Rethinking the Restitutionary Moment: What Next?

Final Conference | November 27-28, 2025 | Grote Zaal, Wereldmuseum Leiden

The multi-year research project Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums draws to a close at the end of 2025. Pressing Matter, funded by the Dutch Science Agenda (NWA-NWO) and the consortium partners, investigated the future of objects collected in colonial times. It asked about the potentialities of ‘colonial objects’ to support societal reconciliation with the colonial past and its afterlives, and how best to deal with conflicting claims by different stakeholders for these objects.

This final conference explores what Pressing Matter’s critical friend, Professor Ciraj Rassool, has described as the restitutionary moment we now inhabit. What are its challenges and opportunities? Confirmed speakers include Tal Adler, Kenzie Allen, Bernadette Atuahene, Dan Hicks, Kodzo Gavua, Farabi Fakih, Hilmar Farid, and Motsane Gertrude Seabela.

Photo: Restitution ceremony with Ysleta del sur Pueblo (United States) in Wereldmuseum Leiden, 2025. Photo: Boudewijn Bollmann.

You may also like the following events from Research Center for Material Culture:

• This month, 25th November, 10:30 am, In Conversation with the Nchivi Ñuu Savi Collective in Leiden