An increasing number of museums in GB, which are not encumbered by prescriptive legislation on restitution, are engaging in creative ways with source communities around the world. In a scholarly and professional manner, they are leading much European practice when it comes to repatriation.
Even those museums, such as the BM and the V&A, unable to deaccession are finding innovative ways to share collections more equitably. They are inhibited by the 1983 Niational Heritage Act.
In strict legal terms, the Act permits trustees to dispose of an object only if it is a duplicate; has become ‘unsuitable’ for the collections; if it is transferred to another national museum; or it has become irreparably damaged.
The two exceptions to this law are objects covered by either the 2004 Human Tissue Act – which concerns human remains less than 1,000 years old – or the 2009 Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act.
Increasingly, however, the question is being asked: what is the moral difference between Nazi and colonial looting, and should there not be a commensurate process of returns? And the 1983 Act is outdated and infantilising: trustees should have autonomy over their collections, which includes the right to deaccession.
It is time for political leadership: the international community expects it, the legal tools are available and a decision needs to be made.
