ABSTRACT
Private owners of collections from colonial areas and dealers can be found in all continents, and also in former colonies. Africa, Asia, Latin America and other places outside the traditional art market countries in Europe and North America have their own big collectors and dealers. This chapter focuses, however, on auction houses, dealers and private owners in the Netherlands and Belgium. They range from family members with a few colonial objects and hucksters in garages to chic dealers and the royal houses of the two countries. They often operate in silence. What they have ranges from tourist art to masterpieces. Masterpieces in trade and private ownership almost always remain out of sight. Do dealers and private owners ever return objects? Finding an answer to this question turns out to be more difficult than searching for information on the return of public museum collections.
