To Those Who Will Come After: The Parrhesia of Traces – Confronting What We Are Forgetting

“The contradictions are our hope.” – Bertolt Brecht

This presentation explores provenance research as a means to engage with loss, absence, and the societal dynamics of Nazi-perpetrated “thefticide” (theft as part of genocide) of cultural objects. It introduces the concept of the Parrhesia of Traces, emphasizing the need to listen carefully to traces attached to objects – not as fixed narrative, but as multi-layered remnants of a lost world. By distinguishing between traces of people – active participants in a diverse world whose full stories can never be fully reconstructed – and traces of societal crime that erased them, we uncover patterns of absence and ongoing power imbalances. This approach challenges us to recognize both the presences of absence and the structures of crime.

Provenance research becomes a tool for confronting these absences, not merely as history, but as ongoing encounters with traces in the present. They invite us to question our own frameworks of memory, confront contradictions, and open ourselves to humility and reflection, understanding that the gaps and silences in provenances are where new learning and connections related to aspects of the Holocaust can emerge. Only through ongoing reflection on how we engage with traces can we truly confront and challenge the societal crime and its enduring implications.

Lea Grüter

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Lea Grüter is a provenance specialist at the Rijksmuseum, where she has worked since 2017, focusing on acquisitions made after 1933. With academic training in art history, French, critical museology, and heritage studies from Göttingen, Paris, and Amsterdam, she specializes in the confiscations and restitution of cultural objects expropriated as part of the Holocaust. Her research examines the moral, political, and societal dimensions of provenance, with particular attention to the memorial challenges of past mass violence, genocide and the ongoing impact of historical absences.