Date: 28 May 2026
Time: 16:00
Location: Resistance Museum Amsterdam
Organisation: Expertisecentrum Restitutie (ECR) of the NIOD and the Resistance Museum Amsterdam
Language: Dutch
The Expert Centre Restitution (ECR) of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Resistance Museum Amsterdam present Roofkunst Ontrafeld, a series of lectures on lesser-known sides of looted art and restitution. Historians connected to the NIOD will present recent research and surprising insights and engage in dialogue with the audience, moderated by Yuki Kho. On 28 May, researcher Maarten van der Bent will present the lecture De Dubois-collectie: 28.000 fossielen en een Indische stem.
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In september 2025 besloot de Nederlandse overheid dat een verzamelding van maar liefst 28.000 fossielen uit de collectie van Naturalis teruggaat naar Indonesië. Deze Dubois-collectie, die onder leiding van de Nederlandse paleontoloog Eugène Dubois eind negentiende eeuw in Indonesië werden opgegraven, werd al decennialang door Indonesië teruggevraagd. Minder bekend is echter dat de roep om restitutie in de koloniale tijd klonk. Wat was het belang van deze ‘wetenschappelijk collectie’ voor Nederlanders, Indische Nederlanders en Indonesiërs?
Indigenous Futures: Towards Policy on Ancestral Remains in the NetherlandsDate: 12-13 May, 2026
Time: 10:00-17:00
Location: Wereldmuseum Leiden
Organisation: Wereldmuseum Leiden, Research Center for Material Culture, Colonial Collections Consortium.
Language: English
Together with members of the Colonial Collections Consortium, Wereldmuseum Leiden and Research Center for Material Culture are organizing an international workshop to contribute to policy frameworks on the repatriation/rematriation and handling of ancestral remains in the Netherlands. Because of the way in which ancestral remains entered museum collections, developing a national policy framework necessitates centering the perspectives of Indigenous and formerly colonized people. This workshop brings together theory and policy input, to understand current policy frameworks in other localities and contemporary (institutional) restitution practices to develop a more comprehensive national policy shaped by Indigenous people from across the world.
How might a policy look when we foreground the lived realities and voices of those past and presence whose lives were most affected by colonial and post-colonial practices of collecting, researching displaying human and ancestral remains in museums and other heritage institutions? Should ancestral remains “acquired” under colonial situations be researched or exhibited within museums today? And how might policies embed Indigenous struggles for self-determination and sovereignty in their framework? These are only some of the questions that this workshop focuses on. More information about the workshop is available below.
International Provenance Research DayDate: 8 April 2026
Location: Online and in-person. Various museums, universities and other heritage institutions in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy and the Unites States.
Language: English
On Wednesday 8 April it is International Provenance Research Day. On this day, an initiative of the Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung, museums, universities and other heritage institutions organise events and publications to give attention to the importance of provenance research in responsible collection management. Part of this, is the importance of provenance research for a careful handling of collections from colonial contexts. These events have different formats, such as workshops, lectures, book presentations and guided museum tours. Below, you can find two examples of events that are also accesible online. Click the button below to take a look at all the events that focus on colonial collections.
University of Geneva
The University of Geneva is organising the online discussion Legal Provenance and TWAIL. This discussion explores provenance through the lens of TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law). As the question of a cultural object’s provenance may be complicated by histories of imperial acquisition and competing property law regimes, we hope that this perspective will provide the language and theoretical toolkit needed to address pertinent issues facing cultural institutions today, as well as foster an open dialogue on the postcolonial dimensions of cultural heritage law. More information is available hier.
University of Leipzig
The Institute of Anatomy at the University of Leipzig is hosting the online conversation Entangled Histories: A Conversation on Ancestral Remains from today’s South Africa at Leipzig University. The insititute is currently conducting provenance research into their collection of skulls, the initial findings of which will be shared during the event. Additionally, the discussion will focus on the intertwined histories of racist research practices, international acquisition networks and colonial wars. More information is available hier.
Date: 9 – 11 June, 2026
Location: State Museum Hannover
Organisation: Museumverband Niedersachsen und Bremen, in samenwerking met het Netzwerk Provenienzforschung in Niedersachsen.
Language: English
The Indonesian phrase pasang surut — “the tide in and out” — evokes the continuous movement of people, objects, and ideas across the seas that once linked Europe and the Indonesian archi-pelago. These currents shaped the emergence of colonial collec-tions but also suggest the possibility of renewed circulation: of knowledge, accountability, and dialogue.
The international conference Pasang Surut: Provenance Research as a Contribuition to Decolonisation and Trajectories of Restitution brings together academic and collection experts, as well as key figures from the fields of art, culture, and politics from Indonesia, Germany, and the Netherlands, to discuss the transformative potential of post-colonial provenance research as a contribution to processes of re-connection and decolonisation. Please register by 15 May 2026 at annekathrin.krieger@landesmuseum-hannover.de More information is available in de save the date below.
Ten museums delve into the provenance of colonial objectsOne year after the closing of the first round of the Regeling Herkomstonderzoek Colonial Collections, the research projects of the ten institutions that were awarded funding are in full swing. This funding scheme allows Dutch institutions managing collections to research the provenance of objects collected from colonial contexts, as a core task of careful and transparent collection management. The Colonial Collections Consortium, as provider of this subsidy, made available a total of €500.000, of which more than €240.000 was awarded to ten projects in the first round.
The awarded institutions show a broad cross section of the museum field, ranging from institutions managing state collection to municipalities, universities and private collections. They research the provenance of subcollections and specific objects that are suspected to have been collected from a colonial context. For example, Museon-Omniversum is researching a ‘banjabangi’, a rare wooden bench from Suriname that was historically used as a percussion instrument and is seen as a symbol of colonial power relations and resistance. Missiemuseum Steyl is focusing on an honorary carpet with Baxian-motives from Yanggu (China) which was taken in 1901 by missionaries under unclear circumstances. Kunstmuseum Den Haag received funding for research into, among other things, the eighteenth-century court silverware of the Sultan of Ternate, currently part of their collection of precious metals.
These are only some examples of the projects that will soon be finished. The results will be shared in provenance reports, publications, public events and exhibitions. Curious about the rest of the projects? You can find more information here.
The Colonial Collections Consortium – a partnership between Museum Bronbeek, NIOD, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Rijksmuseum and Wereldmuseum – supports provenance research financially and substantively, by offering a network and exchanging knowledge. In doing so, the Consortium contributes to a careful handling of colonial collections and collaboration with communities of origin.
Provenance research blog #5 is out now!In this blog series, the Colonial Collections Consortium presents a historical object or collection from a colonial context or situation, currently (or until recently) stored in a museum in the Netherlands that has been the focus of provenance research. Our latest blog focuses on a relief plaque from the Benin Kingdom in Nigeria.
The relief plaque is part of the large and scattered collection of royal artefacts from Benin Kingdom (today Edo state in Nigeria) that were looted in the late nineteenth century. These historic objects – known collectively as the Benin Bronzes – are an expression of Benin culture, history and arts.
The relief plaque (or Ama in Edo) representing a mudfish was until recently part of the collection of Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, in the Netherlands. Recently, archival research and technical analysis confirmed that the bronze plaque finds its provenance in Benin City. The provenance research into this object was financially supported by the Colonial Collections Consortium.
In this blog, you can read more about the provenance research, de role of the Benin Bronzes in the international restitution debate, the restitution of the bronze plaque and the exhibition Back to Benin – New Art, Ancient Legacy, which is currently on show at Museum de Fundatie.
Provenance research blog #5
In the blog series of the Consortium Colonial Collections, we present a historical object or collection from a former colonial context or situation, currently (or until recently) stored in a museum in the Netherlands that has been the focus of provenance research. Each blog explains the steps taken by the respective museum or external provenance researcher to carry out the research. Which stories lie behind the object and what can they tell us about the Dutch colonial past?
In focus this time: a relief plaque from the Benin Kingdom in Nigeria
The Benin Bronzes and the restitution debate
In this blog, we zoom in on a single item – a cast bronze plaque showing a relief representation of a mudfish. This item is part of the large and scattered collection of royal artefacts from Benin Kingdom (today within the Edo State in Nigeria) that were looted in the late nineteenth century. These historic objects – known collectively as the Benin Bronzes – are an expression of Benin culture, history and arts. They were created by specialist guilds working for the royal court of the Oba (king) in Benin City, in what is today Nigeria. The Benin Bronzes include, for example, elaborately decorated cast plaques, commemorative heads, animal and human figures and personal ornaments. They were made from at least the sixteenth century onwards and originally used as royal representational arts to portray historical events, to worship and to perform rituals. These objects were looted by British forces from the Benin Kingdom in 1897 and were distributed all over the world following this violent military campaign.
The Benin Bronzes have gained a lot of attention in recent years as they have been at the centre of debates in Europe about reckoning with its colonial past and the need to return the many historic belongings that were taken to European museums at that time, often under violent circumstances. Although seemingly recent, the current debate about restitution in Western contexts is preceded by a decades-long process that includes countless efforts from formerly colonised communities and countries to recover their historic belongings and ancestral remains. According to Eiloghosa Oghogho Obobaifo’s brief chronology, efforts to restitute the Benin Bronzes can be traced back at least to the 1960s. Bénédicte Savoy traces these and many other restitution efforts across the African continent in her recent book Africa’s Struggle for Its Art.
The situation seems to be slowly shifting, with European countries increasingly willing to return some of the belongings looted in colonial times. For instance, and following the initiative of other countries, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes in the summer of 2025 to the Nigerian government.
Shifting the scope of provenance research
The relief plaque (or Ama in Edo) representing a mudfish was until recently part of the collection of Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, in the Netherlands. This museum’s collection of more than 11.000 objects is composed of several, mainly private, collections. The basis was laid by Dirk Hannema (1895-1984), an art expert and the initiator of the Hannema-de Stuers Foundation, the origin of Museum de Fundatie. Before being forcibly removed, the relief plaque would have been part of the ornamentation of the Oba’s royal palace in Benin city.
Initially, provenance research in the Netherlands (as in other contexts) focused mainly on objects that had been forcibly expropriated during the period 1933-1945. Between 2009 and 2013, Museum de Fundatie was part of a national project organised by the Dutch Museums Association (Nederlandse Museumvereniging) to establish whether objects in collections were connected to this history. In this context, the provenance of the Benin Bronze of Museum de Fundatie was only investigated in relation to the period 1933-1945. This was done by examining the collection database, the museum’s archives and other sources.
In 2020, the debate about the restitution of colonial collections gained renewed attention in Europe, leading the museum to unearth further information about the origins, authenticity and provenance of the object. The relief plaque’s history had thus far only been traced up to 1937. What was already known about the origin of the plaque? A note by the founder of Museum de Fundatie, Dirk Hannema, showed that he had bought the relief in 1937 through art dealer Carel van Lier in Amsterdam, who had the item on loan from part of a display from Paris dealer Charles Ratton. Archival research revealed that a bas-relief of a fish bearing a strong resemblance to the Museum de Fundatie’s plaque was sold by auctioneers Messrs. Foster of Pall Mall, London on 26 June 1930. It is suspected that Ratton acquired the item there. The auction catalogue states that it came from the collection of a ‘gentleman’ and had previously been shown at the Brighton Museum (now Brighton & Hove Museums). This supports the hypothesis that the piece might have ended up in the UK via a British officer who may have been involved in the looting in 1897.
A material approach to provenance research
Since archival research was unable to provide further information about the provenance of the relief plaque, the museum decided to subject it to technical analysis in July 2025. An XRF (X-ray fluorescence) scan, which is a non-destructive analytical technique used to determine the elemental composition of materials, such as metals, plastics, or soil, showed that the plaque is made of brass, with no traces of nickel. This fact strengthened the possibility that this is a historical piece produced in Benin, rather than a modern reproduction. Subsequent chemical analysis on a small sample revealed that the metal consists of brass with small quantities of lead and tin, a composition that corresponds to the brass used in Benin and in European manillas — horseshoe-shaped pieces of metal used primarily as a form of currency. The lead isotope ratios also bear a strong resemblance to those of manillas from an eighteenth-century shipwreck found off Cape Cod, further confirming the origin of the piece. Although it is still not possible to determine with certainty how the relief plaque ended up in Paris after having been looted in 1897, the material analysis was able to confirm the origins of the bronze plaque in the collection of Museum de Fundatie.
Reflection
In this blog, we explored how shifting societal debates about the colonial past can influence the way in which museums view and research their collections. Furthermore, the case presented here showed that in some cases, material analysis of historical objects or collections can answer questions that archival research is unable to verify with certainty. Given the conclusions of the provenance research, Museum de Fundatie returned the relief plaque to the Royal House of Benin in November 2025. Furthermore, the plaque was renamed Ama O Ghe Ehen (plaque of a fish) and this is how it is referred to now, thanks to initial research by Osaisonor Godfrey Ekhator-Obogie.
In 2026, the museum opened an exhibition curated by Aude Christel Mgba (Curator of Contemporary Art), on the occasion of this restitution. Titled Back To Benin – New Art, Ancient Legacy, it brings together 10 contemporary Nigerian artists of Edo origin whose work, inspired by the plaque, engage in a dialogue with history, symbolism and cultural memory. More specifically, the exhibition shows the work of Osaze Amadasun, Minne Atairu, Leo Asemota, Victor Ehikhamenor, Taiye Idahor, Favour Jonathan, Osaru Obaseki, Enotie Ogbebor, Abraham Onoriode Oghobase and Phil Omodamwen. After the end of the exhibition, the Ama O Ghe Ehen will also return to Benin City physicially.
The provenance research into the relief plaque was financially supported by the Colonial Collections Consortium.
Final words
To better understand the historic and current meanings of objects, and how to ethically care for them, information about their origin and acquisition histories are essential. Provenance research is an ongoing process for museums. The Colonial Collections Consortium supports institutions that manage collections with this work by sharing knowledge and information, and by offering stakeholders a network. Would you like to know more or share information with us? Please contact us!
References and further reading
The provenance research presented in this blog was carried out by Kristian Garssen, Johan Koers and Aude Christel Mgba and the report was published in the catalogue of the exhibition Back To Benin – New Art, Ancient Legacy at Museum de Fundatie. The information presented in this blog derives from this research, as well as email communication with Aude Christel Mgba.
Date: 20 March 2026
Time: 10:00 AM EST/11:00 AM AST
Location: Online, via Zoom
Organisation: UWI Museum in partnership with the Centre for Repatriation Research
Language: English
The Museum of the University of the West Indies (UWI Museum) is organizing an online discussion in partnership with the Centre for Repatriation Research. The discussion explores growing global conversations around restitution, colonial collections in archives, museums and galleries and its implications for Caribbean. The session will focus on restitution debates and interventions from the Dutch, French and English speaking Caribbean as it relates to heritage, memory, and repair.
The session includes a presentation on the Colonial Collections Datahub by Camiel de Kom (Digitale Heritage Coach for the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands) and Arminda Franken-Ruiz (Heritage Specialist & Former Director, National Archaeological Museum, Aruba)
Date: 9 april 2026
Time: 16:00
Location: Resistance Museum Amsterdam
Organisation: Expertisecentrum Restitutie (ECR) of the NIOD and the Resistance Museum Amsterdam
Language: Dutch
The Expert Centre Restitution (ECR) of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Resistance Museum Amsterdam present Roofkunst Ontrafeld, a series of lectures on the lesser-known sides of looted art and restitution. Historians connected to the NIOD will present recent research and surprising insights and engage in dialogue with the audience, moderated by Yuki Kho. On 9 April, Daniël Hendrikse will present the lecture Op het kruispunt van onrecht: ‘koloniale kunst’ en de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
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Onderzoek naar kunstroof tijdens WOII en naar koloniale collecties wordt meestal gescheiden, waarbij wetenschappelijke specialisatie en morele bezwaren samenhangend onderzoek in de weg staan. Tijdens deze lezing wordt aan de hand van concrete voorbeelden gezocht naar het historisch kruispunt tussen beide onderzoeksvelden. Daarbij wordt ingegaan op de vraag: Wat te doen met objecten waarbij mogelijk sprake is van gelaagd bezitsverlies: eerst onder invloed van kolonialisme en vervolgens door toedoen van de Duitse bezetter?
Opening expo: Her Love, Her StoryDate: 8 February 2026
Time: 3 PM – 5 PM
Location: OBA Oosterdok (Public Library Amsterdam), Theatre
Organisation: Our HERitage, OBA
Language: Dutch
On 8 February, the photo exposition Her Love, Her Story will be opened at the OBA Amsterdam. The exposition was created by the project Our HERitage and presents 11 portraits of Caribbean foremothers. Their stories show how love, family and identity shape new generations. The exposition will be at the photo gallery of the OBA from 3 February until 9 March.
The opening programme starts Sunday 8 February in the Theatre on the 7th floor, with welcoming words by Our HERitage-founder Fausia S. Abdul. Keynote speaker is prof. Valika Smeulders (Rijksmuseum & Colonial Collections Consortium). Additionally, speakers include authors Liesbeth Smit and Susi & Simba Mosis and participants Tiarra Simon and Robby Kibbelaar. The afteroon will be closed with an intense performance of Reframing HERstory Art Foundation, about slavery and being women.