Circumambulating Objects: on Paradigms of Restitution of Southeast Asian Art

An open call for a new project by SOAS and the Getty Foundation looking at the restitution of art. There is an information session scheduled for March 10, and the application deadline is 24 March 2023.

Circumambulating Objects: on Paradigms of Restitution of Southeast Asian Art (CO-OP) is a collective research project supported by the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories program. CO-OP invites additional participants to join our team of scholars and professionals to examine local Southeast Asian epistemologies and needs at the intersection of current global debates around Restitution. The group will meet 10 days annually for a 3-year period, with a special thematic focus each year.

As for members of the diaspora returning ‘home,’ ‘art’ does not return to the same context from which it was first displaced. The new home has to be created in the stead of the old—in stores, on display, in museums, temples or palaces; in turn, wherever ‘art’ is, it contributes to the ongoing making of ‘home.’ Taking place only once the media spotlight has been turned off, this is the other end of the restitution process which the CO-OP project aims to consider and nurture by probing long, local histories of object circulation and circumambulation, and epistemologies involving object identification, appreciation and use. We will also consider the needs, constraints and possibilities of return once ‘home.’

Source: Join Us – CO-OP