How do you investigate the provenance of museum collections acquired during the colonial era? Our guest speakers Mirjam Shatanawi (Reinwardt Academie and KITLV), Caroline Fernandes Caromano (LUCAS) and Paul Voogt (Missiemuseum Steyl) research such collections in the Netherlands. During this event, they will discuss their experiences as provenance researchers and some common challenges they encounter in their work. They talk about finding your way around extensive archival material spread across different institutions in the Netherlands and ways they trace ‘involuntary loss of possession’. They will also discuss the topic of researching colonial collections from different perspectives. What does it mean for a small museum with limited means to examine its collection history? And what is it like for someone from Brazil to research objects taken from their country and subsequently scattered across the European continent?

In order to assist researchers from the Netherlands and abroad in the first steps of their provenance research, the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR) of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies will present a series of digital research aids. The aids have been developed within the Colonial Collections Consortium, in conjunction with the Colonial Collections DataHub. Together with the experts and the audience, we will discuss what contribution such research aids can bring to the development of research into colonial collections in the Netherlands.