From the Objects to the Actors of Restitution: Jewish Agency in the Nazi-Era Looted Art and Artefact Restitution Field

Abstract

Scholarship on the restitution of art and artefacts looted during the Nazi era has predominantly focused on objects rather than the actors who have shaped this field. This article adopts an actor-oriented approach to examine the agency of Jewish cultural brokers formative to restitution processes since the 1950s. Drawing on interviews conducted with fifteen Jewish cultural brokers from 2022 to 2025 and archival research at the Leo Baeck Institute Archives in New York, it traces how Jewish actors have pioneered and transformed the restitution field. The research reveals two phases of restitution work. In the first phase (1950s–1990s), Jewish lawyers and organisations established legal frameworks for restitution claims. In the second phase (late twentieth century to the present), second- and third-generation Jewish actors shifted the field from national toward moral and global frameworks to emphasise ‘just and fair solutions’. Contemporary Jewish cultural brokers understand their work as both personal heritage practice and moral obligation. They assert agency, seeking not merely the return of objects but the restoration of marginalised stories to history. This actor-centric approach reveals restitution as a processual, relational, and spatial practice of heritage-making that encompasses voice, recognition, and collective memory. By centring Jewish agency, the study demonstrates how marginalised populations can transform institutional fields, offering new perspectives on cultural heritage as an active, lived process rather than a static product of the past.