The ongoing debates around decolonizing the museum have not only taken on dominant regimes of representation but have also increasingly interrogated the material basis of the museum.  The ways in which collections have been accumulated and subsequently mobilized in the knowledge production on cultural heritage are under ever more scrutiny, and rightly so. The struggles for the restitution of artworks and historical objects have been pivotal in these developments, and, perhaps for the first time, in the wake of the global Black Lives Matter Movement/Movement for Black Lives have been able to galvanize broader publics in favor of acts of return. While some high profile restitutions from European institutions have been celebrated in the realm of diplomacy, the larger political conditions and legal frameworks within which current acts of return are conducted are still in need of critical examination. At the same time the idea of the universal or encyclopedic museum continues to retain its power, be it in national or international politics. It does so by trying to recuperate the language of decolonization and of “diversity” in ways that seem to indicate a shift from the paradigm of “preserving the past” to one of “preserving the museum” itself. Indeed, we are witnessing the simultaneous  acceleration of restitution demands and of the integration of the terminology of decolonization into European cultural policies, in ways that stabilize both geopolitical power relations as well as the institution of the museum in its modern form.

Taking restitution as a vantage point, the BEYONDREST event series examines not only this shift but explores how restitution holds the potential to transform the very ways of producing knowledge on cultural heritage and art, both inside and outside the museum. Interrogating how the “preservation paradigm” is mobilized in different scholarly, political, and social practices surrounding cultural heritage, the invited speakers offer conceptual contemplations on dispossession and inheritance as well as the ways in which conceptions of ownership and property shape those of cultural heritage and of provenance. In different formats and drawing on neighboring disciplines, the event series proposes new readings  of the laws and legal provisions that are supposed to protect and preserve cultural heritage. The guest lectures, panels, and screenings  offer inquiries into how ongoing restitution debates are currently shaping the fields that contribute to the knowledge production on cultural heritage, such as archeology, art history, history, anthropology, cultural studies, critical theory, and museum studies. They also examines how restitution debates are mobilized in national contexts and authoritarian fields. We hope to open up space for discussing the limitations and possibilities that archival research offers in efforts to transform knowledge production. Together, we aim to explore and imagine different ways of knowledge-making in the complex of cultural heritage from perspectives that are committed to decolonization.