Switzerland has allocated just under CHF2 million ($2.4 million) to research the provenance of cultural artefacts held by museums and collections, with funding for 26 projects scheduled for 2027–2028. The work will examine objects linked to colonial and archaeological contexts and the Nazi era, including how items entered collections and, in some cases, their connections to communities of origin. The Swiss Federal Office of Culture announced the awards after a public call for proposals.
Research will span collections and archives
The funded work will include detailed studies of individual objects, reviews of larger groups of holdings and the cataloguing or digitisation of archives and databases. The aim is to make material available for research while helping institutions establish what can be known about the histories of their collections.
Projects bring together museums and other partners, including communities of origin, while also involving collections with less experience in provenance research. The range matters in Switzerland’s decentralised museum landscape: the funding is intended to help different kinds of institutions build an evidentiary basis for decisions and possible next steps, rather than prescribe a single outcome.
Basel project examines Indonesian human remains
A $120,000 grant will support a collaboration between the Natural History Museum in Basel and Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. The researchers will investigate 189 Indonesian human remains held by the Basel museum, tracing their provenance and the circumstances in which they were acquired.
The project will also seek to identify potential descendant communities. Its stated purpose is to establish a basis for restitution dialogues; the funding announcement does not specify a decision on return. The research therefore centres both on the collection’s history and on identifying people or communities with whom the institution might discuss that history.
Nine museums study artefacts from Cameroon
A separate $120,000 award backs a joint project involving nine Swiss museums, among them the Museum of Cultures Basel and the Bern Historical Museum. Together, the institutions will investigate more than 6,300 artefacts from Cameroon held across their collections.
The inquiry will consider how the objects were appropriated, the successive changes in ownership and their significance to contemporary Cameroon. Examining holdings across nine institutions makes it possible to consider related questions across multiple collections, rather than treating each artefact as an isolated case.
Kunstmuseum Basel reviews 336 drawings
The programme also addresses art from the Nazi era. Kunstmuseum Basel will receive $120,000 to investigate 336 drawings whose provenance histories have previously been flagged as problematic.
The research will look beyond the drawings’ ownership records to examine the circumstances and fates of their sellers, alongside the museum’s collection strategies from 1933 to 1945. That scope connects the history of specific works with the decisions and conditions that shaped the museum’s acquisitions during the period.
Funding establishes a basis for further action
The 26 awards cover both focused investigations and broader, collaborative research, addressing the colonial legacy and Nazi-looted art in Swiss museums. Their shared starting point is provenance: reconstructing an object’s history, the circumstances of its acquisition and the record of its transfer between owners or institutions.
For the participating collections, the projects are designed to produce findings that can inform what happens next. The work on human remains explicitly seeks a foundation for restitution discussions, while the Cameroon research will assess the artefacts’ significance today. The announcement sets out the research agenda, not final conclusions about individual claims or returns.
Takeaway: Switzerland’s just-under-CHF2 million programme will fund 26 projects investigating colonial, archaeological and Nazi-era provenance, with research ranging from 189 Indonesian remains to more than 6,300 artefacts from Cameroon.
What this piece draws on
- artnews.com — “Swiss Government to Fund Research into Holdings of”
- swissinfo.ch — “Swiss allocate funding for research into cultural artefacts – SWI swissinfo.ch”
- ICE — “Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities (CPAA) Investigations”
- lootedart.com — “Welcome to lootedart.com”
- state.gov — “Switzerland – United States Department of State”
