miloš Řezník (GHI Warsaw)

Winani Thebele (Botswana National Museum), The Restitution of Cultural Property: a question of power structures and lost identity
Barbara Vodopivec (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts), The restitution of artworks from Austria to Yugoslavia after 1945 in the new Central and Eastern European post-war reality
Abena A. Yalley (University of Konstanz) & Daniel Kwofie (University of Professional Studies, Accra), Restitution is Equal to What? The assassination and return of the head of Badu Bonso II by the Dutch and its implications for the Ahanta people of Ghana

19.30-20.00 APERITIVO in the garden [for speakers & chairs]

20.00
KEYNOTE SPEECH: Bénédicte Savoy (TU Berlin)
A Monument to Burnt Villages? On the consequences of radical transparency in museums
Introduced by Hans van Ess (President, Max Weber Stiftung)

21.00 DINNER [for speakers & chairs]

Tuesday 17 May 2022

9.00- 11.00
Panel III: A MULTIPLE BURDEN. TACKLING COLONIAL, NAZI AND GDR-ERA PROVENANCES TOGETHER
Chairs: Thomas Maissen (GHI Paris) & Bénédicte Savoy (TU Berlin)

Christine Howald (Zentralarchiv – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Traces of Loss – Asian objects from Jewish collections in German museums
Mattes Lammert (TU Berlin/DFK Paris), Displacement of Displaced Objects. Paris, a trading hub of antiquities under German Occupation
Xenia Schiemann (TU Berlin), Restitutions behind the Wall? Art market and claims for the return of looted cultural goods between the GDR and the West

11.00-11.30
MORNING COFFEE/TEA in the garden [for speakers & chairs]

11.30- 13.30
Panel IV: INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES to RESTITUTION CLAIMS
Chair: Simone Lässig (GHI Washington)

Jonathan Bach (The New School, NY), The Object as a Site of Reckoning in Germany’s Layered Pasts
Borbála Klacsmann (Independent researcher), “In Conflict with the Moral Mindset of the Hungarian People”: anti-Jewish notions in the restitution to Hungarian Holocaust survivors
James McSpadden (University of Nevada, Reno), Looted Nazi and Holocaust-Era Books in the United States and the Changing Rationales for Restitution

13.30-14.30 LUNCH in the garden [for speakers & chairs]

14.30-17.00
Panel V: PUBLIC and ARTISTIC NARRATIVES OF RESTITUTION
Chair: Christina von Hodenberg (GHI London)

Shlomit Steinberg (Israel Museum), Dr. Gurlitt and I
Staffan Lundén (University of Gothenburg), The Benin bronzes. Whose stories get told, silenced or neutralised?
Shauna Isaac (Independent researcher, London), Portrait of Wally: the first major restitution case and its influence on restitution in the last two decades
Veronika Rudorfer (KunstForum Wien), Another Form of Restitution? Possibilities and problems of contemporary artistic practices dealing with questions of restitution

17.00-17.30
AFTERNOON COFFEE/TEA in the garden [for speakers & chairs]

17.30-20.30
AFTERNOON OUTING [for speakers & chairs]
Walking tour of the Jewish Quartier with A. Osti Guerrazzi, followed by aperitivo

21.00 DINNER [for speakers & chairs]

Wednesday 18 May 2022

09.00-11.00
Panel VI: COMPARING POST-FASCIST & POST-COLONIAL RESTITUTION: A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE
Chairs: Birgit Schäbler (Orient-Institut Beirut) & Arianna Visconti (Catholic University, Milan)

Leora Bilsky & Rachel Rachel Klagsbrun (Buchmann Faculty of Law & Minerva Center for Human Rights, Tel Aviv University), Beyond Restitution: from Jewish Cultural Reconstruction to the Sarr-Savoy Report – challenging the private property paradigm
Tabitha Oost (University of Amsterdam), A Changing “Moral” Paradigm in an Entangled Restitution Debate: lessons learned for the restitution of Nazi-Looted and colonial cultural objects
Benno Nietzel (Ruhr University Bochum), Collective and Individual Claims in the Restitution of Cultural Property

11.00-11.30
MORNING COFFEE/TEA in the garden [for speakers & chairs]

11.30-13.30
Panel VII: DECOLONISING MUSEAL PRACTICES
Chair: Christoph K. Neumann (LMU Munich)

Achia Anzi (University of Amsterdam & Jindal University, Delhi), Institution, Destitution, Restitution: how to decolonise the museum?
Flaminia Bartolini (ISPC/CNR & British School at Rome), Renegotiating the past at the ex-Colonial Museum in Rome
Dan Hicks (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford), The Brutish Museums

13.30-14.30 LUNCH in the garden [for speakers & chairs]

14.30-16.30
Panel VIII: ITALY AND ITS COLONIAL DISCONTENTS
Chair: Ilaria Pavan (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)

Francesca Cavarocchi (University of Florence), Lost in Transition: postwar Italy facing claims for cultural objects by its former colonies
Simona Troilo (University of L’Aquila), The Slow Restitution. The return of colonial artifacts in Republican Italy
Beatrice Falcucci (University of L’Aquila), The Colonial Museum in Rome and Requests for Repatriation: the Libyan case

16.30-17.00
A CHAT with the ARTISTS
Exhibition The UnArchivable. Colonial roots and decolonial ways, KunstRaum Goethe-Institut (Foyer)

17.00-17.30 AFTERNOON COFFEE/TEA [for speakers & chairs]

17.30-19.00
Final Roundtable: ITALY’S POST-FASCIST & POST-COLONIAL MEMORY THROUGH MATERIAL CULTURE
Chair: Bianca Gaudenzi (GHI Rome/Konstanz/Cambridge)

Valeria Deplano (University of Cagliari)
Donata Levi (University of Udine)
Igiaba Scego (writer)
Emanuele Pellegrini (IMT Lucca)
Uoldelul Chelati Dirar (University of Macerata)

19.00-19.30
Concluding remarks
Bianca Gaudenzi (GHI Rome/Konstanz/Cambridge)
Lutz Klinkhammer (Vice-Director, GHI Rome)
Martin Baumeister (Director, GHI Rome)

19.30 End of the conference

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