The provenance of a Chinese honorary tapestry – which disappeared from China in 1901 and became part of the collection of Mission Museum Steyl under circumstances that are not entirely clear – has been investigated. The SVD missionaries played a role in fuelling the Boxer Rebellion.
Rachel Gatehouse and Jin Gao examine UK heritage institutions’ repatriation practices through a new database of repatriated items from 2010 to 2022. The dataset records 491 items across 29 case studies, returned to 7 countries, with most material consisting of human remains from London-based national museums, particularly the Natural History Museum. The list, created by Tamara Newton, is publicly accessible.
As Benin invests in museums, welcomes the return of looted royal treasures and stages the Festival of Masks, it is advancing a new vision of heritage in which ritual, scholarship and cultural policy converge, challenging conventional understandings of what museums preserve and how history is told.
Whilst repatriation alone does not equal a decolonised museum, elements of the repatriation process provide learnings that can be applied to anti-colonial museum practice more broadly. Amy Shakespeare puts forward a new practical framework for anti-colonial museum practice and museology – The Radicals.
[in Dutch] Since 1902, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam has had a diamond stolen from Indonesia. It has been formally requested back and that request will probably be granted. But who in Indonesia owns the diamond? The government, or the Sultan descendants, journalist Saskia Konniger wonders?
For decades, the descendants of the Senegalese Muslim mystic, scholar, and military commander Omar Saïdou Tall have been trying to retrieve the “treasure of Ségou” (looted in 1890) from the French state. The new French restitution law offers new hope.
Five years after the return of 26 objects from the royal treasures of Dahomey, Benin has submitted a new restitution request to Paris for 35 colonial works and archives. This action is based on a French framework law that came into effect in May, designed to facilitate such transfers.
[in Spanish] Invitation for the first meeting of the webinar series "Repatriation in Latin America: rights, sovereignties and concrete experiences" that Patricia Ayala and Lucas da Costa Maciel are organizing with the support of the International Repatriation Network.
The Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum (RJM) in Cologne transforms into a place of encounter and exchange about questions such as: What does return mean when there is no way back? What kinds of relationships can emerge from exile, displacement, and loss? What happens when connections are destroyed—and how can new forms of belonging and togetherness take shape?
For Native Hawai‘ian advocate Edward Halealoha Ayau, caring for the dead has been a lifelong duty. It has also been a matter of steadily increasing legal traction.
Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) contemplate the world through an interconnected lens, reflecting the integrated way life is lived and the symbiotic relationship between humans and their immediate tangible and intangible environment. Open Restitution Africa sees how the invocation of an IKS lens shifts the means and desired ends of restitutionary work around African cultural belongings and human ancestors.
Amir Al-Khafaji writes: Western museums stripped my homeland (IRAQ) of its ancient soul under the banner of "civility." Today, they hold my ancestors’ legacy behind paywalls.
[in French] French historian Yannick Le Marec retraces the cultural mechanism that prepared the way for the plundering of the colonies. "Knowing how an object arrived in a museum is not impoverishment." Interview by Erwan Le Bec.
The four-days conference 'Restitution Beyond Return: Reclaiming African Heritage in Today's Geopolitical and Technological Realities' brings together legal practitioners, policymakers, cultural institutions, artists, technologists, researchers and civil society to examine how restitution is evolving in response to changing geopolitical realities, international human rights law, and emerging technologies.
[in French] Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (Uni Lumbumbashi, DRC) explores the question of the restitution of cultural objects looted from communities in his country. With two case studies he establishes a dialogue between written and oral sources.
The practice of provenance research has exploded beyond museum staff and investigative journalists to become a nearly mainstream area of academic study across the developed world. But the general public still knows very little about what the word actually means. Art historian Melissa Metzgar shows steps towards making provenance more accessible and decolonising collecting practices.
Edna Arisbet Roque García's PhD project analyses restitution governance and the role of imperial museums in the foreign policy of states, with Germany as the main case study. The project demonstrates to what extent the restitution governance involves dialogue of interests, negotiation between states, and even the management of political repercussions. This is compared with the situation in Austria and in Switzerland.
For many years, the American museum community has been pursuing jars, created by enslaved potter David Drake (1800-1870). However, now the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, has made a necessary and bold move: it has recognised the jars as stolen objects.
In 'Towards Decolonising Dutch Museums: Provenance research, participatory methodologies, and Indigenous tattooists', Talisha Schilder critically reflects about museums, after doing provenance research with Sylvester (Iban), Talisha (Dutch-Indo), Pai (Bidayuh), and Yanto (Punan) at the depot of the University Museum Groningen. Her conclusion: the inclusion of Indigenous tattooists in provenance research is an important step towards decolonising museums.
[in German] The merchant Theodor Francke (1830-1896) ran an ivory bleaching plant in the 19th century. Imported ivory from colonial trade networks was bleached here and processed into piano keyboards, for example. Francke GmbH was also involved in the trade in looted art such as the Benin bronzes. An exhibition at Museum Tempelhof in Berlin has the story...
In the Marejesho Research and Information Centre in Moshi, Tanzania, 150 representatives of different communities in the Kilimanjaro and Arusha regions focused on the Marejesho initiative's history (from mobile exhibition to provenance research project), current research goals, restitution and repatriation efforts, and findings about cultural belongings and ancestral remains in German museums. With some remarkable conclusions.
Ireland has never had a formal mechanism for determining restitution or repatriation claims. However, this may change with the recent publication of a report from the Advisory Committee on the Restitution and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage. Ronan Bergin thinks it is a 'refreshing advice:
On 1 July 2026, Bolivia Archaeology National Museum (Munarq) reopened its doors with the permanent exhibition ‘Eternal Roots, Living Legacies,’ an exhibition that highlights the connection between pre-Hispanic customs and current traditions of the Andean country. It also has a section about repatriation.
Australia’s High Court has upheld the forfeiture of the pre-Columbian basalt artefact under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 (Cth) (the Act), despite the cultural object having been exported more than 30 years before the Act came into force.
Nepali content creator Nikki Thapa writes: Decades of looting turned living Deities into costly global commodities, but the era of quiet disappearance is giving way to one of recovery and return.
[in German] In a festive ceremony, the Governor of the Erongo Region, Nathalia /Goagoses, accepted the "Usakos Railway Workers' Collection" collection on behalf of the Republic of Namibia. A Swiss railway engineer and his wife collected them between 1903 and 1905 in a context of colonial violence.
Drawing on his broad research, Chipangura explores how ethnographic museums holding African collections are confronting the enduring consequences of colonialism. His presentation moves beyond familiar debates on restitution and repatriation, asking a more fundamental question: What are museums for, and whom do they serve?
[in French] Vicky Victoire Muke (Kinshasa Uni) shares a new preliminary study devoted to the colouring materials of the costumes and heritage fabrics of the Democratic Republic of Congo, based on the inventory records of the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac. His questions: How did you dye a kuba loincloth a century ago? Where does the deep red of mbuti adornments come from? And why is mangbetu black called "earth pigment"?
[in French] The metaphor of “objects as ambassadors” - used to refer to Kanak objects originating in New Caledonia and currently kept outside the territory, and sometimes returned there temporarily for exhibitions, arises in a context of institutional decolonisation and the aspiration for full Kanak sovereignty, with New Caledonia remaining a sui generis French overseas collectivity.
Emiline Smith argues that the 3,000-year-old Iranian gold discs, which American actress Zendaya showed at a London photocall for Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming adaptation of The Odyssey, are emblematic of a market that has spent decades quietly dismantling ancient objects for parts.
Reilly Clark argues that, if the return of African cultural objects ends with the literal return of physical objects, it does little to address legacies of colonial theft, value extraction, and epistemicide but can reinscribe the power of Western interpretive frameworks and reproduce Western patterns of state power by returning objects to Western-style institutions within postcolonial nation-states...
How are colonial violence, looted cultural assets and partnership projects related? This exhibition sheds light on the eventful history between the Cameroonian city of Tibati and Bremen. The focus is on current questions: What is the status of the projects? What is the significance of the restitution of colonial objects and how can a common future be shaped?
Over 2,000 ancestral remains and sacred objects belonging to the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians have gone home. Dating back thousands of years, they were long confined to wood trays and boxes at Yale and Harvard’s Peabody museums. Chumash representatives called this treatment of their ancestors “cruel and inhumane.”
Art historian Muhammad Nishat Gurmani writes: The bronze figurine of the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro was made 4500 years ago by the Indus Valley Civilisation. She resides in a museum in India but she comes from what is now Pakistan. She has been the subject of various controversies in recent years...
In her article 'From Cultural Hub to Crime Scene: British Museum Refuses Repatriation of Thefted Colonial Loot', Sierra Kinsey-Lawton argues that the British Museum is currently facing intensified pressure over the scale of its unprovenanced non‑European collection, following an internal review that found that more than 40% of those objects lack sufficient documentation to establish legal ownership.
[in French] Vicky Victoire Muke (Kinshasa Uni) writes: This is a first effort to the heritage costumes of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as they appear in the online collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA – AfricaMuseum, Belgium). It is intended as a situational resource, intended for anyone wishing to familiarise themselves with the diversity of costumes, loincloths and adornments preserved in these collections.
How did the colonial matrix of power continue to shape the modern world? The question is central to the exhibition Postcolonial?, presented by the House of European History in Brussels from 17 April 2026 to 14 March 2027. This book combines contributions from the people behind the exhibition.
For many museum professionals, the answer appears self-evident. Collections exist to be preserved. Conservation safeguards objects for future generations. Museums are institutions built around permanence. Johm Moses challenges these assumptions. Rather than taking conservation, collections, or even museums themselves as given, Moses invites us to begin elsewhere: with people, languages, relationships, and the continuity of cultural life.
Okechukwu Uwaezuoke argues: The homecoming of Yinka Shonibare’s work from the 2024 Venice Biennale “Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul” to Benin City seemed to complete one historical circle while quietly opening another debate.
NAGPRA specialist Rachael Carnes warns: Museums and AI Consultants build AI interfaces that let visitors "ask the collection" questions directly. Objects that answer. Catalogues that talk back. But listen closely to whose voice.
In this podcast, Jessica Coldrey asks Miriama Bono to share her insights on the interconnectedness of land, culture, and ocean in Polynesian perspectives. She discusses her work in museums, repatriation efforts, and the importance of storytelling in preserving heritage. So far, 20 objects came back, be it most of them on a six years loan.
[in French] French authors Alexandre Decroix and Asena Poyrazer write: Despite an increasingly important presence in the public debate, the term "restitution" is misunderstood. In contrast to the "new relationship with Africa" promoted by Emmanuel Macron, the issue of the restitution of African cultural property betrays a colonialism that is still very much alive. France retains tight control.
Nigerian art curator Yahuza Rabiu Garba argues: We need to decolonize our understanding of heritage spaces. The Eurocentric model insists on the "four walls" idea, a quiet archive where artifacts are curated to be looked at, but never touched. But...
An exhibition at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum confronts the colonial imbalance of Tanzanian artefacts being more accessible to Europeans than Tanzanians, asking who truly holds the right to tell the nation’s history.
Zimbabwean archaeologist Mutyandaedza Bright argues: The global movement to repatriate African cultural heritage has gained unprecedented momentum. While much attention has been given to whether objects should be returned, far less attention has been paid to an equally important question: Are local communities prepared to receive them? Yes, they are, but strengthening institutional capacity is essential.
Running from 28 March through 11 October 2026 at Ocean Space, the Venice Art Biennale exhibition “Tide of Returns” by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll raises questions about such issues as ownership and ways of acquisition.
Senior Ethiopian researcher Tadesse Simie Metekia argues: To implement the landmark UN slavery resolution, reparations should be defined as a framework for truth, responsibility, repair, reconciliation and global justice.
On 25 June 2026, the 41st Ordinary General Assembly voted to adopt the revised ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums. The vote marks the culmination of a multi-year participatory process. It also touches carefully) restitution issues.
Pressured claims for reparation and the redistribution of authority in decision-making processes, some museums have recognised their entanglements with Indigenous cultures and the erasure produced by the appropriation of collections and the imposition of classificatory systems. How are these institutions transformed by Indigenous agency and curatorship? What are the potential uses assigned to museums by Indigenous curators, creators and artists in the present?
The conversation around restitution just got a major jolt of momentum. Musée Guimet of Asian Arts in Paris, where Chinese artifacts make up roughly a third of the collection, has set a groundbreaking precedent: if any of its Chinese relics are definitively proven to be looted, they will be sent back to their country of origin within 24 hours.
Ganga Rajinee Dissanayaka writes: When I conduct my work as a provenance researcher, reconstructing how some piece of Kandyan art from Sri Lanka came to be in a museum in Amsterdam or Berlin, I am engaging precisely these traditional archival documents, and I am repeatedly realise that they were created for the purposes of ruling us, not remembering us.
On 29 June 2026, at the National Museum in Lagos, three Swiss museums formally returned 18 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, alongside a bronze bracelet and four archaeological monoliths seized during criminal investigations. Lawyer Kai Loon Loh analyses what makes the Swiss approach distinctive, and why it matters for cultural heritage law and practice.
This article describes the sensitive historical and cultural contexts of the collection and gives a special place to the significance and relevance of these artefacts for the Mapuche today, and their integration into cultural and social processes in relation to historical events and provenances.
The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, the Botanischer Garten and the Botanisches Museum, together with the Ethnologisches Museum and the Zentralarchiv der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (SPK),and the Archives Nationales du Togo and the University of Ghana are jointly investigating the contexts of acquisition of collections from the German colony of Togo, and neighbouring Ghana.
Hansjörg Dilger writes: Ethnographic collections can be understood as affective forces: relational entities that connect people, institutions, histories, and more-than-human worlds, while shaping contemporary debates about care, collaboration, and restitution. (open access)
This issue of Museum International (309-310) is the second of two volumes addressing the challenges faced by museums today in establishing the provenance of their collections. Many objects, collections and ancestral remains found in museums today lack a clear or full provenance: conditions that reflect the historical conditions under which they were assembled.
That the Netherlands will return 2,000 stolen objects to Ghana, is - according to the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) - a premature conclusion. For claims of looted colelctions, the normal Dutch procedures will have to be followed. The catalogue with the objects is a first step. See RM* of 21 June 2026.
'Law no 2026-351 of 9th May 2026 on restitution of cultural property which has been illicitly acquired' is a step forward and shows, at the same time, that many in France are not ready to accept their colonial past and continue to deny their brutal history in Africa.
Ghana is set to receive over 2,000 cultural artefacts from the Netherlands, while Germany has also identified items linked to the Kpando traditional area for return, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa during the “Accra Next Steps” discussions on cultural restitution. The move forms part of ongoing international efforts on cultural restitution and Ghana’s push to recover artefacts taken during the colonial era.
Dutch museum collections contain ethnographic objects originating from Suriname, many of which were acquired in a colonial context. This search guide provides information on the most common ways in which these objects ended up in collections in the Netherlands and other countries in the Global North. [In English and Dutch]
Chana Algarvio's paper reshapes and redefines our understanding of books, challenging modern beliefs influenced by Western bias so that the field of Egyptology can unhesitatingly incorporate the topic of books and bibliography explicitly into scholarship.
In a major step toward cultural restitution, taken during a high-stakes African Union summit in Addis Ababa, a specialised international task force has been established to spearhead the return of looted and illicitly trafficked cultural artifacts back to the African continent.
Natural history specimens from former colonial territories reflect both the scientific curiosity and the power imbalances and violence of the era. Often acquired alongside human remains or cultural objects, they raise questions about the responsibilities of natural history museums. This volume explores these questions as they concern the collections of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
These two bronze zodiac heads once formed part of the clepsydra (water clock) that adorned the entrance to the Western style Yuanmingyuan or Old Summer Palace gardens in Beijing. After the sacking of the Summer Palace by Anglo-French forces in 1860, the zodiac heads were stolen and dispersed among private collections.
This symposium interrogates processes of return in Latin America not as inherently reparative gestures, but as practices that can be ambivalent—capable both of reproducing colonial logics and of resistance and re-articulation of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. In particular, we aim to examine how different regimes of value —state, scientific, Indigenous and traditional— come into friction, and to what extent contemporary heritage frameworks operate as mechanisms that depoliticise struggles over the control of ancestors. Symposium 23-27 November 2026.
Livia Solaro investigates how a museum—especially one with a problematic past, such as an ethnographic institution—can critically confront its colonial heritage while keeping the public informed and actively involved in the process.
In this moderator-led discussion, we examine the mechanics of memory, looking at how history is recorded and retrieved. With Kwame Boafo, scholar and artist from Accra, Ghana, and Peter Jegede, Nigerian archaeologist and museum curator.
The rejection by the city of Bordeaux of a private donation of 53 art objects allows for the direct repatriation of these works to their countries of origin, especially Gabon, which will receive 33 pieces from the collection. The other recipients are Nigeria, Niger, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, and Togo.
[ In Dutch ] The French parliament has passed a law that makes it easier to return at least 150,000 pieces of art stolen during the colonization. "In France, people prefer not to talk about historically disturbing topics." an interview with art historian, Bénédicte Savoy
How do museum-exhibitions enable visitors to critically engage with the complex histories of colonial collections and reflect on their potential (re)distribution? The Wereldmuseum Amsterdam’s Unfinished Pasts: Return, Keep, or...? brings this question into curatorial focus. Pao-Yi Yang assesses how its interpretive design both deepens and complicates the viewing experience.
An independent commission has revealed that the Dutch Royal Family possesses one thousand objects from the former colonies. Although most were ‘donated’ at the time, a few dozens of objects are booty of war and were taken by colonial officials and soldiers during military confrontations.
The Windsor Shades estate in Virginia has been sold to the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, reconnecting one of Virginia’s most significant colonial and Revolutionary War landmarks with the people who originally inhabited and stewarded the land centuries before English settlement.
Based on stone tools, sacred objects, secret rituals, and daily life articles, collected by O.W. Hampton and kept in California, Christopher Buckley portrays in 'Stone and Fibre: Daily Life in the Baliem Valley, Papuathe Baliem Valley' the Hubula (Dani) peoples of the Grand Valley of the Baliem River in the central highlands of Papua. There is more than a book. In May 2026, the collection has been shipped to Jakarta, and from there to Papua. Initially, it will be housed in the Museum Lokabudaya in Jayapura. But the plan is for the collection to become the core of a new museum in Wamena (the regional capital of the highland area).
Andreas Giorgallis argues that prevailing approaches often frame decolonisation as a series of discrete corrective interventions, rather than as a challenge to the structural foundations through which heritage is constituted and governed. Unless the enduring colonial architectures embedded in these frameworks are addressed, decolonisation risks remaining symbolic rather than transformative.
Salinan Tribal Councilmember Robert Piatti remembers when he realized that what was sitting beneath a university campus wasn’t just archival material—it could also be people. “I was a reporter at Cal State Long Beach,” he said. “In the humanities building, down in the basement, there were boxes and boxes of bodies. And it was awful, really awful.”
Kate Fitz Gibbon notes that Chinese cultural claims to the return of artifacts looted during the attack on the Summer Palace in 1860, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, and the Japanese invasion in the first half of the 20th century support the country's anti-Taiwanese and nationalist propaganda. But she also wants China to become more self-critical, not to exaggerate about the number of lost relics and to also tackle the abuses in its own country.
Kate Fitz Gibbon writes: The restitution of Asante-linked instruments from Los Angeles to Ghana exposes the limits of standard repatriation narratives, particularly when provenance is uncertain and human remains are involved. Rather than resolving historical injustice, the case highlights competing claims, ethical ambiguities, and the need for negotiated, context-specific outcomes.
[in French] With the law on the restitution of cultural property adopted, CNRS researcher Catharine Titi questions, in Le Monde, the legal and archaeological issues related to this question through a reflection on the fragments of the Parthenon at the Louvre. France could draw inspiration from the examples of the Vatican, Italy and Germany.
[in French] Session: Does the emergence of a legal framework for the restitution of African cultural property play a sufficient role in the reparation enterprise following colonization?
Open Restitution Africa (ORA) describes restitution as a pan-African process of remembrance, research, and the digital sharing of knowledge – an interview with Chao Tayiana Maina and Karen Ijumba. 'The bulk of the work in the restitution lies on the African side: the work of reintegration, the negotiation, and supporting people in dealing with the return of the artifacts.'
Ganga Rajinee Dissanayaka explores how heritage, power, and narrative relate to each other, and how the subtle, insidious dependencies shape who tells the story of a culture in 2026 and who becomes little more than a footnote at the back of a museum. In Sri Lanka, Vedda cultures, coastal Muslim traders, Tamil ritual practices, and Catholic-Sinhalese syncretism could be studied ethnographically, none qualified as heritage.
During his visit to Kenya, French President Emmanuel Macron said the process of returning African artworks looted during the colonial era had become "unstoppable". But, despite a growing number of restitution requests, France has returned only a handful of artefacts to its colonies.
Samuel Bachmann (Bern Historical Museum) argues: If museums are to confront their – and Switzerland’s – coloniality, they require a new mandate: one that questions their interpretive authority and addresses fundamental questions about why, and for whom, cultural heritage is preserved, researched and communicated.
The 'Oceania and Indonesia' holdings in Altenburg (approx. 350 objects) and the entire ethnographic collection (approx. 250 objects) in Meerane will be examined. The initial check follows a research project on the Africa collection in Altenburg and the recommendation by ethnologist Ms Dolz from the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony for Meerane.
The Kings Own Royal Regiment Museum Trust presented ancient relics of Emperor Tewodros II of Abyssinia at the University of Cumbria in Lancaster o the Ethiopian Heritage Authority (EHA).
Culture Minister Samira Tovela announced Mozambique’s official effort to reclaim around 800 colonial-era artworks stolen during colonization. The process, supported by UNESCO and EU nations, comes ahead of the country’s 50th independence anniversary in June. The cultural and symbolic value is estimated at over USD 100 million.
[in French] In October 2025, the Louvre lost several jewels among the Crown Jewels. FranceInfo found out more about how the security system was foiled and who sponsored the theft.
Mahlet Mehdi writes: The return of Empress Tiruwork Wube’s hairpin to Ethiopia underscores how much remains unresolved. Most artifacts taken from Magdala remain abroad. Legal frameworks offer limited recourse. Private markets remain opaque. And restitution continues to depend on chance discovery, rapid response, and negotiated compromise. The hairpin is less an endpoint than a case study.
Emotional Provenance refers to the emotional, spiritual, ritual, and affective histories embedded within artefacts through their creation, use, displacement, performance, and institutional representation.
Yrine Matchinda examines in her disseration *Presence and Absence of Cameroonian Religious Objects in Colonial Collections of German Museums (1884–1919): Cultural and Religious Implications for Communities in Cameroon* how the musealisation of sacred/religious objects affects cultural identity, collective memory, and intergenerational transmission within communities of origin.
Ahmad Mohammad writes: As a wave of NAGPRA repatriation filings hit the Federal Register, this article asks what repatriation cannot reach, and why the limit is not accidental.
Plunder stolen from Ireland and stored in museums of former colonial powers should be returned. But there is no list of what is held abroad in ‘post-colonial museums’. Culute Minister also said that restitution cannot be a one-way street.
Minister Patrick O’Donovan said there was a “compulsion” on former colonial powers to return “loot” taken from people against their will.
The conference 'Museums as Monuments to the Colonial Troops?' brings together historians, artists, curators and artists to examine the artefactual history of colonial warfare in three former German colonies: Togo, Kamerun and German East-Africa.
Until its restitution in November 2025, Ama O Ghe Ehen, a 18th-century bronze plaque depicting a mudfish, was held in the colelction of the Museum de Fundatie in the Dutch city of Zwolle, since its acquisition in 1937. This symposium explores the process and implications of this return, and what restitution might mean in the context of this plaque.
Ahmed Mohammad examines Germany's new Coordination Council for Returns of Cultural Property and Human Remains from Colonial Contexts — weighing what it genuinely achieves against the structural challenges that remain. The council's limitation is that it remains unclarified whether it will issue binding rulings or operate in an advisory capacity. The question of human remains is where this limitation is sharpest.
Sierra Kinsey-Lawton takes the Musauem of Us in San Diego, California, as a case study: the Museum of Us hired a decolonization team because it was fashionable. Every museum was doing it. But the moment the team pushed for something larger—a major repatriation, a public apology, a shift in governance—the discomfort became too great. The team became a problem. And problems are easier to eliminate than to solve. Budget shortfalls became the perfect excuse. They are neutral and impersonal. They allow the museum to avoid saying what it really means: we no longer wish to fund this work.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for the return of the priceless Koh-i-Noor diamond from the UK. The 105-carat diamond is part of the Crown Jewels but its ownership has been disputed by India, who claims that it was stolen during British rule. Mamdani was born in Uganda but has Indian roots.
Brighton & Hove Museums will return 45 cultural belongings to Botswana following a 2022 repatriation claim by the Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe. The belongings were acquired in the Gammangwato region of Botswana in the 1890s by Reverend William Charles Willoughby, a missionary in Old Palapye. He worked with Kgosi (Chief) Khama III as a translator and advisor.
This is about Yemen. About how an American foundation oversaw the exploitation of Yemen’s archaeological inheritance in British-occupied South Yemen during the early 1950s. About Yemen's policy to recover belogings that were lost in the colonial days. And it answers the question why, when and by whom Yemen was colonised.
The Restitution Law, approved by the French parliament, evokes all sorts of reactions. RM* summarises them in a few posts. In this post, the Chinese Global Times writes that while countries around the world have been progressively engaging in the repatriation of cultural relics, Japan stands out as a negative example.
The Restitution Law, approved by the French parliament, evokes all sorts of reactions. Most are quite similar (and positive). Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne has serious doubts about it.
28 April: Black Muse and Digital Benin: Benin Heritage & New Forms of Narratives: Digital Access & Reconnection to the Living Heritage of Benin Kingdom
3 May: Digital Benin and Kokopelli Gallery: Digital Benin: Digital heritage at the intersection of culture, data and practice
The fact that cultural possessions, which were brought from China at the beginning of the twentieth century, are spread throughout Europe and the US is proven by the Skušek Collection in the Ethnographic Museum of Ljublijana. Ivan Skušek had served in the Austro-Hungarian navy and was in a Chinese prison from 1917-1920, had several dozens of boxes filled Chinese art objects. The circumstances under which he had acquired such a mass of Chinese art are not yet completely clear.
Two looted West African musical instruments languishing at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles are creating a restitution challenge, because they have human skulls attached to them.
Since 2019, a number of sacred objects and ancestral remains have been repatriated to the Warlpiri people of Yuendumu community north-west of Alice Springs in the middle of Australia. For them repatriation is about healing the community, but in particular healing the young men and women of their community, writes Jamie Hampton*. In this Blog, he shares his story about the Yuendumu community and how repatriation has helped them heal from past injustices, providing pathways for the next generations of Warlpiri to ensure they live a life grounded in culture in a changing world.
Lloyd Makonya writes: The systematic removal of cultural heritage formed part of a broader colonial strategy to undermine African civilisation. Against this historical backdrop, the handover of the Zimbabwe Bird and ancestral human remains by South African authorities to Zimbabwean officials marks the latest victory in Zimbabwe’s sustained push to reclaim its cultural inheritance.
Books, oral histories, artefacts, images, textiles, posters, manuscripts, architectural documentation, and cultural records across Africa, the diaspora, and the Global South. It contains 70 locally indexed records · 300,000+ archive horizon · static-hosted discovery architecture, etc.
While Germany appears keen to expedite the conclusion of the negotiations with Namibia concerning the genocide committed against the Ovaherero and Nama communities between 1904 and 1908, the Namibian position reflects that the matter remains unresolved. Namibia continues to advocate for a comprehensive reparative framework grounded in five key elements: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, guarantees of non-repetition, and satisfaction. Sarah Negumbo, the Director of Namibia Library and Archives Service, provides further insight into the historical, legal, and ethical dimensions underpinning these demands.
Although published in 2021, RM* distributes this open access book, as South Sudan is a much forgotten area. According to editors Zoe Cormack and Cherry Leonardi, the long-term effects of colonialism and conflict have largely precluded any concerted attempts to preserve material culture within the country; museums remained in Khartoum, the capital of the formally united Sudan. Furthermore, tens of thousands of objects had been removed from what is now South Sudan during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to museum and private collections around the world...
The Mambesak Group was active in Jayapura from 1978 to 1984. After the murder of Arnold Ap in 1984, the group, mostly students from various regions in Papua, disbanded. This film tries to articulate the traces of the ideas of Arnold Ap, leader of the Mambesak Group, as mediators between their generation and the traces of their ancestors and Papuan culture. With firm statements about coloniality and restitution.
The handover ceremony, directed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, took place at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, marking a significant moment in the restoration of African heritage. The repatriation also underscores growing cooperation among African nations in addressing historical injustices linked to colonial-era dispossession.
The French parliament has unanimously adopted on 13 April a framework legislation for the deaccession of cultural items plundered from former colonies. Nine years after President Emmanuel Macron pledged repatriation of African heritage, the new law finally opens the way for the return of items illegitimately taken by force. The bill was initiated in 2023, but it has been delayed by political instability and changes of government as well as the sensitivity of the subject.
Thomas Fues (Dekolonial Erinnern) is monitoring all restitutions from German museums and universities to former colonial regions. Wherever possible, with a source. In 2026, Māori taonga („Pou of Hinematioro“) was returned to New Zealand by the University of Tübingen.
Over 1,000,000 known African artefacts unwillingly held outside the continent. Of these, less than 1,000 have been returned... The Open Restitution Project is an Africa-led project seeking to open up access to information on the restitution of African material culture and human ancestors, to empower all stakeholders involved to make knowledge-based decisions.
Lia Iannarilli and Malaika Bunzigiye conclude: The story of looted art from the Democratic Republic of the Congo is inseparable from broader struggles of political sovereignty. By holding on to these items, European powers are holding on to the narrative of their colonial rule. In a world shaped by imperial legacies, the decolonial project must be both material and symbolic. To repatriate art is to repatriate power.
Vast majority of Africa’s cultural legacy remains abroad, where institutions claim superior care, shared human heritage. Three African analysts comment. ‘Biggest issue is changing the historical narrative that excluded us.’
[English version, French version] In 2025, the tribal art market returned to its cruising speed. With a turnover of €42.7 million, it followed the trajectory of previous years: more selective, more demanding, yet also more cautious.
The V&A’s collections include around 90 objects from Ethiopia. The majority of these are in some way associated with a British military expedition to Ethiopia from 1867 – 68 against Emperor Tewodros. The museum also holds a selection of Ethiopian paintings from the 1940s. Restitution is out of the question. A provenance report.
[ in Dutch, in French] That this issue has received increasing attention is partly due to two important issues, namely the question of the restitution of works of art looted by the Nazis to relatives of victims of the Holocaust and the question of the restitution of cultural heritage objects illegally acquired during colonization by Western countries. Three Wednesday afternoons.
Laura Petersen argues that authors and artists have also taken up a responsibility for restitution. Deploying the literal translation ‘making-good-again’, this book focuses on the ‘making’ of law, literature and visual art to argue that restitution is a practice which is found in different genres, sites and temporalities.
'Cultural Capital: African Art, Repatriation, and Restitution', a critical documentary by Reilly Clark on art from Africa in western museums, will be released on 19 May 2026.
Please join the Denver Art Museum’s Native Arts and Provenance departments, along with special guests from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, for a lively panel discussion on the vital role provenance research plays in museums.
[Italian] In “Restituire”, Maria ia Guermandi reconstructs, with historical precision and critical clarity, the complex path that has brought the issue of restitution from the halls of the UN to museum policies, from the claims of African countries to the struggles of indigenous communities in so-called settlement colonies.
The lechwe skin cloaks are a rare remnant of Batwa people's traditional intellectual, cultural and social worlds. They were recently rediscovered in a museum collection in Stockholm, Sweden. These belongings were slated for digital repatriation, along with +/- 100 other belongings, through a collaborative project between the Women's History Museum of Zambia, and the National Museums of World Culture, Sweden.
As one of the biggest targets of wartime looting in centuries past, China is now positioning itself as a global pioneer in repatriating lost cultural artefacts. In two articles, Xinlu Liang looks a Chinese demand that Japan returns an ancient tablet, which could mark a ‘historical reckoning’, and how China is wielding law, diplomacy and a Global South coalition to rewrite the rules of restitution, filling a void left by a retreating US.
[in German, partially in English] In Germany, the federal, state and local governments decided to establish the "Coordination Council for Returns of Cultural Property and Human Remains from Colonial Contexts". The secretariat will be located at the Federal Foreign Office.
The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, in collaboration with the Open Society Foundations, announces its annual fellowship program themed, “Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition.” The program will convene scholars or practitioners interested in restitution and repatriation issues related to African art and artifacts.
The chair, which will be launched on 22 June 2026, will address issues related to illicit trafficking, restitution and the management of collections originating from colonial contexts.
Mirjam Shatanawi gives an overview of Islamic collections in the Netherlands, focusing on their presence in museums, libraries, and archives. It provides a critical overview of how these collections have been shaped, preserved, and interpreted, with particular attention to the enduring influence of colonial perspectives on Indonesian Islamic traditions. Examples will be given of objects from Java, Sumatra and South Sulawesi.
The Center for Art Collection Ethics (ACE) at the University of Denver (DU) announces a hybrid training program: Provenance Research Today: Issues, Resources, and Networks. The program is geared toward graduate students and emerging museum and art market professionals.
An important moment! Congolese and Belgian experts presented their recommendations for the future of institutional provenance research at an open forum: ‘The current framework is insufficient.’
On 25 February 2026, the Togolese cabinet approved a draft law to establish a restitution committee. The committee will seek to repatriate tangible and intangible cultural heritage, as well as human remains and archives from colonial contexts. The bill refers to over 8,000 „objects“ currently held in foreign museums. They predominantly come from northern Togo.
Museums in a country like Ghana have an impoortant function in preserving ervidence of the past and in shaping together the country's history. A self-critical look from Ghanaian professionals in their museum practice, especially that of the National Museum.
In addition to private and institutional collectors, natural history traders have historically been important sources of specimens and information for natural history museums in the past. However, the history and significance of the natural history traders is still little known and researched. One such naturalia trader with worldwide trading partners was the long-established Hamburg company of the J. F. G. Umlauff family.
Reporters from the Chinese newspaper Global Times visited Japan and found that looted Chinese cultural relics are being displayed and even promoted as militarist "trophies," including at a notorious shrine. History must not be distorted, and heritage must not be plundered. But to this day, Japan has not returned these looted relics. Instead, it has attempted to conceal and deny this history.
How can we trace and reconstruct the provenance of objects, collections and ancestral remains that were amassed in the past, and are now placed in museums as mundane and lifeless objects frozen in a timeless past without adequate information and context? The renewed interest in provenance research can be understood as part of the broader agenda to decolonise these museums.
In March 2024, Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) filed a formal restitution claim on behalf of the Nigerian government for 14 Benin artifacts held by the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich (UZH). The University of Zurich has decided to honor this claim. "Signing the property agreement is not just a legal act, but the recognition of colonial injustices", Zürich's lord mayor, Corine Mauch, said.
Kedleston (north-west of Derby) houses an impressive collection of paintings, sculptures and furnishings, some collected by the then Viceroy of India, George Nathaniel Curzon during his travels. The exhibition sheds light on previously untold stories. Encounters, a new film by British-Tibetan artist, Nyima Murry, brings to life the artefacts.
Alioune Samb writes: As part of my research, I developed and tested a system called SYDOCOM. Not to “add voices”. But to create conditions where different forms of knowledge can exist without being reduced to a single authorised version.
Coloniality is ever-present. Even decades after the period of formal colonisation has ended it has persisted through structural forms of privilege and bias. Beyond their more obvious manifestations such as the racial stratification of labour and the proliferation of inequality and racism, there is the coloniality of knowledge, which is hard to discern and much more insidious to overcome.
The Royal Ethiopian Trust (RET) is celebrating the return of a historic treasure: the gold hairpin of Etege Tiruwork Wube, wife of Emperor Tewodros, once taken during the storming of Magdala in 1868.
[in Dutch] On the occasion of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy in Antwerp is organising an event on postcolonial history and culture: we will enter into a dialogue on African cultural heritage in Western institutions.
[in French] Congolese and Belgian experts presented their recommendations for the future of institution-based research at an open forum: "The current framework is insufficient". The provenance search is relevant, but it must neither condition nor delay the restitution. Today, Belgium and the DRC must move forward with concrete actions.
The grandson of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I avoids confrontation and uses patience and strategy in oder to retrieve stolen objects from public and private parties in Great Britain. It is part of a wider demand for historical justice that continues to resonate across the African diaspora.
The aution included 40 archaeological pieces and were auctioned during a live sale on 27 February 2026, at Maison Millon in Paris. The Culture Ministry started legal procedures and used diplomatic channels to seek a return. In the meantime the lots have been sold for 1,2 million euro.
Reilly Clark writes: Despite the return of Benin belongings, the relations between Africa and the West have remained fundamentally unchanged. African cultural objects were taken from the continent as part of the dual projects of Western imperialism and resource extraction.
[in French] The PROCHE project, implemented by the Royal Museum for Central Africa, is part of the 2022 Belgian law on the restitution of colonial collections. It aims to retrace the conditions of acquisition of the museum's so-called "ethnographic" and musicological objects, in close collaboration with Congolese institutions and cultural actors.
The Ashmolean Musuem of the University of Oxfoird has returned a 16th-century bronze to the Government of India following research into the object’s provenance and liaison with Indian authorities.
Bradley J. Gordon, Melina Antoniadis & Sokunthyda Long write: Cambodia is among the countries most profoundly affected by the large-scale looting of cultural heritage, particularly from the 1960s to the 1990s—before, during, and after civil war and genocide—as well as during the French colonial era, which saw the large-scale removal of artifacts.
Reilly Clark writes: Two Benin plaques were among the ones looted by the British from the palace of the oba in Benin. Later, they were given to the British Museum and later still, to the Nigerian National Museum in Lagos. The plaques were removed without permission from the Nigerian National Museum between 1950 and 1991.
This article by Elias Aguigah, Yann LeGall and Jeanne-Ange Wagne (TU Berlin) is part of The Restitution of Knowledge project. It documents the history of ‘plunder’ of former African colonies and addresses its legacy in ethnological collections, with a focus on loot from so-called 'punitive expeditions', this time in the Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig (+ an addition about Togo loot in Stuttgart).
[in French] Yasmina Zian, Aline Bosuma, Alexandre Chevalier and Laurent Licata make critical remarks about Belgium's decolonisation of museums effort. Belgium keeps control over decisions and there is a lack of a balanced dialogue with the DRC.
The Tangué is a ship’s beak carved from wood and placed on the bow of the ship of the royal Bele-Bele family. This mystical and sacred belonging symbolises power, particularly the ultimate authority of the King over the water tribes of the Douala kingdom, and is an integral part of socio-cultural and spiritual practices. n 1884, it was stolen by German military. Currently, it is in the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich.
[in English, in Portuguese] Pedro de Niemeyer Cesarino and Lucas da Costa Maciel raise important questions: What if so-called objects in museums are not just that? What if they refuse such constraints?
‘Extraordinary’ golden lamb’s head pillaged in 1874 from what is now Ghana remains hidden in officers’ mess. The glistening golden ram’s head would seemingly be worthy of any museum, but it remains hidden within the regiment’s mess at Larkhill in Wiltshire.
Ganga Rajinee Dissanayaka discovered at a conference in Europe that Benin Bronzes, Egyptian antiquities and African collections were discussed. But Asia was unmentioned. And then when a colleague from Indonesia brought up the topic of Southeast Asian collections, the moderator nodded graciously and then moved on to another topic. Decolonisation, it appears, is an African story.
[in Dutch] In museum De Fundatie in Zwolle, Nigerian artists shine their light on an antique plaque of a mud fish. The fish was stolen from Benin City at the end of the 19th century, and it will return to that city next summer. 'The mudfish is symbolic of the flexibility of the Edo people.'
France has officially returned the sacred Djidji drum to Ivory Coast. It is among 148 cultural belongings claimed by the Africab country in 2018. The text of the special law is included.
Jennifer Howes writes: Amaravati Stupa was the first Buddhist site in India to be systematically excavated by the British. Its first colonial excavation in 1816–17 led to 51 sculptures being removed from the site by amateur antiquarians. Some of these were sent to museums, but most of them were transported to the market town of Machilipatnam, where they were used to construct an eccentric marketplace monument.
Thomas Laely writes: The debate on the repatriation of (in)tangible cultural heritage and belongings has developed a broad dynamic in recent years. This sudden activism raises questions. What is its background, what are the goals behind it, and how are they to be achieved? Is it primarily about African or rather European interests?
Repatriation is urgent and important work and should be recognised as one of the UK museum sector’s top priorities. It is widely acknowledged that a lack of funding and capacity are two of the main reasons that more museums in the UK do not engage with repatriation, writes Amy Shakespeare.
President John Dramani Mahama has sent a clear message to the international community: the time for "ceremonial language" regarding Africa’s historical injustices is over.
The History Museum of Armenia is organizing the “Layers of Repatriation” international conference, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the great repatriation movement, which aims to rediscover museum collections related to the topic and discuss the different social, cultural, and historical layers of the phenomenon.
[in French] After the Porto-Novo symposiums in 2022 and Yaoundé in 2023, after several days of study in Paris, the Dakar symposium is the final stage (or almost) of 5 years of research, publications, meetings of the international program "Returns: geopolitics, economies and imaginaries of restitution".
The Louvre will restore Empress Eugénie’s crown, which was damaged during the $102 million heist in October 2025. Experts found the diamond-and-emerald crown deformed, but most stones remain intact after violent theft.
The restitution project, undertaken in Namibia from 2019 – 2024, was centred around 23 cultural belongings, which were selected from a collection of +/-1400 cultural belongings in the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, on the basis of their rarity, ability to travel well (fragility, arsenic poisoning etc), cultural, historical and aesthetic significance, as well as their connection to the history of Namibian fashion.
Tracing the course of Britain’s wars with the Asante alongside the course of its plundered relics, Barnaby Phillips weaves a thrilling and poignant tale of imperial ambition and African resistance. Travelling from the Gold Coast to the museum galleries, officers’ mess rooms and aristocratic homes of Britain, The African Kingdom of Gold confronts us with urgent questions about the legacy of Empire and, in particular, how our museums should respond.
Vishakha N. Desai writes: The return of looted artworks shows India is no longer treating restitution as a zero-sum recovery, but as a negotiating tool that asserts ownership while deploying art as soft power.
Restitution debates – the question of whether a cultural object should be returned from a museum or other collection to a person or community – often begin with a deceptively simple question: who owns an object?
Barnaby Phillips: The decision by the university’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to return looted Nigerian treasures leaves larger institutions increasingly isolated. Which museum will be the next one? Uwa Igbafe: This case reflects a gradual transition from legal acknowledgement to the actual transfer of artefacts.
In the last hundred years, France has restituted only twenty-nine looted artefacts to Africa (26 to Benin, 1 to Senegal, 1 to Côte d’Ivoire, 1 to the Malagasy Republic). At this rate, how long will it take France to return the other 96 971 looted African artefacts in France? Kwame Opoku points to an African scholar and his troubling support who actively enables the Louvre/Musée du Quai Branly to retain, among others, the statue of Gou, the Vodun divinity from Benin, in Paris.
[in English, in Mozambiquan Portuguese] The five texts in this richly illustrated issue nr. 9 of Troubles dans les Collections trace how new local contexts in Mozambique and global debates have resonated in the country since the restitution debate gained heightened visibility. Civil society actors play a crucial role in raising the restitution issue.
[in French] Issue 2025/8 of L’essor des contre-muséologies is about several types of museums. Confronting the dominant model of the museum—born of the French Revolution and rooted in bourgeois values—reformist museologists strive to democratize it, while popular or community-based initiatives attest to its rejection.
Much of the scholarly attention for decolonisation and restitution in English has centred on developments in the Anglophone world. A special Issue - Portuguese Studies Review will bring together new studies on parallel and emerging developments within the Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) world.
The Taonga Files, a new investigative podcast exploring the journeys of Aotearoa’s taonga now held in museums around the world — and the complex systems, histories, and relationships that shape their return.
The Shanghai University’s Research Centre for Chinese Relics Overseas has completed evidence-based research proving that a precious cultural relic currently in Japan belongs to China, and has urged - with support of Japanese cultural groups - Japan to promptly return it.
Restitution of cultural property is gaining momentum across Africa, framed not as symbolic but as a fundamental right. Senior officials, ambassadors, scholars, and international representatives gathered in Addis Ababa to debate restitution as a pillar of justice and identity.
Lucky Igohosa Ugbudian writes: Switzerland has witnessed curators playing an increasingly significant role in the restitution debate surrounding Benin artworks. The looting of these cultural objects in 1897 led to the illicit global circulation of these objects. The forceful trafficking of these items, alongside international laws and conventions, prompted Nigerian and Pan-African groups to demand restitution.
Where and to whom do ancient things belong? What happens when they are stolen—not by a colonial power, but by a national museum claiming them as state patrimony? What kinds of healing and restitution can follow?
The Kingdom of the Netherlands has formally handed over an inventory of Ghanaian cultural artefacts held in Dutch collections, marking a major step toward the restitution of objects looted during the colonial era.
The French Senate on Wednesday adopted a draft legislation to facilitate the return of artworks and other prized artefacts looted during the country’s colonial era. This new procedure could help address requests already submitted by various countries, including Morocco, Mali, Algeria and Benin.
[mostly in French] Based on research in the DR Congo, Vicky Van Bockhaven explores a tension within contemporary museum and cultural policies, focusing on the decolonisation of colonial collections and associated knowledge production. These initiatives often remain under the control of Western institutions, leaving the concerned countries and communities unequally involved.
[English version, German version] Cultural heritage of the Nso in Germany - Episode with Dr Bulami Edward Fonyuy (Cameroon) by podcast Decolonial Memories (on all major platforms). In the podcast, Dr Bulami calls on the German government to play a long-term role in the healing process between the two countries, going beyond the restitution of colonial loot.
Grounded primarily in historical investigation into post-colonial memory, Edith Isoken Erhokpaidamwen examines how colonial conquest and Western ideological domination produced enduring psychological and cultural consequences without idealizing pre-colonial societies.
[in French, in English] Since the 1990s, new forms of discourse and mobilization have emerged to question Belgium’s colonial past and postcolonial present. Journalists, researchers, archivists, community activists, artists, members of the African diaspora, former colonists and their descendants, national and political players, etc. have contributed to putting the issue of colonial legacy on the public agenda.
While Britain has shown little inclination to even seriously consider restitution of the Kohinoor or other cultural artefacts taken from India, several European countries have begun doing so, with the Netherlands emerging at the forefront. While doing so, all sorts of challenges pop up.
Ayọ̀ Akínwándé examines restitution, spiritual provenance, and the unresolved tensions between royal authority, state power, and museum-making in Benin City. The conflict between the MOWAA and the Benin Court goes back to the colonial days.
The British Museum’s attempt to frame its decision to ‘share’ a few colonial-era artefacts with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai as a move to ‘decolonise’ its collection has been ridiculed by art historians as a ‘con’. There’s only one way to show contrition: return the stolen goods.
Colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures.
The protection of cultural heritage is increasingly shifting towards favouring the return of cultural property to its people of origin. Evidence of this shift can be found in a more intentional distinction between cultural property rights on the one hand, and traditional rights in rem on the other; the strengthening of international cooperation; as well as the reconstruction of traditional doctrines.
[in German] Parts of the collection of the closed, missionary Werl museum "Forum der Völker" in Germany are under suspicion. Three collections may have originated from colonial looting. The German Lost Art Foundation sees a need for further research.
The V&A’s collection includes nearly 200 Ethiopian objects – from metalwork and textiles to photography, manuscripts, and paintings. One of the most exciting outcomes of this research, Molly Judd writes, was uncovering records for objects that had effectively become hidden within the collection.
According to Ruby Satele, a PhD candidate from Sāmoa at the University of Vienna, rematriation involves not only the return of ancestors, but also practices of care while they remain in storage. Her research combines strong theoretical thinking with practical action to challenge power imbalances and promote greater justice in museums and universities.
For decades, the demand for colonial reparations in Africa was treated by Western capitals as a rhetorical exercise — a radical plea from the fringes that could be safely ignored or pacified with vague “expressions of regret.” By the end of 2025, however, that era of Western comfort officially ended in Algiers.
[in English and Greek] Leading British legal experts have questioned the legality of the UK government’s decision to bar the country’s national museums from deciding independently on the repatriation of cultural objects.
In 2022, the Republic of Indonesia submitted an official application for the collection’s restitution after which the Dutch State Secretary for Culture requested the Colonial Collections Committee to provide advice on this request. In 2025, the Netherlands transferred it to Indonesia. This Blog offers a reflection.
What can art and artists bring to researching the origins and biographies of objects? How do they shed new light on – or even unsettle – existing approaches to such questions? 'What is not said or shown – absences and gaps – needs attention and can itself open up new avenues of investigation.' [ open access ]
Between 1896-1916 today's Burundi was a German colony as part of what was known as ‘German East Africa’. Not only in colonial historiography, but also in provenance research, Burundi has been largely underrepresented and, similar to Rwanda, stands ‘in the shadow’ of the reappraisal of the material cultural heritage of present-day Tanzania.
On December 3, 2025, the Pavillon des Sessions at the Louvre reopened its new layout, now called the Galerie des Cinq Continents or Gallery of the Five Continents. In Maria Pia Guermandi’s opinion, the layout continues to express a Western vision that claims to ‘elevate’ other cultures by granting them admission to the sancta sanctorum of European art.
For several years, the Wereldmuseum in the Netherlands has actively engaged in provenance research, focusing on the unequal power dynamics that shaped the collection of objects amidst European colonialism. Daantje van de Linde and Karolien Nédée investigate this approach. 'The broader discipline is still in its infant years, and its goals and research methods are continuously developing.'
For an issue about 'Measuring Cultural Heritage: Indicators for Cultural Heritage Law and Policy Development', the e-journal Santander Art, Culture & Law Review welcomes contributions from legal scholars, policymakers, cultural heritage practitioners, and interdisciplinary researchers. Submissions should offer original research, comparative analysis, or innovative methodologies that contribute to the understanding, assessment, and governance of cultural heritage.
[ in Spanish ] In 'Arte secuestrado' or Abducted art, Catharine Titi (CNRS, France) and Katia Fach Gómez (Uni Zaragoza) recount the stories of six iconic collections, from the Parthenon Marbles to Moctezuma's headdress, the Benin Bronzes, and the Bust of Nefertiti, to shed light on how they ended up in the museums where they now reside, and to open the debate about their repatriation.
For more than fifty years, my father quietly assembled one of the most significant private collections of Nigerian and West African art ever held in a family home. Carvings. Bronzes. Masks. Ritual objects. Works that carried centuries of history, belief, and mastery.
As Africa enters 2026, its museums stand as vibrant guardians of the continent’s layered history, from ancient pharaonic legacies to the scars of colonialism and the triumphs of independence. Amid global conversations on cultural restitution, with artifacts slowly returning from European institutions, new and revitalised venues are reshaping how Africans and the world engage with the past.
[ in French ] The AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, Belgium, changed from a ‘museum for colonial propaganda’ and a ‘museum of avoidance’ into one that ‘multiplies voices on colonial history and its persistence’, says historian Yasmina Zian.
‘Time for Papua’ brings different perspectives together: from refined wood carvings and korwar figures to prauw prows and recent film works. You see how creators make history tangible, how objects form relationships, and how a dynamic perception of time clashes with imposed boundaries and economic interests.
This restitution of 107 objects is being recognized as exemplary due to its transparent process and the collaborative approach between the institutions involved. The artifacts, once held in private and public collections in Switzerland, have now been formally transferred to the National Museum of Abidjan.
A new gallery at the Manchester Museum displays thousands of African artefacts, aiming to spark discussion on colonial-era looting and restitution. The initiative seeks public input on the origins and returns of these items, amid growing calls for repatriation of looted cultural heritage.
In recent years, there has been growing recognition that these collections carry painful legacies. In all these engagements, two words are often used: repatriation and restitution.
At first glance they may seem to mean the same thing, and both involve the return of something. But as South African scholars, working in the fields of history, museum studies and human biology, Victoria Ribbon and Ciraj Rassool argue that the difference between these terms is not just semantic. The choice of word reflects deeper politics of justice, recognition and repair.
The conference theme will reflect the project’s focus on equitable collaboration, community-engagement and revisiting the ways in which collections are acquired, interpreted and shared. This year we’re rethinking what a conference can be. Dates: 23-24 April 2026.
In 2025, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA) achieved two significant ownership resolutions. First, the museum was asked to rescind and return the long-term loan of Benin Kingdom artwork to the private collection of Robert Owen Lehman. Both of these resolutions speak to the facts that (1) restitution does not have to be a zero-sum game, and (2) museum restitution has expanded beyond what the letter of the law dictates.
To exhibit taonga is not simply to interpret the past. It is to enter a living relationship with an ancestral presence. Museums do not own taonga. At best, they are temporary caregivers, and increasingly, digital co-stewards.
Susan Tallman writes: What does a fair policy of museum repatriation look like? A new book considers the issue in terms of human rights, cultural sovereignty, and stewardship.
[ in French ] In the 19th century, the concept of "Asian art" gradually gained prominence in the European market, driven not initially by collectors, but by dealers, the true intermediaries between Asia and Europe. This phenomenon took root in a context of forced opening of Asian territories: the Treaty of Yedo (1858) with Japan, the Treaty of Tianjin (1858-1860) with China, and the Treaty of Saigon (1862) with Vietnam.
[ in Dutch ] After five years, research project Pressing Matter, which dealt with the restitution of colonial collection pieces, ends. De Volkskrant talks to initiator Wayne Modest about the project and its influence on the World Museum.
Call for Papers for the 12th Annual Conference of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture. The conference 'Unsettling Heritage and Memory Futures: Decolonial Trajectories Between Crisis and Possibility', will take place on 17, 18 and 19 June, 2026.
Andreas Roth shows, the real story of the coral regalia does not fit the postcolonial narrative some want to attach to these artefacts. They do not provide a precedent for the return of Benin Bronzes.
David Abulafia writes: The history of the Rosetta Stone is not simply an Egyptian history. The inscription in three scripts, hieroglyphic, the less formal hieratic script, and classical Greek, is humdrum.
Bella d'Abrera writes: The decolonisation movement is making headway in Australia’s museums and libraries which are adopting dangerous politics which will ultimately call into question their very existence. In trying to erase the past, we erase ourselves. (It is an older article but worth offers an anti-restitution perspective)
[ in English and in German ] The Museum der Kulturen Basel is systematically examining its collection for coloniality and highlighting the central importance of collaborating with communities in the Global South.
This paper is an ethnographic essay on what should not count as collection and how the Mapuche modes of existence exceed the Chilean heritage regime of objectification. Thus, it requires rethinking repatriation as other-than-human politics.
The Indonesian phrase pasang surut — “the tide in and out” — evokes the continuous movement of people, objects, and ideas across the seas that once linked Europe and the Indonesian archipelago. These currents shaped the emergence of colonial collections but also suggest the possibility of renewed circulation: of knowledge, accountability, and dialogue.
Barnaby Philips discovers one more return of a Benin object from the Netherlands and further analyses what went wrong in Benin City: Two days before the aborted viewing of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), Oba Ewuare II visited his ally Monday Okpebholo, the governor of Edo State. ‘Please stop the opening of the MOWAA.’
Leah Niederhausen and Nicole L. Immler joined forces with Markus Kooper (Hoachanas Community Library & Archives) and Talita Uinuses (Captain Hendrik Witbooi Auta !Nanseb Foundation) and listened to, archive, and amplify Nama knowledge (Namibia) on and experiences with restitution, reparation, and historical (in)justice.
All too often, the literature on the restitution of colonial cultural objects tends to focus on the public international law (PubIIL) aspects of the debate. With a few notable exceptions, the PubIIL and private international law (PIL) dimensions of the debate are rarely considered together. This article makes the case for a coordinated approach.
Western museums are returning the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, but a state-of-the-art museum to display them is still a long way off. Alex Marshall saw hundreds of Benin Bronzes while reporting this article in Benin City and Lagos, Nigeria.
In January 2023, an online seminar was held to investigate the Vatican collections, their legal structure and how repatriation might be possible to countries and communities of origin. In particular we looked at the principle of ‘inalienability’ which governs the collections under Vatican civil law, Alexander Herman writes.
This paper explores the challenges of repatriating poorly documented Aboriginal secret-sacred objects—known as tywerrenge—to central Australia. 'No story, but we still want to see them come back. Then people can know them.'
Restitution activist Mwazulu Diyabanza explains why he is taking the law into his own hands. His actions are a calculated act of civil disobedience, executed for maximum political impact without engaging in violence or damaging property.
December 15th, at 4 pm (Lagos time), the International Repatriation Network (IRN) will host an online session exploring what restitution and repatriation mean for diverse communities and stakeholders in Nigeria today.
[ in German ] The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz will return spiritual objects from Kpando containing human remains to Akpini People in Ghana, and spiritual objects to Australia. Currently, they are in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.
In an address delivered in Algiers, the Caribbean Community (Caricom), unveiled a comprehensive ten-point plan calling for concrete reparations for the crimes of colonialism. This intervention strongly underscored the necessity of a unified, coordinated effort between Africa and its diaspora to confront centuries-long injustices, restore historical rights, and secure meaningful mechanisms for recognition, compensation, and restitution.
Senegalese economist and thinker Felwine Sarr called for a deep reconsideration of the museum, its history, its functions, and the narratives it upholds as African artworks dispersed across Western museums gradually return to the continent. Africa should rethink museum models.
[ in French ] Marie-Anne Léourier administered a questionnaire focused on these questions to visitors of the permanent collections area of the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum (MQB).
The Georg Steindorff Collection, comprising 163 objects, is a central, yet complex, component of the Egyptian Museum-Georg Steindorff at Leipzig University. The “loss” for Georg Steindorff’s family was placed at the forefront of this restitution of Nazi-looted art, while the original, broader loss of heritage for the country of origin (Egypt) due to colonial practices was sidelined.
Open Restitution Africa has published a case study that is centred around 119 cultural belongings from the historic Benin Kingdom. This collection includes intricately cast bronzes, carved ivories and terracotta. They serve dually as both historical artefact and active carriers of spiritual and cultural knowledge, many of which remain relevant in Benin cultural and religious life today.
'Investigating Online Heritage Crime - New Directions, New Technologies, Emerging Markets' offers an introduction to a crucial new field of interest to all heritage researchers.
[ in Dutch ] Collaborative research between heritage institutions in Europe and heritage communities outside Europe offer a unique opportunity to democratise the production of knowledge about the past, the present ,and the future, writes Katrijn D'Hamers (p. 72 ff).
Africa has renewed its most assertive push yet for historical justice (including restitution), as ministers, jurists, and diplomats gathered in Algiers for a landmark conference on the criminalisation of colonialism.
[ in Dutch, in French ] The MAS in Antwerp investigated the provenance of three important cultural objects from its Congolese collection. How did they end up in Antwerp, and what do they mean to Congolese communities today? The results are published in the new publication "On Origin and Future" and incorporated into the permanent exhibition.
The Catalan project "(Tr)African(t)s. Museums and collections of Catalonia in the face of coloniality" has recently created a travelling exhibition titled “To whom does history belong? Struggles for the decolonization of museums". This exhibition “invites us to reflect on the role of museums in colonial history and to rethink heritage from a critical perspective."
The agreement represents the first major case of art restitution involving works created by an enslaved person in the U.S. — a process traditionally associated with families seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis in World War II.
The Art of Status: Looted Treasures and the Global Politics of Restitution examines the relationship between looted art and international status, by focusing on the debates about acquisition and restitution of the Parthenon Marbles, Benin Bronzes, and a never before written about collection of Nazi-looted art housed in the National Museum of Serbia.
There’s a shift in museums of the global north. They have begun to decolonise. Finally! But the weird thing is the ones who are leading this shift are the descendants of those who stole, murdered, oppressed. Is this one of our blind spots? It is high time to sit in our discomfort, for serious self-examination, and for a shifting of power dynamics.
[ in French ] It was in 2021, after 129 years of plunder by France, that the royal treasure of Abomey was returned to Benin. The restitution of this piece of history is part of a campaign launched by Benin in 2016 to make its heritage the cornerstone of its cultural influence.
This article examines how an eighteenth-century decision to bureaucratize gift exchange continued to disrupt long-standing South Asian protocols of reciprocity and regard well into the twentieth century.
The aim of the project is to reveal and connect all collections of material made in Africa that are held in 32 Scottish museums, including lesser-known as well as better-known ones, and to connect these collections with relevant and interested diaspora and descendant communities.
[ in Spanish ] The work of the two expert committees created by Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture, to "overcome and challenge the Eurocentrism" of these two institutions, has concluded after six months with the delivery of two projects outlining concrete guidelines for renewing their museographic narratives.
The UK Government is to implement a change in law that will make it easier for museums in England and Wales to restitute objects from their collections on moral grounds. But national museums will be excluded from new rules.
University collections are more than any others, linked to the definition and transmission of knowledge. The Musée L, UCLouvain's university museum, is launching a new open-access online scientific journal dedicated to university collections and museums: UniMusea – Research and Practices on University Collections.
On November 9th, 2025, as 250 Nigerian and international guests – donors, diplomats, and the heads of national cultural agencies – gathered in Benin City at the new Museum of West African Art’s opening event, protesters in red baseball caps broke into the museum, forcing its closure. Cultural Property News analyses what happen, and why.
Have a look at the way Vatican News reported about the return of 62 objects to Canada. No indigenous representatives or objects visible. Only Roman-catholic dignitaries. It is a fairly literal translation of the article.
Symposium on current debates around the spiritual artifacts collected under colonial or postcolonial conditions and housed in European ethnographic museums. It will be held Dec. 3 and 4 in Groningen with many wonderful scholars and MA and PhD students involved.
Twelve historical artefacts have been formally returned to Ethiopia after being kept by a German family for more than 100 years. The artefacts were y collected in the 1920s by Germany's then-envoy to Ethiopia Franz Weiss and his wife Hedwig.
[ in Dutch] Due to the death of Otto van der Mieden on February 1, 2024, the founder and director of the Puppetry Museum, the museum is closed and the collection is being deaccessioned.
The purpose of this article is to take a closer look at such instances of return of cultural heritage, by particularly focusing on the relationship between the matters of return and the questions of identity and collective memory in this respect. The third part focuses on the question of repatriation of cultural objects removed during the times of colonialism.
Phillip Ihenacho, director and chairman of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), has watched the restitution debate unfold with both pride and concern. Pride, because it signals a long-overdue recognition of West Africa’s cultural heritage; concern, because too often the conversation is shaped by Western priorities rather than African ones.
[in English, in German] Thomas Fues sees many positive elements in the Joint Guidelines. which the federal government, the states and local authority associations adopted on 14 October 2025. They have some good guidelines but challenges remain as well.
Ghana's Asante king has welcomed the return of 130 gold and bronze artefacts from the UK and South Africa some of which were looted during colonial times and others bought on the open market. 'These artifacts belong where their meaning was born'.
The Vatican is working with the Canadian Catholic Church to return 62 Indigenous objects, says Gilbert Whiteduck . He is the education director and former chief of the Algonquin community Kitigan Zibi Anishinābeg, in western Quebec.
Julien Volper, acurator at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium), is writing here in a personal capacity: The Dutch restitution of Benin objects, earlier this year, was motivated by Dutch self-interest, both of the government and of the museum that has to let go a collection.
Elias Feroz interviews Dan Hicks: Monuments, museums, and cultural institutions were often created in the image of “militarist realism,” presenting colonialism and enslavement as eternal. Undoing this legacy is not erasing the past but combating a pernicious ideology.
From the crowns of Ethiopian emperors held abroad to the mummified remains of African ancestors still stored in Western institutions, the theft of Africa’s sacred heritage represents a deeper violence. Those which we speak of, are not mere museum exhibits; they are vessels of ancestral power and collective memory. Their continued displacement denies Africa’s children the right to know and connect with their lineage.
Kwame Opoku looks back at the year 2025. Two fragments, one about the Western dedain for looted objects and human remains. The other about a publication of Open Restitution Africa. But first, a positive event.
The opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum comes with renewed calls for restitution: the famous Nefertiti bust, in Berlin since 1913, and the Stone of Rosetta, in London since 1801. Differing points of view.
Cyprus is a much negelected spot in colonial history. This documentary Film trailer by Zimbabwean artist Sithabile Mlotshwa is made possible through a collaboration with historian Paraskevas Samaras and videographer Michalakis Georgiou with contributions and support from Dinos Toumazos, Agora Dialogue, Oz Karahan and others.
Oba Ewuare II today, during a courtesy visit to the Government house spoke explicitly on the proposed plan to build Benin Royal Museum which the past Governor of the state, Mr. Godwin Obaseki converted to EMOWAA and later MOWAA.
The theft of the Louvre’s crown jewels has increased calls for the museum to be more transparent about the colonial origins of the treasures it displays. Their routes to Paris run through the shadows of empire, an uncomfortable history that France has only begun to confront.
In an address at the 2025 Conference of the African Bar Association (AfBA) in Accra, Chief Charles A. Taku of the AfBA Reparations Committee, made an impassioned appeal for what he termed “The Accra Declaration” — a continental demand compelling Europe and the West to pay reparations for the centuries of slavery, colonialism, and cultural theft inflicted upon Africa and its peoples.
The International Seminar on the Return of Cultural Heritage under the auspices of the 2025 Brazil BRICS Presidency will take place on 10 and 11 November and is organized by the University of São Paulo [ USP ].
The cultural goods – a carved wooden stick, a divination basket, and a bovine astragalus amulet - were originally owned by the Nkuna royal family of Limpopo and used in ritual and spiritual ceremonies dating back to the 19th century. They were taken in 1899 by Swiss missionary Dr. Henri Junod. The royal family had begun negotiations in 2016.
[ in Dutch ] Last Saturday, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) opened in Cairo. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was also in attendance. The world's largest archaeological museum displays more than 100,000 art treasures from Egyptian history, but one important piece is missing: the bust of Queen Nefertiti. It has graced the walls of Berlin for over a century.
Dan Hicks argues that the allegation that his book The Brutish Museums is “part of a trend away from pro-British perspectives” is contextualised and refuted. On the contrary, this reply argues, openness and transparency about the colonial past and present is a key element of the reclamation and
reimagining of Britishness that is unfolding in the 2020s – this unfinished period that the book calls “the decade of returns”.
Colonial powers have long used museums to collect, display and contain the suffering of subjugated peoples, transforming trauma into spectacle and erasure into curation. Armenia, like so many small nations whose history was stolen, remains entangled in this architecture of memory.
Over 4.250 respondents from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and Mali participated in a survey, expressing that return of artefacts is an essential party of reparations to the continent.
At the G20 meeting, South African Minister for Sport, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, champions cultural restitution and digital equity at the G20 summit, advocating for a fairer future. Each G20 member state should have a restitution committee.
[ in German ] Berlin Postkolonial, Decolonize Berlin, and Flinn Works welcome the update of the “Joint Guidelines on Dealing with Cultural Property and Human Remains from Colonial Contexts.” Clearer procedures and the establishment of unconditional returns are steps in the right direction. At the same time, the guidelines fall far short of a human rights- and international law-based understanding of restitution and repatriation.
[ in English and in German ] The main focus is on cultural belongings from four Cameroonian communities, the Bakoko, Bamum, Duala, and Maka, whose heritage was absorbed by these institutions during the German colonial era (1884-1919). This should also become a basis for future restitutions.
[ in French ] The French government intends to go further with a bill that could become a landmark law in this area. What are the terms of the bill, and why does it potentially represent a historic turning point? Catharine Titi writes....
The British Museum has hosted a lavish fundraiser at 2,000 pounds ($2,668) per ticket, dubbed the "Pink Ball," in the room housing the Parthenon Marbles, igniting fierce criticism and reviving long-standing debates over cultural ethics and colonial restitution. Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni condemned as 'provocative indifference'. Here follows a comment by Global Times reporter Chen Xi.
The stolen jewels are also products of a long history of colonial extraction. The sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, pearls, and other gemstones they contained were mined across Asia, Africa, and South America.
[ in German ] The 2025 Guidelines promote dialogue with societies of origin and descendants, interdisciplinary provenance research, and proactive roles for museums, while they acknowledge the cultural, spiritual, and epistemological singularities of each case. They expand on communication channels for restitution requests, specifically notably requiring the consent of the state of origin, and call for a need to streamline procedures and call for an expert advisory body to be established to support restitution efforts. Further details on governance and the body’s specific mandate remain to be defined.
This kick-off seminar, led by Pietro Sullo, discusses the legal status of colonial artefacts from Africa held in European museums, clarifying whether there is a duty to repatriate them. The research hypothesis is that European states have a legal duty to return colonial artefacts acquired without the consent of the communities of origin.
The colonial collections in public museums and the private sector in Italy are not less substantial than elsewhere in Europe. Italy has made some significant returns. Nevertheless, this blog argues that the country is much better at reclaiming its own stolen relics than at accepting the consequences of the investigations into its colonial collections.
The decolonisation of museums worldwide is an unstoppable process. Spain aimed to join the wave of museological decolonisation. In the case of the Canary Islands, this practice presents a series of peculiarities related to their unique historical process.
The German state Baden-Württemberg acknowledges its historical responsibility and is committed to provenance research in order to identify and return colonial cultural goods that were acquired unlawfully. The start was in 2019, when Hendrik Witbooi's Bible and whip were returned to Namibia.
