The RAAD Project was inspired by a French report titled, The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage Toward a New Relational Ethics report written by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, and prepared with the assistance of the Inspector General of Cultural Affairs, the Institut des sciences sociales du politique, Ministere de la Culture, Université Paris Nanterre and translated by Drew S. Burk, which was commissioned by and submitted to the French presidency in November 2018.
The African art and artifacts in this report are The Africa Collection of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum, Paris, France.
The RAAD Project Team wishes to thank Mr. Vincent Négri, Researcher at the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique, who introduced the project to M. Victor Claass, PhD, who then generously shared the museum’s raw data catalogue of The Africa Collection with The RAAD Project team.
The MQB’s data is accessible to the public, though opaque, and has served as the meta-data for The RAAD Project.
The RAAD Project team has translated the data from French to English and worked with the data to increase its transparency, legibility, and scaling potential for future expansion of The RAAD Project Database.