Austrian government to propose law on returning museum objects acquired in a colonial context

The Austrian authorities goals to suggest laws governing the restitution of objects in nationwide museums acquired in a colonial context by March 2024, the tradition secretary, Andrea Mayer, informed a press convention right now.

A government-appointed advisory committee led by Jonathan Tremendous, the scientific director of the Weltmuseum in Vienna, referred to as for a everlasting, “intellectually and culturally numerous” analysis board to submit suggestions on returns of objects acquired within the colonial period to the federal government. The federal government would then resolve on the idea of its findings; returns must be handled on a “state-to-state foundation,” the committee really useful in its report launched right now.

Mayer stated Austria goals to introduce an “orderly, constant and complete” course of for dealing with restitution claims. “The rulers of European international locations lengthy seen massive components of the world as locations the place they might assist themselves; they merely took artefacts and noticed that as their pure proper,” she stated. “Calling out this injustice and following it up with critical debate and concrete actions is Austria’s accountability too.”

Tremendous stated there’s at the moment no estimate for the variety of gadgets in Austrian nationwide museums that might be eligible for restitution however that he believes “very many” of the 200,000 objects within the Weltmuseum’s assortment have been taken in a colonial context. The advisory fee outlined objects eligible for return as these whose homeowners “didn’t want to half with them on the time they have been collected” – encompassing, for example, these misplaced “underneath circumstances of violence, looting, theft, coercion or by misleading means.”

Austria solely dabbled in colonialism briefly within the 18th century, when the Habsburg Monarchy tried to determine colonies within the Nicobar Islands in addition to components of Mozambique and South East and East Asia. Nevertheless it profited from different nations’ colonial exploits. Austrian people and organisations acquired objects throughout armed conflicts and in scientific and political expeditions, and engaged in commerce and Christian missions in different international locations’ colonies.

“Colonial propaganda was bolstered, analysis into ‘race science’ intensified, and colonialist pondering and attitudes dominated public opinion,” the advisory committee stated in its report. “As one of many successors to the Habsburg monarchy, the Republic of Austria has paid comparatively little consideration to its predecessor’s colonial historical past.” Provenance analysis into Austrian colonial contexts “continues to be in its infancy,” the committee stated.

The advisory committee additionally referred to as for continued help for provenance analysis and everlasting funds to help civil society initiatives aimed toward selling consciousness of the legacy of colonialism.