Friedrich Nietzsche once commented in his inimitable style: "Europeans reveal themselves by the way they have colonised." Those same Europeans often summarily dismissed as "primitive" the peoples as well as the art and culture of their colonies, leading to the neglect and irretrievable loss of many works of art as well as their iconological context and therefore to the omission of much value from cultural analysis.

The industrialized world starts the third millennium with a more balanced approach. Globalisation leads to mutual appreciation and respect between different cultures and put into context claims about European cultural superiority.

What better ambassadors of culture to kindle such mutual understanding than objects of art? Such was the principle guiding a small group of lovers of remote cultures and their often exceptional art objects when they established the "Forgotten Cultural Treasures Foundation" SVK.

The SVK was founded to speak for the great art of those cultures long concealed from European eyes, providing those art objects with an intercultural context for more universal appreciation.