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.
The purpose of this article by Mirosław M Sadowski 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. With case studies from Brazil and Angola.
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.
Early in 2025, Patty Gerstenblith published 'Cultural Objects and Reparative Justice. A Legal and Historical Analysis'. She proposes an innovative paradigm for determining reparations, including restitution of cultural objects appropriated during the nineteenth century. This is a review of her book by Annaïs Mattez with both positive and critical points.
Australian Aboriginal Studies (AAS) is a peer-reviewed journal that combines academic rigour with research excellence. Issue nr 2/ 2025 has a number of articles relevant for RM*.
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 ]
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.
The Freer Research Center at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art and the Zentralarchiv and Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz announce their second in-person symposium dedicated to the provenance of Asian art, occurring November 11–13, 2026, on Museum Island in Berlin, Germany.
[ 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.
Archaeologist and journalist Mariam Gichan wonders why complicated legal hurdles are sufficient to explain why the fossil hasn’t returned to Tanzania and whether “complicated” becomes a convenient reason for inaction.
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.
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.
The Wereldmuseum collection includes 3,647 objects that contain ancestral human remains. Particularly harrowing are the 26 premature and newborn babies preserved in fluid. Together with members of various communities, Manuwi C. Tokai created an altar in the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam to serve as a place of remembrance for the ancestors held in the museum’s collection.
[ in Spanish ] Lucas da Costa Maciel, Mario Blaser and Marisol de la Cadena invite readers to think of ethnography from friction—not as an obstacle to be resolved, but as a material and creative condition of encounters between worlds.
This paper investigates the political and cultural grounds in disseminating manuscripts’ digital copies and ask what kinds of shifting assumptions about the nature of textuality and manuscripts are indicated by digital returns. This is especially relevant given that some manuscripts in traditional Java, those designated as pusaka, are not merely media transmitting textual information. Rather, their materiality contains a power of its own.
Through the case of the Palembang Sultanate in Sumatra, Alan Darmawan investigates the extant manuscripts originating from the palace library. Some moved into the hands of private owners in Palembang, while others were dispersed into colonial collections in Europe and Southeast Asia.
[ 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.
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.
Rodney Westerlaken writes: The return of the Dubois Collection: principled restitution, unresolved policy questions: – At what point does scientific heritage become cultural heritage? – Which criteria should govern this classification, and by whom are they determined? - How can restitution frameworks avoid becoming normatively expansive without sufficient conceptual precision?
[ 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.
[ in French ] What does decolonization mean when power relations remain unchanged? Anne Wetsi Mpoma invites us to rethink decolonization as a political, epistemic and restorative process — where art becomes a space of resistance, reappropriation and symbolic justice.
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.
During work with our project 'People, place and plunder' about diaspora groups and Restitution, writes Swedish scholar Staffan Lundén, we have come upon two articles which are almost certainly written by AI.
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.'
[ 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.
Findings suggest that whilst there is strong support for retaining objects, namely under the guise of guaranteeing access for all peoples, there is also opposition from volunteers who feel that the British Museum is morally obliged to return objects.
Through diverse voices, this (open access) Abécédaire rethinks the history of art and museums as an experimental space, transcending disciplinary and geographical boundaries. It offers a fresh, nuanced perspective on contemporary issues in the study of the past while paving new pathways for the future.
[ 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.
Ngaire Blankenberg writes: While the world debates restitution, Africa’s own heritage institutions are collapsing. The question is no longer who took our past, but who is keeping it alive.
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.
Andrew Matthijssen of the Vendue House informs the authorities in Vanuatu that it withdraws the skulls from auction and will suggest to the owner(s) of the skulls to return them to Vanuatu.
In an email, in the hands of RM*, to the Vendue Huis in The Hague, the Netherlands, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre (VKS) and the National Museum of Vanuatu, the national authorities responsible for the safeguarding of Vanuatu’s cultural heritage, demand the immediate withdrawal of ancestral remains from sale.
[ 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.
The auctioneers of the Venduehuis in The Hague, the Netherlands, offer four ancestral skulls from Vanuatu. Evidence that the trade in ancestral remains continues. On line auction, until 24 November 2025
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.
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.
[ 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.
It is well known that Australia's police perpetrated violence against First Nations throughout the colonial period, but their role in supplying Indigenous ancestral bodily remains and cultural heritage objects to domestic and overseas museums is little understood, nor too is whether they exceeded or abused their powers in doing so.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
Nikolaus Perneczky examines three archival films produced in the 1960s and 1970s, locating them within struggles over the historical memory of colonialism and political contestations of the post-independence era. These works were some of the earliest African-directed films to employ found (still and moving) images.
[ 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....
[ 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.
The British Museum has announced that it will be holding a charity ball on 18 October 2025 to collect funds to further, inter alia, its international partnerships. This makes Kwame Opoku having a closer look at it.
This special exhibition is dedicated to a long-overlooked collecting practice: The collection of objects by Catholic and Protestant missionary societies – primarily during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Doing research in Swiss museums, artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige comes across a collection of ancestral remains and artifacts from an indigenous Sri Lankan community. The award-winning documentary can be seen at film festivals in Leipzig and Amsterdam.
In 'Rethinking Histories of Indonesia - Experiencing, Resisting and Renegotiating Coloniality', editors Sadiah Boonstra and others provide a critical evaluation of histories of Indonesia from the formal period of colonisation to the present day. The volume approaches Indonesian history through the lens of coloniality, or the structures of power and control that underpin colonisation and which persist into the present.
Christian missionary collections have contributed much to the development of the exhibitionary complex, but have received significantly less notice than imperial states using violence to acquire collections, and subsequent demands for restitution.
[ in English and in German ] Experience to date suggests that the portal has so far been little used by actors from the contexts of origin and other countries of the so-called Global South and their diasporic communities. To shed more light on this issue, we surveyed both the DDB as the provider and German and international researchers as (potential) users in writing.
Hugh Johnson-Gilbert and Alexander Herman write: It has long been the view in the UK that national museums are restricted by law from repatriating collection objects. But will legislation passed three years ago, the Charities Act 2022, point the way ahead?
Kulasumb Kalinoe (East Sepik area, Papua New Guinea; currrently James Cook University, Australia) focuses on the collection and removal of cultural material from Papua New Guinea (PNG) during the colonial era. She discusses views among the Papua New Guinean diaspora in Australia on museums and PNG collections, and argues that cultural heritage issues must be addressed before the work of decolonisation can begin.
The English translation of this guide offers the basic steps for how to begin, with the main sources and practical tips. The guide was written for Dutch museums and other institutions.
Muhammad Nishat Hussain writes: The 100th anniversary of the first formal excavation at Harappa (Punjab, NE Pakistan) is more than a commemoration of a century-old dig. It is an opportunity to reimagine how Pakistan studies and safeguards its past. Since the 1970s the country has tried to regain lost treasures. In vain.
Rohan Fernando emphasises the colonial roots of India’s great contemporary museums and the role of the British in rediscovering India’s past. Muhammad Nishan Hussain [University of Lahore] takes an opposite view and sees them as a tool of colonial control.
In 2021, the University of Aberdeen returned a looted Benin object to the Oba of Benin, becoming the first UK institution to agree to an unconditional return. Neil Curtis [University of Aberdeen] outlines the process of giving back a pillaged object without a repatriation request being made.
Jongsok Kim wrote this open access book in 2018, but it is still very relevant for our discussion. With legal and historical perspectives. Some case-studies about restitution are noteworthy.
There has been a lack of academic focus related to how public facing or ‘live interpreter’ volunteers are strategically utilised to support the delivery of museum decolonisation, as well as the implications this has for volunteering.
The past decade has seen a worldwide tendency to re-examine human remains found in old museum collections. To obtain a full picture of the life history of the individuals under consideration, an anthropological study might be mandated, although this approach is not yet systematic.
[ in English, French and Spanish ] From a continental European perspective, islands have long been considered as separated and isolated spaces, disconnected from one another and from the rest of their environment. This special issue of the ICOFOM Study Series rethinks such a perspective on islands by bringing together papers from around the world that draw on alternative views, notably from the Pacific and Caribbean regions concerning oceanic islands.
[ in Dutch ] How are Belgium and the Netherlands dealing with the sensitive issue of returning looted art and researching its colonial origins? An exploration of some treacherous areas in the quagmire of new Dutch and Belgian restitution policy. A discussion between museum director Wayne Modest and activist Nadia Nsayi.
Thupten Kelsang quotes Clare Harris: 'The bulk of Tibet’s portable cultural heritage has been retained everywhere other than Tibet, and is now most readily at the disposal of everyone other than Tibetans.' About a 'doubly colonial' Tibet.
Museums hold thousands of ‘things’ from all around the world. In larger institutions like Te Papa, the histories of these ‘things’ are not always known. This blog is looking at ways to start recovering these lost stories and histories.
Kwame Opoku writes: The French Minister of Culture presented a legislative text on 30 July to facilitate the restitution of artefacts in French museums by derogating from the principle of inalienability. It will not likely lead to a rush of restitutions from France. Excluding archaeological materials, military materials, and public records eliminates many objects. Archaeological finds from Egypt, Mali, and other African countries, such as those on the ICOM Red Lists, would be excluded.
This open access book (only after 10 - 14 days) offers a unique perspective on the return of cultural objects by considering the aftermath of the handover processes.
This paper is the outcome of joint reflections by the two authors, based in Europe and in Africa. Since the diverse practices of restitution have attracted more attention than certain concepts related to it, this paper addresses this imbalance by focusing on conceptual issues.
The article 'Journey of No Return: The Impact of Looted Heritage on Nigeria’s Cultural Legacy' explores the profound impact of looted heritage on Nigeria’s cultural legacy, highlighting the historical, cultural, and economic implications of the plundered artifacts.
Thomas Fues writes: the German government emphasises its willingness to confront Germany’s colonial history and its consequences. But it remains to be seen whether and how such declarations of intent at the beginning of the legislative period will actually be implemented in the coming years.
Dan Hicks writes: Genuine transparency will require the V&A channelling its resources into creating a truly comprehensive public database of the artefacts, images and archives that it holds.
It’s no easy matter resolving the current ethical debate over the retention and exhibition of human remains. But one public collection is asking visitors to cast their vote.
The African Renaissance made restitution central to reclaiming cultural sovereignty. But the reality is that implementation is still shaped by donor-led systems that often bypass African agency and African audiences.
[ in Dutch ] How do Belgium and the Netherlands deal with the sensitive issue of returning looted art and investigating its colonial origins? What do you see of this in museums and what remains underexposed?
This article about 500 palm-leaf manuscripts, looted during the conquest of Lombok by the Netherlands East Indies in 1894, is especially urgent as the demand for provenance research grows. It helps to better understand the complex historical trajectories of these cultural heritage objects.
Vanessa Hava Schulmann (Freie Universität Berlin): The stories I will tell you about happened during my work in a Berlin university collection. I was tasked of meeting the deceased whose bones and tissues were stored in those dusty wooden cupboards and figure out how to handle their presence in a dignified way.
The colonial legacy continues to resonate in Portugal, shaping “organized forgetting” of colonial violence. Finding ways to dismantle the real effects of that historical legacy includes restitution of looted collections.
The June 2025 report by a working group of Edinburgh University DECOLONISED TRANSFORMATIONS CONFRONTING THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH’S HISTORY AND LEGACIES OF ENSLAVEMENT AND COLONIALISM focusses mainly on slavery an its current impact. At the en dit has an interesting recommendation for the university's Anatomical Museum and its 200 skulls.
On 7 July 2025, the French National Assembly has approved the restitution to Ivory Coast of the Djidji Ayôkwê, an important talking drum, stolen in 1916. In the same period, the British Museum came with a statement that it is unwilling to restitute an equally important drum to the Pokomo council of elders in Kenya.
La Galigo, an Bugis text, is poetry, written on palm leaves in Bugis language and is considered to be the most voluminous literary work in the world. But the majority of the manuscripts are stored in Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Ahmad Mohammed writes: While digital repatriation offers an alternative or complementary pathway to physical restitution, its success hinges not only on ethical intent or technological innovation but on the socio-technical infrastructure available to source communities.
Andreas Giorgallis provides an overview of how race manifests itself when it comes to cultural heritage, with reference to the restitution of colonial cultural objects, statues related to slavery and colonialism, intangible cultural heritage but also its protection during armed conflict.
[ in Dutch ] According to FARO, the Flemish support centre for cultural heritage, organisations in this part of Belgium increasingly involve communities of origin as active partners in management, description, research and showing collections of these communities that the Flemish organisations preserve.
Thomas Fues writes: In an historic breakthrough for German restitution policy on colonial contexts, Cameroon’s official Restitution Committee has agreed upon the return of colonially appropriated cultural heritage in September 2025. Four German museums are involved.
This working paper provides an analysis of grounds for return and restitution frameworks based upon them in different national contexts. One European policy context, namely the German, is analyzed alongside three Latin American legislative contexts: the Argentinian, Chilean, and Brazilian.
In “Relooted” players find themselves in a major museum, busting through walls, arms full of ill-begotten African artifacts to be returned to their rightful homes. The game features a crew of Robin Hood-esque thieves staging elaborate heists to take back stolen artifacts from Western museums, and repatriating them to the peoples from whom they were taken.
Hotel Drouot has auctioned off three Benin objects, without guaranteeing that they are not related to the British invasion of the Kingdom of Benin in 1897. The provenance only goes to the 1950s and 1960s. It also auctioned Nok and Sokoto objects from Nigeria, both of which are on ICOM's Red List for West Africa.
This working paper offers an inventory of missionary orders and societies active in German colonial regions in Africa and Asia, the information available about them and the options for further research.
[ in Dutch ] Daantje van de Linde delves into the history of a power statue that has been called the face of the World Museum Rotterdam's Africa collection. Her conclusion: case of involuntary loss of possession.
Cameroonian prof. Albert Gouaffo made an interim assessment of the debate on the looting and restitution of Cameroon’s cultural heritage in Germany. 'This work requires preparation and prudence and not a rush, as the German side would like.'
Catharine Titi examines the history of a series of objects in the museum's possession that are currently being claimed by their countries of origin and reviews the institution's inadequate response to the repatriation debate.
Mike Rutherford, curator of Zoology and Anatomy at the Hunterian, University of Glasgow, speaks at a conference in Manchester. Case-study: Repatriation Jamaican Giant Galliwasp.
Rematriation is more than the return of land or cultural items. It is a sacred process of restoring Indigenous relationships to land, water, language, and spiritual responsibility.
'Mobile Heritage' explores how diverse digital technologies have allowed for new types of mobilities and introduced a novel set of practices, interventions, and politics for heritage collections, archives, exhibitions, entertainment, conservation, management, commerce, education, restitution, activism, and regulation. With a case-study about digitalised ancient manuscripts from Ethiopia in the British Library.
[ in Dutch ] Tervurologie sets its sights on the AfricaMuseum and radically bets on imagination - to think new Tervurens, plural. Not as escape, but as intervention. Not as recovery, but as restart. Not as an answer, but as another question. Tervurologie is an attempt at exorcism.
Proceedings from the seminar Museums, Decolonisation, and Restitution: A Global Conversation, held at Shanghai University on March 20–21, 2023. With 60 experts from 21 countries.
This article postulates that what we have seen in the past decade has been a turning point in memory politics of the colonial past, and it asks whether a new Franco-German paradigm in memory politics has emerged?
[ in Italian ] From the dawn of Italian exploration in Africa and throughout the colonial period, objects and samples from overseas came to the Peninsula, finding their way into temporary exhibitions and more than one hundred permanent displays, where they were studied, described and presented to the public.
Dominic Senayah presents an in-depth exploration of reparations using Ghana as a case study. He highlights the multivalent dimensions of reparations and has a set of recommendations.
Within the national museum context, the Repatriasi exhibition risks becoming a missed opportunity to critically engage with the afterlives of returned objects, beyond marking their physical return.
This Provenance Research Reports Series shows the variety of approaches to provenance research on specific objects, collections, collectors, and regions. This is the first of four issues.
[ in German ] In a new book, German author and former SPD politician Mathias Brodkorb denounces the development of ethnological museums in Europe, especially Leipzig, Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna.
The House of Ni’isjoohl Memorial Pole, stolen in the 1920s, was rematriated from National Museums Scotland (NMS) in 2023. Noxs Ts’aawit (Dr. Amy Parent) of The Nisga’a Nation and Dr. John Giblin from NMS outline the process of international cooperation.
During the 19th century colonial wars, the library of the rulers of Palembang in Sumatra was looted by British and Dutch troops; its manuscripts were transported to other places and some of them are lost. Alan Darmawan looks for traces of some of these mishandled treasures.
In her book 'Colonial Ambitions and Collecting Anxieties: Aboriginal Objects and Western Australian Frontiers, 1828–1914' Nicola Froggatt assesses how non-Aboriginal collectors understood Aboriginal objects, and what this reveals about colonial relationships, anxieties and ambitions.
(Re)collecting Natural History in Europe is a research project that examines how natural history and ethnographic collections are curated and displayed, with a particular focus on European museums.
The paper 'Nkali and Kolo-collecting in Eastern Nigeria: interrogating colonial collections of ọfϙ and Ikenga, Igbo objects of sovereignty and authority' explores the changing narratives of Ọfϙ and Ikenga, sacred objects of sovereignty and authority among the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria, currently in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), University of Cambridge (UK).
The paper argues that the ensuing negotiations and the state-imposed criteria for reburial reflect an ongoing colonial impulse to control Indigenous bodies and restrict ontological and political self-determination.
Understanding the Restorative museum practices begins with a departure from static preservation models. It involves recognizing that cultural institutions operate within complex social and ecological systems, bearing responsibility for their historical impacts and future roles.
This interdisciplinary encyclopedia brings together scholars from different disciplines across the humanities and social sciences to provide the state of the art and most comprehensive overview of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of cultural heritage and conflict.
Zainab Tahir: The Marine Heritage Gallery, a gallery managed by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries in Jakarta, sparked conversation about the complexities surrounding the display of three thousand commercially salvaged artefacts.
Re:Sound explores whether and how the inherent divergence of validations and understandings of sonic expression provides ways to reconsider established notions of heritage.
Objects taken from former colonies have been incorporated into collections. They express universality, which should be valued, without ignoring the need to trace their journey and restore their ownership.
Deliberate avoidance, lack of interest, or lack of sources, African arts have found themselves to the margins of the history of spoliations, destruction and displacement of works of art during the 1933-45 period, with research largely focusing on European art. Conference on 13 November 2025 in Paris.
This gold crown with stunningly delicate filigree belonged to Emperor Tewodros II, the King of Kings of Abyssinia. It was the most remarkable artefact looted during the British Army’s 1868 siege of Maqdala, the king’s hilltop fortress capital.
In Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome, Gloria Jane Bell considers Indigenous cultural belongings held in Vatican Museums collections. As she turns attention to the stories they tell—and the Vatican’s efforts to silence them—she locates these possessions within a long history of Indigenous travelers with creative ties to Rome.
Dan Hicks' 'Every Monument Will Fall - A Story of Remembering and Forgetting' reappraises how we think about culture, and how to find hope, remembrance and reconciliation in the fragments of an unfinished violent past.
Ahmad Mohammed writes: Immersive technologies and digital repatriation are reshaping heritage practice—opening up new possibilities for connection, access, and repair. But are we asking the right questions?
Heritage interpretation—the process through which meaning is assigned to the material and immaterial traces of the past—is never a neutral act. It inherently involves questions of power, identity, and authority, writes Ahmad Mohammed.
The (black-red) coalition agreement of Conservatives (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) in Germany contains remarkably positive statements on dealing with the colonial legacy.
The British Museum must not succumb to pressure to return the Benin Bronzes to Africa, as the case for their restitution is 'weak', Sir Trevor Phillips says.
A central assumption in the political process of restitution of looted properties and cultural objects is that their return helps societies to redeem histories of injustice and dispossession. In this article, we ask which objects address whose histories, and how processes of restitution are influenced by the presence and absence of objects and collections.
Te Papa collection manager and kaitiaki taonga Moana Parata brings home a precious taonga, a raranga vest collected by Carl Freeze, an American Mormon missionary in the early 1900s.
This essay by Ahmad Mohammed critically interrogates how decolonisation discourse is being used—sometimes productively to drive real change, but other times performatively as a mere buzzword—within the heritage sector.
Markus Scholz discusses the missionary practice and ideas of the Bavarian Capuchins among the Mapuche in Araucanía in south Chile from 1895–1896 onwards. Distinguishing themselves as defenders of Indigenous land rights and as linguistic experts on the Mapuche language, they also assembled a rich collection of ethnographic artifacts and natural specimens, which could be problematic today. [ open access ]
A European art collector challenged Conan Cheong's commendation of the Dutch Government’s return of the Singhosari stone Bhairava, Nandi, Ganesha and Brahma statues to Indonesia the year before.
'Deconstructing Dinosaurs - The History of the German Tendaguru Expedition and its finds, 1906-2023' takes a fresh look at the history of the German Tendaguru Expedition (1909–1913), using recently uncovered sources to reveal how Berlin’s Natural History Museum appropriated and extracted 225 tonnes of dinosaur fossils from land belonging to modern-day Tanzania.
Muhammad Nishat Hussain explores how Pakistan has been doubly deprived of its cultural heritage, first through British colonial looting and later through India's post-Partition retention of thousands of artifacts.
How are museum objects valued and who decides? Trevor Engel explores the relationship of perceived scientific value to the idea of hoarding applied to colonial institutions' holdings.
Contributing to current efforts to grapple with museums' colonial legacies, this article takes the question of evidence as an entry point to unlock the multi-layered make-up of African spiritual artifacts in missionary collections.
Senegalese art historian El Hadji Malick Ndiaye says discussions and decisions about the restitution of African artefacts cannot be dictated by the West. He also discusses inter-Africa repatriations.
This collaboration between the Académie des Traces and C& explores the traces of colonial heritage today in several texts by emerging scholars and museum professionals from the African and European continents.
Geraldine Kendall Adams delves into the moral and ethical arguments that surround the highly sensitive issue of human remains held in British museum collections.
This project, sponsored by the Scottish Government, developed recommendations on how Scotland’s involvement in empire, colonialism, and historic slavery can be addressed using museum collections and museum spaces. The Scottish Government accepted these recommendations in January 2024 and work to deliver them is underway.
This article presents recent provenance research on the Indigenous ancestral human remains gathered by Alphonse Louis Pinart (1852-1911) during his journey in Oceania on board the French navy cruiser Le Seignelay.
The restitution of material objects has become central for engaging with past injustices in post-conflict situations. Thereby, restitution is increasingly attributed a transformative potential to enable dialogues between different victim and perpetrator groups in the aftermath of mass violence.
This dissertation investigates the histories and itineraries of Abelam collections from the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea held in museums in Europe (the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and the UK), Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Since the later part of the twentieth century, ethnographic museums have come under increasing scrutiny, and many have reflected on and changed their presentation as they questioned collections so often made by colonial officials and explorers.
Modernity has emphasized the need to disconnect from emotions for the sake of objectivity; the mind as the vehicle for sense-making. However, onto-epistemologies from the Global South discuss the relevance of a holistic integration of the body, mind, heart, and life-force (spirit) for a better understanding.
The African Collections Futures project seeks to develop a better sense of where Africa-related objects and materials are present in diaspora and communities of origin have with these objects, and what more can be done. The scope covers the nine institutions – eight museums and the Botanic Garden – that make up the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM), the University Library, and less well-known collections such as those in various University departments and affiliated institutions.
In Morocco, the post-colonial power has implemented cultural policies aiming for a return to the precolonial times with a conception of tradition that was produced by the colonial gaze, thus continuing the colonial epistemology and policies.
This paper demonstrates that communities and victims of colonial crimes who suffered gross violations of international human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law are entitled to reparations and the restitution of their stolen or looted African cultural heritage.
In the last three decades, museums and museological practices that are fundamentally based on Western knowledge systems have been strongly questioned by a collective that includes Indigenous Peoples, political activists, representatives of civil society and scholars.
New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities delves into the hidden histories of forty of the New World’s most iconic artifacts, from the Inca mummy to Darwin’s hummingbirds.
This essay proceeds from the observation that the “Egypt” portrayed in museums and school education misrepresents the lived realities of modern Egyptians, their experiences, and their expectations concerning Egypt’s past and present.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for African Reparations (APPG-AR) has produced a policy brief, ‘Laying Ancestors to Rest’, which makes the case that the display and sale of African ancestral remains by British institutions “causes profound distress to diaspora communities and countries of origin”.
When repatriation has been largely framed within nation-state contexts, what does it mean to truly foster inclusivity in this process? Is it essential to involve the communities directly affected for such inclusivity to be achieved? What insights can we gain from community-led repatriations regarding local priorities, needs, and cultural practices?
“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate” Edward W. Said.
The latest issue of the "International Journal of Heritage Studies" (Volume 31, Issue 3, 2025) is out! This issues features a series of articles on "virtual repatriation", "the symbolic violence of heritage consultancy", "the heritage value of emptiness", etc.
[ open access ] This Special Issue of UMAC Journal has a Guidance for restitution and return of items from university collections and interesting contributions about ancestral remains in these collections.
The collection of the Musée des Rois Bamoun (MRB, Museum of the Bamoun Kings), located in Foumban in Cameroon’s West Region, testifies to the richness and diversity of the Bamoun Kingdom’s art, culture, and history.
Argentina has one of the most important and sensitive bioanthropological collections in Latin America. Most of the remains in museums come from Tehuelche and Mapuche victims of the so-called "Conquest of the Desert". However...
This blog discusses the necessity for a comprehensive monitoring system for tracking restitution efforts involving cultural belongings and ancestral remains in Latin America.
The volume offers new findings on the historical and current significance of artifacts and highlights the current dialogue with partners from Nigeria and the diaspora, reflecting on the methods of cooperative research and the future of the objects currently kept in Swiss collections.
The AfricaMuseum in Tervuren near Brussels conserves two mummified persons. Where they came from and how they reached the museum was long shrouded in mystery.
The National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) with the support of the Federal Ministry of Art, culture , tourism and the creative economy signed a historic management agreement with the Oba of Benin, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo Ewuare II at the Royal Palace in Benin..
[ open access ] 'Displacing and Displaying the Objects of Others - The Materiality of Identity and Depots of Global History' brings a diverse range of contributions inspired by research from the "Hamburg’s (post-)colonial legacy" research center.
[ in German ] Scientists from the global south criticize museum provenance research and restitutions as a colonial project: The assignment of work orders copies the mapping of the world shut down by imperialism.
Since the later stage of the Qing Dynasty, many imperial objects have been moved to Europe due to a series of Sino-European wars. Perceived as having less material value, Qing imperial books, manuscripts, and scrolls are studied less by contemporary scholars.
This annotated bibliography presents mostly Indigenous authors and thinkers who have identified this disconnect between Euro-centric and Indigenous ways of seeing and understanding the world for decades, if not centuries.
A foundational handbook for critical heritage research about Africa and its diaspora. Part III African Objects and the Global Museum-Scape is relevant for RM*.
[ in French, Italian subtitles ] This year it is seventy years ago that Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Ghislain Cloquet released their documentary Les statues meurent aussi about historical African art and the effects colonialism has had on how it is perceived.
The report offers an overview of the restitutions and claims processed in the Netherlands until recently, and the legal framework in which they took place.
The State-centric discourse that surrounds Indonesia’s cultural heritage protection and repatriation policies impede locally-led activism related to cultural heritage.
[ in German, English and French ] German museums of world cultures hold 40,000 objects from Cameroon, more than the entire African collection of the British Museum, according to a new study, presented by Bénédicte Savoy (Technische Universität, Berlin) and Albert Gouaffo (University of Dschang).
This article explores the ownership of cultural objects within national and traditional customary law in Suriname, with the aim to provide a legal context to the issue of claims for the return of some of these cultural objects from the Netherlands.
In Switzerland, the decolonization of ethnological and historical museums and collections is in progress. This is true in practice, especially by federally funded provenance research projects and by single restitutions of human remains and colonial objects.
The article 'Hidden Colonial Legacies and Pathways of Repair'investigates how the question of ancestral remains out of colonial contexts in Belgian museum collections is understood in the DR Congo.
[ in French ] The article 'Between Belgian archives and Congolese oral sources in provenance research. The case of the statue of Chief Nkolomonyi at MAS (Belgium)' examines the value of sources in the country of the former coloniser and that of the ex-colonised. It broadens the scope of provenance research.
The Return of Cultural Heritage to Latin America takes a new approach to the question of returns and restitutions. It is the first publication to look at the domestic politics of claiming countries in order to understand who supports the claims and why.
This book examines the ways in which law can be used to structure the return of indigenous sacred cultural heritage to indigenous communities, referred to as repatriation in this volume. In particular, it aims at developing legal structures that align repatriation with contemporary international human rights standards.
The Bill of 3 July 2022 to recognize the alienability of goods linked to the Belgian State’s colonial past and to determine a legal framework for their restitution and return (“the Restitution Bill”) puts Belgium at the forefront of international restitutions of colonial collections.
The 1990 Native American Graves and Protection Act (NAGPRA) is generally presented as a breakthrough in favour of First Nations. NAGPRA set up a process by which Native American tribes can request the return of human remains and cultural objects from museums and government agencies, including federally funded universities. How successful has it been in California?
Much ink has been spilled on the Parthenon marbles, mostly on the ethical and cultural merits of their repatriation. But what has generally not been considered are the legal merits of their return in light of contemporary international law.
Despite the existence of codes of ethics and other published guidelines for the ethical treatment of human remains in many countries and for most professional bodies, there is still widespread anxiety among many professionals in museum and research contexts about whether they are getting it right.
Objects from the Wereldmuseum Leiden collection to be returned to indigenous tribe in the US. This item contains the announcement by the Dutch government, the report by the Dutch advisory Committee Colonial Collections and reactions from local news stations in El Paso, Texas.
[ in English, French and Spanish ] This call invites researchers and academics from all areas of social sciences and humanities to submit their work for a special issue of Jangwa Pana dedicated to the repatriation of colonial collections in the Caribbean. Deadline 21 April 2025.
The Netherlands and other European countries are developing policies to return objects and ancestral remains appropriated in the colonial period. This offers hope for postcolonial countries to retrieve their lost treasures. Bangladesh should make more use of this opportunity. To begin with, it can claim an object from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
Discussions, held in March 2023 by experts, scholars, and professionals from around the world who delve into the complex questions surrounding decolonization and restitution in the museum sector.
Modern treaties and statutes protecting cultural property apply only prospectively to items stolen or illegally exported after their effective dates. But while the United States does not have a law concerning looted cultural objects taken from formerly colonized peoples overseas, it does have a statute governing the repatriation of Native American cultural items and human remains.
[ in English but also available in French ] With the release of the documentary film Dahomey, which follows France’s restitution of twenty-six works of art to Benin, various research teams continue to work on the return of African cultural property to their communities of origin.
[ in English and in Dutch ] In April 2024, a Netherlands delegation visited Suriname and mapped out which objects are present in Dutch public collections through the colonial history of the Netherlands and Suriname.
From a historical point of view, the practice of the restitution of cultural artefacts among States emerged at the beginning of the 19th century, during the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Unfortunately, these rules were not universal. They were only applicable among contracting States, stopping at the borders of Europe, the ‘civilised world’, and did not apply to territories which were or were to be colonised.
Denunciations of the ‘evils’ of colonialism occur over and over again, as does an intermittent readiness to listen to them. But the wounds that have been inflicted cannot be healed, not least because the colonial systems in all their forms have upset the deep structures of the social, economic and political organization of the societies they have targeted.
‘In 1894, two colonising powers faced each other across the narrow strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok. One was the Netherlands East Indies, the other the kingdom of Lombok, ruled by a settler regime from Bali that dominated the island’s indigenous Sasak population.'
This Guide to Initiating Requests for the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin is part of the ECOWAS Action Plan 2019-2023 on the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin.
The museum is an institution embedded in European modernity. It was invented when a perception of ‘the Other’, or colonised populations, was being disseminated. The International Council of Museums ICOM has had a longstanding involvement in this process.
Joint research on the 1868 Maqdala expedition led us to question assumptions about the legacy of empire in museums and to scrutinise unexpected connections in the history of museum collections.
Held in 1972, the Santiago de Chile Round Table was a fundamental milestone in the historiography of museums and museology from the Global South, and a pivotal event for practices and reflections related to the ‘social role’ of museums.
Once, The Art Newspaper called the historical relationships of the art trade with museums a ‘foggy world’. That was in 2016. I dare say the relationship of trade with museums still is very foggy. How does this relationship look like?
During the European expansion constant fighting and violence and the taking of spoils of war went hand-in-hand. Palaces, shrines, homesteads and entire villages were plundered and destroyed. In the restitution debate, the focus is mostly on state-collections resulting from these confrontations. There is ample evidence, however, that many more parties were involved. This blogpost has soem of the evidence.
Why is research into colonial collections in the private sector - I mean art dealers, auction houses and private collectors - so tough? The main reasons is that most of them have built a wall around themselves, and there is rarely a hole in this wall through which an outside observer can look inside their closed bulwark.
This paper examines the complex relationship between African art and colonial encounter while interrogating the commodification and restitution of African artifacts which has become a topical issue.
Material Culture in Transit: Theory and Practice constellates curators and scholars actively working with material culture within academic and museal institutions through theory and practice.
Many European countries deal with their colonial history and their collections of ethnographic material. As much as human remains seem like the essence of the need to do reparations to indigenous cultures, they are but a small part of the responsibility to understand our entangled histories
In the Review of African Political Economy, Aguigah argues that current debates around restitution of looted art from Africa mostly ignore politico-economic aspects of neocolonialism, reflecting the trend in academia as well as the wider public to separate cultural from economic issues.
Many African countries are becoming more proactive in their quest for the repatriation of their cultural heritage. They increasingly participate in international conventions and adopt more effective policies in these areas.
Cultural assets such as the large corpus of Benin bronzes housed in museums are part of the cultural world heritage of mankind. It is time to give up the exclusive concept of private property– or a single nation’s property – for these cultural assets in favor of a concept of multiple stakeholders. “Shared heritage,” in other words. The same patterns anchored in the socioeconomic structure of European societies unfold their power again and again: It is not the victims, the slaves, who receive compensation, but the dispossessed slave owners, then as now.
In this captivating episode, Syvlie Njobati and Ngwatilo Mawiyoo embark on a journey through history, exploring the complex, violent, and manipulative ways in which heritage items of African origin ended up in Western museums and private collections.
[ in French or in English ] Provenance research into non-Western heritage in Europe has become a must in the field of museology and cultural policy. Yet no scientific work has yet examined the collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (Belgium) in their entirety.
[ in French ] French historian Patrick Howlett Martin focuses on colonial spoliations and those committed during conflicts and military interventions with their procession of enslavement, repression and pillage exercised on the peoples and cultures that suffered the rule of the conquering powers.
[ in French ] Marie-Sophie de Clippele’s book maps the numerous recent regulations relating to legal limitations on the marketing of objects and to assess their impact on the art market.
[ in French ] Relations between ethnographic museums and African and Oceanic art markets in France, Switzerland and Belgium : building value(s) and appropriating otherness
The MFA distinguishes five theft categories: garden-variety theft, archaeological looting, wartime pillage, state expropriation, and sales under duress or other forcible transfers. The last form the most expansive category.
Archaeology in its formative years was often less a meticulous science than an exercise in vandalism. A little-known horror unfolded in the Southwestern United States.
Aurora Hamm argues that restituted objects are instruments of soft power through public and cultural diplomacy. The (former) coloniser states utilise them, with geopolitical considerations in mind, as a means of ‘restarting’ their bilateral relationships and thus obtaining a certain form the restitution
The story of the discoveries is being told for the first time by Elisabeth Goring and her successor, Dr Margaret Maitland, in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland of 30 November 2023.
What’s in a name? The language we use tells us who is speaking, from what perspective, and (implicitly), who controls the narrative. Names, in short, have power.
For Indigenous museum visitors, long-prevalent display methods like ‘wonder cabinets’ or ‘white cubes’ can be an alienating way to encounter their cultural heritage. This article will illustrate how exhibition designers are influenced by the colonial imagination, a term we use for the settler mythology behind imperial ambition, both historical and contemporary.
The American Alliance of Museums has brought out a special issue Museum as part of a larger project exploring the next horizon of museum practice with regard to voluntary repatriation, restitution, and reparations. The articles in this issue provide a window into practices regarding the Benin-objects, lost items of the Yaqui, voluntary returns, and the application of NAGPRA.
European powers often dismissed or devalued the cultural expressions of colonised peoples, labelling them as ‘crafts,’ ‘artifacts,’ or ‘ethnographic objects’ rather than art and reinforcing the idea that European art holds a superior place in global culture.
In 'The Parthenon Marbles Dispute', Alexander Herman examines the entire contentious history of the Parthenon marbles from their creation up to the famous restitution debate of the present day.
This is the “age of apology” for past wrongs. Reams of articles in Western media are devoted to former colonizer countries and yet, this is rarely the result of requests from former colonies. Example India.
Anaïs Mattez (University of Hongkong) argues that provenance research has been key in the downfall of the internationalist ideology about cultural property.
[ in Dutch ] This thesis on the Watson collection shows that even smaller non-ethnographic museums such as the Noordbrabants Museum of art, culture and history have collections from colonial areas.
[ in Dutch ] The University Museum Groningen has a collection of human remains from Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Where do they come from and how can their presence there be understood? This issue of Magazine De Boekenwereld is about Camper, his ideas and his collection.
What practical steps can we take to resolve cross-border claims to looted art and prevent illicit trafficking in cultural goods? That's what the European Parliament asked Leiden legal scholar Evelien Campfens.
[ in French ] While the restitution of African cultural property polarizes debates, how can the voices of return be heard? How can we designate these things, objects, artifacts, goods or works returned or expected on the continent? How can we account for points of view, imaginations and frictions around their futures?
This ethnographic study aims to construct a thick description of how one migrant and diaspora community in a particular location – Somalis in Finland – preserve and discuss their cultural heritage.
[ in French and in Dutch ] Although it is accepted that human remains are out of trade and therefore should not be sold, practice shows that this happens anyway.
In January 2021, the Dutch government became the first in Europe to approve a central mechanism for repatriating colonial loot. One aspect of the new policy raises concerns given that artefacts that were looted from non-Dutch colonies will not automatically be repatriated.
In 2021, the Belgian federal state declared that Belgium, with a deep history immersed in colonialism, would return looted artefacts to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by way of transfer of legal ownership of the antiquities to the Congolese state.
In 1863, Emperor Tewodros II of Abyssinia took a British consul hostage; five years later, the British sent a punitive expedition. This military expedition shaped later campaigns in Sudan and West Africa in the1890s. What was new for Maqdala was the inclusion of a member of staff from the British Museum.
How do we trace the origin of collections? What new insights can be gleaned from these provenances? And what should become of such collections, within and beyond museum walls?
Mirjam Shatanawi's 'Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Collections - The (Un)Making of Indonesian Islam in the Netherlands' tells the untold story of Indonesian Islam in museums: Often overshadowed by Hindu-Buddhist art, Indonesian Islamic heritage rarely receives the attention.
Three decades after legislation pushed for the return of Native American remains to Indigenous communities, many of the nation’s top museums and universities still have the remains of thousands of people in their collections.
Who should own Benin objects returned to Nigeria? And what about the Oba of Benin commenting, prior to 2023, that the Benin objects to be returned to Nigeria should be returned to him and not the federal government?
[ in Dutch ] What to do with the human skulls from Africa or Asia in their collection? The days when this kind of heritage could be easily in museums seem to be over. The call for return to the place of origin is louder and louder. But are they waiting for it there?
This e-report of the international conference 'Museum Forward International Best Practice Forum on Museums & Heritage' in Jakarta gives a clear insight into Indonesia's cultural policy.
[ in German ] ‘African human skull, early 20th century, €2000’ - this is how dealers openly advertise human skulls on social media such as Instagram. Panorama reporters uncover just how dubious this trade is, especially when you realise the origin of these skulls.
[ in Dutch ] The University Museum Groningen has a collection of human remains from Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Where do they come from and how can their presence there be understood? This issue of Magazine De Boekenwereld is about Camper, his ideas and his collection.
Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann of the Christiansborg Archaeoogical Heritage Project helps to understand how the agreement with one American and two British museums was reached.
As part of donation agreements with private collectors, such museums could agree to make the objects the focus of courses centred on provenance research and related issues. A key goal of the research would be to trace as complete an ownership history as possible and identify the most likely country of origin for all the objects.
Fifty-four years ago, Ghanaian Nii Kwate Owoo was granted access to the storage facilities of the British Museum. The result was You Hide Me – a 40-minute film depicting Owoo and his colleague discovering an enormous volume of colonial objects hidden away in the institution’s basement.
The 2024 report covers the previous year and concludes that the tribal art market has plummeted in 2023, with a global auction turnover of €37.55 million, marking a 37.5% decline, compared with the year 2022.
In a lengthy and worthwhile essay in ARTnews about the progress in the restitution discourse, both steps forward and steps back in the former colonizers’ countries and the former colonies are discussed.
The documentary "The Empty Grave" traces the mission of two families in Tanzania that embark on an emotional journey to reclaim their ancestors’ human remains from German museums.
Two British museums, the British Museum (BM) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) have agreed to return to Asante/Ghana respectively 15 and 17 looted objects. It is, however, a loan.
Tea sets, paravents, spears and shields – even if today’s heirs were not involved in their acquisition or theft, these artefacts are inextricably linked to German colonial history.
The wars of 1845–72 were described by James Belich as ‘bitter and bloody struggles, as important to New Zealand as were the Civil Wars to England and the United States’. The conflict’s themes of land and sovereignty continue to resonate today.
As a result of the Netherlands’ colonial past, parts of the history of countries, communities and individuals across the world are being held in archives currently located in the Netherlands. These archives might not be in the right place.
Europeans collected a huge number of Aboriginal artefacts during the colonisation of Australia. Gemmia Burden's research is on the Queensland Museum’s collecting networks.
Although Laura Benton's book is not directly about colonial collections and restitution, RM* wants to mention it. 'They called it peace' is about the ideological-legal justification of colonial violence and plunder.
This publication compiles information on 39 institutions in museums and universities in German-speaking countries that have accessioned, altogether, almost 19,000 pieces of tangible cultural heritage produced in Namibian communities over a period of time of more than 160 years (pre-1860s to date).
The British Museum (‘BM’) has a collection of 224 objects from or likely from Cambodia, which were acquired across a period spanning from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this figure BM’s collection of banknotes, coins and medals from Cambodia is not included.
Kwame Opoku writes: The lull in the restitution of African artefacts after the restitutions of 2021 and 2022has left a vacuum filled with activities that, although not directly anti-restitution, do not directly promote restitution.
Chief Charles Taku argues that the resistance towards the restitution of African Heritage artefacts and the payment of reparations for colonial crimes is premised on the supposed legality of the crimes under the General Act of the Berlin Conference (26 February 1885).
Cynthia Scott analyzes the history of the negotiations that led to the atypical return of colonial-era cultural property from the Netherlands to Indonesia in the 1970s. By doing so, the book shows that competing visions of post-colonial redress were contested throughout the era of post-World War II decolonization.
This report was developed as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #67 under the guidance of the CMA Reconciliation Council.
