Paper short abstract:

The simple call for restitution often obscures the complex contexts and practicalities of returning cultural entities from museum collections to their rightful owners. This paper presents the range of questions associated with restitution processes and some practical approaches.

Paper long abstract:

The simple term restitution, if understood literally as a process of restoring, returning or recovering something, entails a complex range of legal, political, cultural, spiritual, epistemological, economic and material meanings and implications. What exactly is being restituted with/in/beyond an “object”? How is it restituted? Who is the rightful owner? What knowledge, belief and cultural practices are needed, enabled or missing in the process, and what impact does this have on the significance of a restitution for the parties involved? Who tends to be excluded from such processes, why, and how is this addressed? This paper presents key questions and challenges observed and experienced in a German ethnographic museum context and proposes a set of approaches that open up the notion of restitution from a curatorial point of view. The focus thereby lies on the relational potential: Relational approaches that consider conversation, exchange, co-creation and un-learning part of restitution address important aspects mostly ignored in the political and public debates on restitution.