Bought, robbed, given, extorted or loote • Table.Briefings

Index card of a bowl presumably looted during the „Boxer War“, which is now part of the collection of the German Museum of Asian Art.

Provenance research is dedicated to the question of how art pieces from other parts of the world arrived in the colonial states. In Berlin, China slowly shifts into focus. The reason for this is that German soldiers stole numerous valuable pieces of art during the Boxer Rebellion. A team of seven German museums, in cooperation with Shanghai University, wants to clarify their origin and whereabouts.

The project „Traces of the Boxer War“ already has international resonance. Just recently, Christine Howald, the project manager, and Kerstin Pannhorst, a historian involved in the project, accompanied a Japanese film team through the Ethnological Museum in Berlin-Dahlem. The public television company NHK from Tokyo is shooting a film about art pieces from the colonial context in the possession of European museums.

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