The Texture of Diaspora – Collecting Dissipated Objects, Dissipating Collected Objects

Abstract

Provenance research has always been an inherent task of cultural institutions and is therefore no novelty for libraries and museums. It is professional standard. This self-confident reaction of cultural organizations towards research assignments resulting from the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi Confiscated Art (1998) conceals the fact that the search for NS looted objects does not only call for a biography of objects but also for a biography of their pre-possessors. It also conceals that a successful termination of any search does not mean that those dubious objects found remain as part of a collection, but that it entails their restitution, which inevitably leads to their dispersal into the diaspora. The object of this essay is to show the tension and discrepancies between collection and dissipation, between provenance research, aiming at the conservation of collections, and the restitution science, aiming and the dissipation of collections.