Centuries of plunder, forced labour, and extraction built the wealth of Europe while impoverishing the Global South. The debt owed is not symbolic; it is measurable, moral, and political. Reparations are not charity—they are justice long overdue. Restitution of colonial collections is part of this.
[ 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?
Our third In Conversation considers restitution from an ethnographic perspective. Charlotte Joy will discuss the research for her upcoming book, drawing on interviews and her work with UNESCO, with Mirjam Shatanawi and Katarzyna Puzon. We invite you to join our conversation.
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.
Ahmad Mohammed writes: Sacred objects, ancestral remains, and ritual artifacts remain estranged from the communities that created and cherished them. This condition is what many scholars and practitioners now identify as cultural heritage alienation: the systematic displacement of heritage from its social, spiritual, and cultural lifeworlds into the frameworks of Western curatorial authority. But community control is crucial.
More and more colonial looted art is returned to the country of origin by European countries and museums, yet millions of precious sculptures, masks and bronzes still remain in the hands of the former colonizer. In the Netherlands alone, hundreds of thousands of artifacts are involved. Why? 'They claim that we can't take care of it ourselves.'
Tilda Gladwell likes to divert your attention from news of war and geopolitical instability for just a moment to an equally pressing issue: the decades-long debate concerning repatriation.
In 2013, the AfricaMuseum near Brussels closed its doors and embarked on a major redesign. The architectural changes must have felt less challenging than the long overdue re-evaluation of the holdings and their presentation. Jeremy Harding reports.
This workshop marks the conclusion of the interdisciplinary provenance research project "Human Remains from Colonial Contexts: Provenance Research in the Anthropological Collections of the University of Göttingen and MARKK Hamburg".
[ 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.
The conference “Colonial Pasts and Contemporary Search for Justice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Restitution and Redress for Colonial Violence” brings together experiences from different parts of the world, and perspectives in the field of transitional justice and (post-)colonial studies.
[ 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.
Social media is helping drive trade in skulls, bones and skin products as UK legal void risks new era of ‘body snatching’. Paul Boateng (Labour Party), who will meet the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, next month to appeal for a change in the law, has raised specific concerns about the trade in remains of ancestors from Indigenous communities.
[ French translation ] La France débat actuellement de la création d’un cadre juridique pour la restitution des collections publiques historiques, principalement d’origine coloniale. La Belgique dispose déjà d’une telle loi. Ce court article propose une comparaison entre les deux dispositifs – la loi belge et le projet de loi français – en se concentrant sur trois points :
• l’approche centrée sur l’État,
• le champ d’application,
• la procédure de restitution.
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.
The Japan-Netherlands Symposium International Training Program in Museums: Exploring Inclusive and Collaborative Engagement focuses on international museum training programs conducted by the Netherlands and Japan, exploring new approaches to international museum collaboration that transcend the traditional hierarchy between “trainers” and “trainees.”
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.
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.
This call for contributions to Terroirs, African Journal of Social Sciences and Philosophy, aims to give greater consideration to African perspectives by analyzing citizen mobilizations, artistic initiatives, state strategies, and community practices that shape the return of heritage.
[ in English and in French ] The French government has proposed a restitution law. After Belgium, it is the second former European colonial power to do so. Such a law streamlines restitution procedures and offers former colonies more clarity and even legal certainty. This blog discusses the draft-bill and examines whether countries of origin will benefit much from it.
Paul Dailey (Guardian Australian columnist) writes: Bodies and body parts have long been part of collections of imperial plunder over the years – but museums must understand that attitudes have moved on.
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 Latin America and the Caribbean chapter of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (LAC-ACHS), together with Centro de Patrimonio Cultural and Núcleo Milenio Nupats of Universidad Católica de Chile and the Department of Arts and Culture Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, warmly invites abstracts for its inaugural conference “Encounters. Collaborative Approaches to Heritage in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
[ 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?
Leading academic, Gloria Bell, argues that the Vatican is not only stalling on Pope Francis’ promises of restoring the looted artifacts — but continues to falsely 'refer to everything in their collection as a ‘gift.’
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 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.
Eight years after French president Emmanuel Macron pledged to return African heritage to the continent, his government has adopted a bill facilitating the deaccession of cultural items plundered from former colonies. The text will be submitted for a vote in the senate on 24 September.
The Franco-German Fund for Provenance Research on cultural belonging from Sub-Saharan Africa has announced the funding of networking and parthership initiatives aimed at fostering the creation of international research teams and strengthening existing partnerships between Germany, France, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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.
The remains of a woman, described as a “non-European skeleton,” were given a full funeral service by Highgate School, the fee-paying secondary in Highgate Village. No relatives could be found.
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.
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.
'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.
Quoting the recently deceased Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o on decolonisation of the mind, Kwame Opoku critically analyses a recent interview in The Times with Nicholas Cullinan, the new director of the British Museum.
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 a five pages long joint statement, eight archaeological organisations from across the UK said a “cross-sector consultative forum” should be established to enable a wide range of viewpoints to be heard on any proposed changes to human remains legislation and practice.
[ in Portuguese ] A 15-point action plan is the most tangible proposal put forward by the working group in a report on “sensitive heritage” at the University of Coimbra. Among the actions consists are “identifying and systematizing all the ‘sensitive heritage’ of UC”, the adoption of principles on dealing with them, legislation for restitution and the repatriation of a skull collection to Timor Leste.
The director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan, has ruled out any move towards allowing restitution from its collections as he focuses instead on fostering global collaboration.
Why should internationally active organisations concern themselves with decolonisation? How can transnational institutions meaningfully shape this process? What challenges, responsibilities and opportunities arise from this?
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.
The exhibition explores the current debate surrounding collections gathered during the colonial period and the question of restitution. Visitors not only learn about the provenance of cultural objects but also to reflect on ownership, value, and the ethical implications of a colonial history that continues to resonate in museum collections today. [ English version and Dutch version ]
With the deaccession policies of Britain’s national museums so diametrically different from Britain’s larger number of regional and university collections, learning how museums unencumbered by national legislation are dealing successfully with the same legacies of inequality and trauma is revealing.
[ in English and in Dutch ] Science museums are full of skeletons, skulls and other human and animal remains. How were these obtained? Colonial heritage researchers shed new light on that question and come to painful conclusions.
International Conference. - Decolonising Cultural Heritage: State of the Art, Methodologies, and Practices”. University for Foreigners of Siena, Italy.
“Black Paris” retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. The exhibition celebrates 150 black artists coming from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.
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.
Pope Francis died on April 20 at 88, marking the end of an epoch for the Catholic Church and the beginning of its search for the next spiritual leader, who will also become proprietor of the Vatican’s library and vast art collection.
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.
At Galeria Avenida da Índia in Lisbon, Uriel Orlow’s exhibition Memória Colateral unfolds like a sensory mapping of historical violence and of how memory is inscribed – or erased – within Western structures.
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.
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.
This conference will explore how accessing archives and museum collections can enable communities to recover their past and rekindle “alternative stories” as well as disrupt the discourses constructed by Western views.
The Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) has established a committee to investigate what part of the current collection has a connection to the former colonies or slavery past. Based on this investigation, the committee will issue a recommendation at a later date.
[ simultaneous translation into German, French and English ] 'Hidden paths and emerging networks - Provenance research between memory and responsibility' is the title of the event on the occasion of the 7th International Research Day on the Provenance of Cultural Objects, the Franco-German Research Fund on the Provenance of Sub-Saharan African Objects invites leading scientists and experts working at the intersection of provenance research, restitution issues and museum practices.
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, which operates more than 20 museums and research centres visited by millions yearly in Washington DC and New York City. It also affects the Smithsonian's restitution policy. J.D. Vance will lead the purge.
Geraldine Kendall Adams delves into the moral and ethical arguments that surround the highly sensitive issue of human remains held in British museum collections.
The Memory & Heritage Network of Utrecht University and the ERC project Ecologies of Violence: Crimes Against Nature in the Contemporary Cultural Imagination (Eco-Violence) are organizing a workshop on the representation of colonial and ecological violence in museums.
The display of human remains in museums has long been a contentious issue. Earlier in March, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations (APPG-AR) published the report Laying the Ancestors to Rest. Returning African human remains is time- and money-consuming. With the ongoing budget cuts, it becomes harder to return them.
At present, the law that regulates the storage and use of human remains in the UK only requires consent for acquiring and holding body tissue from people under 100 years old. Fiona Twycross, a junior minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, acknowledged that the guidance was dated and “the world has changed substantially” since then.
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.
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.
British lawmakers, NGOs, and researchers urge the UK to address a 'legislative vacuum' permitting the display of African ancestral remains from the colonial era. T
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.
Tristam Hunt, director V&A Museum, discusses the contradictory state of the restitution debate in Great Britain (GB): on the one hand, a quickening rhythm of returns from university and regional museums and on the other, continued confusion around deaccessioning contested objects from national collections such as the V&A and British Museum (BM).
“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.
Despite promises from Western institutions to return the artefacts, the process has been slow and piecemeal, raising questions about the sincerity of these efforts.
On social media and in auction houses, there is a lively trade in ancestral remains from colonial areas. Skulls, skeletons and other body parts regularly change hands. While this may be an acceptable practice for those involved, it is painful for many descendants of these dead.
[ 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.
Live-report of the meanings and significance of provenance research in the current legal debate on the return and restitution of cultural objects, organised by the Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group and the Interest Group on International Law of Culture of the European Society of International Law.
ETH Zurich's natural history collections house thousands of artefacts from former overseas colonies, including rocks and minerals, insects, animal and plant specimens.
Even if many museums are eager to return objects now that they are "done" with them, at a time when preservation and storage costs are skyrocketing, it does not always mean that this is the right time for the other side.
[ 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.
Kwame Opoku comments on the report that former director of the Louvre Museum and current Ambassador for International Cooperation, Jean-Luc Martinez, delivered on 25 April 2023 to the French Minister of Culture.
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.
How can academics and museum professionals research the provenance of a colonial museum collection? And can we trace possible ‘involuntary loss of possession’ or looted objects?
The 2025 Kenneth Kirkwood Day will explore the theme of repatriations, looking at how different museums are approaching this, the language used and if, how and why returns should be made.
[ 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.
[ in German ] The Roman-Catholic (RC) Institute for World-Church and Mission (IWM) in Frankfurt am Main is running a two-years pilot-project "Mission-History Collections", funded by two RC organisations.
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 Austrian government aims to propose legislation governing the restitution of objects in national museums acquired in a colonial context by March 2024.
Lawyer Alexander Herman: To make progress in returning countries’ heritage taken by previous generations, museums must take a pragmatic, ethical stance.
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.
Sometimes, descendants of Europeans no longer want to keep the objects, manuscripts or ancestral remains, which they inherited. The items have lost their significance. They take up too much space. The descendants want to make some money out of it. Or they feel these items belong more in their country of origin. Descendants use different ways to get rid of them.
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.
RedressHub builds an innovative online platform that leverages advanced data technologies, interactive visualization tools, and participatory design to map and connect efforts addressing colonial harms and their ongoing legacies. Among these restitution.
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.
Colonial looted art is finally being returned to its countries of origin. New problems lie ahead, as former colonies now fear the return of looted art may take the place of a comprehensive reparation for colonial crimes.
The age of many of museums, particularly those in the UK, means that they have artefacts dating back to colonial times. This article lists arguments pro and con restitution. Here the con's are presented.
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.
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.
The extensive article 'The ghosts are everywhere, about a museum beset by colonial controversy, difficult finances and the discovery of a thief on the inside.
Tim Maxwell: Repatriating artefacts found underwater could help former colonial powers meet moral obligations to countries they had historically exploited for their transatlantic slave trade.
Creative pursuits in Spain face the challenge of purging the country’s colonial vision, critically reviewing its relationship with the Americas and overcoming a gender bias. + Pedro Antonio Cano, a 7-foot man from South America
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.
This is how the difficulties of the colonial past should be negotiated. First, begin with the object and not the politics. Museums cannot absolve the crimes of colonialism and they should not be mobilised to assist contemporary geopolitical objectives.
Egypt has announced plans to convene an international meeting for countries affected by the smuggling of antiquities during the age of imperialism. The move comes in the wake of the revelation that over 2,000 artifacts were stolen from the British Museum, which has raised concerns about the credibility of several Western museums.
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.
Museums from Glasgow to Cambridge are proactively repatriating objects. Glasgow has become the first UK museum to repatriate objects to India (“a very emotional event”, as Glaswegians of Indian heritage said).
The Mauritshuis gallery in the Netherlands and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin have joined forces in an exhibition that addresses the looting of art that has sustained European collections for centuries
[ 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
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
Many believe new applications—from AI and NFTs to 3D scanning—are game changing in returning objects to source communities. Lawyers say they can make the process harder.
Switzerland’s Federal Council will set up a new independent committee to advise on disputes over art that was looted during the Nazi era. The committee will also be consulted over repatriation claims made about cultural objects that came to Switzerland due to colonialism.
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.
Anaïs Mattez (University of Hongkong) argues that provenance research has been key in the downfall of the internationalist ideology about cultural property.
[ 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.
British High Commissioner in Nigeria: UK museums operate independently of the government, as decisions relating to the care and management of UK collections are addressed by museum trustees, with claims for restitution addressable to relevant museums.
Nick Merriman, the chief executive of the Horniman Museum in south London, says inclusion of difficult stories of slavery and empire is not wokery, but ‘simply good history’.
Human remains held in French public collections and less than 500 years old, can now be returned to their countries of origin by a decision of the prime minister.
[ 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 Spanish ] The Spanish Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has reported to the parliamentarian Commission on Culture about the review of the “colonial framework” carried out in Spanish museums, institutions “anchored in gender or ethnocentric inertia that have often hindered the vision of heritage, the history and artistic legacy”. Conservatives are against.
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.
[ 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?
[ 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.
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?
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.
If you came here for a vicious takedown or a strident defence of Tristram Hunt’s position on “colonialism and collecting”, you might be slightly disappointed.
Some 17,000 human remains are said to be in the collections of German museums and universities. It's often no longer clear how they ended up in Germany. Colonialists committed horrific crimes.
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.
Robert Jenrick, MP Conservative Party since 2014 and Minister of State from 2022 to 2023, writes: Our museums have fallen into the hands of a careless generation. Foreign governments seeking restitution of art calculate that our institutions – the UK itself – lacks the self-confidence to fight back.
Taco Dibbits: “Like many people I used to think of restitution as a solution — politically, certainly. If you just give something back, then that’s done with, finished. But now I think it’s only the beginning.".
This paper offers an overview of successful cases and unsettled claims submitted to West and East German museums, collections and private people between 1970 and 2021.
Returns of Cultural Artefacts and Human Remains in a (Post)colonial Context. Mapping Claims between the Mid-19th Century and the 1970s, renders visible protests against the dispossession of cultural property and demands for its return in both colonial and post-colonial times: a starting point.
Resist, Reclaim, Retrieve - The Long History of the Struggle for the Restitution of Cultural Heritage and Ancestral Remains Taken under Colonial Conditions, brings together authors from countries in the Global South and North. They shed light on the long history of restitution claims from colonised countries, with a focus on the pre-1970 period.
How did Geneva live through the colonial period? In what ways was the Ethnography Museum a major cultural actor in the colonial context? What is the future of the collections held there? Can we understand today the real identity of an object, sometimes centuries after it entered the Genevan museum collections?
On Wednesday (Nov. 20, 2024), Labour's Bell Ribeiro-Addy told the Commons that human remains are sold at auction and on social media and asked the government to end what she described as a "depraved practice."
Christa Roodt, specialist in international private law and and provenance and restitution issues at the University of Glasgow, adopts a novel approach to the social question of restitution and repatriation of sacred cultural property and heritage acquired unethically during the colonial era. Her approach premises on better integration of law, ethics, history, anthropology, and provenance research.
How did Geneva live through the colonial period? In what ways was the Ethnography Museum a major cultural actor in the colonial context? What is the future of the collections held there? Can we understand today the real identity of an object, sometimes centuries after it entered the Genevan museum collections?
[ in Dutch ] Museum Huis Doorn in the Netherlands, the exiling place where Wilhelm II lived until his death in 1941, owns 36,000 objects from the ex- emperor. How many of these have a colonial origin, and whether there is colonial predatory art, for example, the museum did not know until recently.
David Guido Pietroni, Italian publisher, film, and music producer, offers an overview of the BM’s history, not only of its large collections of artworks, antiquities, and collectibles, but also of its large collections of controversies: colonial loot, Nazi-looted art works, stolen and lost objects, and links with big business.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Pope Francis last month, he raised the issue of reconciliation with First Nations, and urged the pope to return Indigenous cultural artifacts from the Vatican collections to communities in Canada. This request came at a tense time.
(In English, French and Spanish) This issue of ICOFOM Study Series is the result of an international seminar at the University of Marburg in Germany in June 2024, where a wide range of speakers from the global south and north met.
Over the centuries, a multitude of items – including a cannon of the King of Kandy, power-objects from DR Congo, Benin bronzes, Javanese temple statues, Maori heads and strategic documents – has ended up in museums and private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands by improper means.
In 'The Empty Showcase Syndrome - Tough Questions about Cultural Heritage from Colonial Regions', author Jos van Beurden explores three questions that slow down the restitution process.
Historian Justin M. Jacobs challenges the widely accepted belief that many of Western museums’ treasures were acquired by imperialist plunder and theft. His account re-examines the allegedly immoral provenance of Western collections, advocating for a nuanced understanding of how artefacts reached Western shores.
(In English, Italian and French) The central issue examined in this impressive collection of essays is how to respond to the desire of African-origin communities to reclaim what was taken from them.
This special issue of Museum & Society (open access), Mobilizing Museum Minerals: Critical Approaches to Mineralogical Collections, showcases burgeoning critical approaches to the collection, interpretation, and display of mineralogical specimens in museums while expanding understandings of their transformative potential in an era of rising ecological injustice.
People buy and sell human remains online. Most of this trade these days is over social media. In a study of this 'bone trade', how it works, and why it matters, the authors review and use a variety of methods drawn from the digital humanities to analyze the sheer volume of social media posts in search of answers to questions regarding this online bone trade.
An estimated 350,000 African artefacts and manuscripts, as well as human remains, photographs and natural history specimens, have been found in the stores and archives of the eight museums and the Botanic Garden which together make up the University of Cambridge Museums, as well as the University Library and less-well known collections in university departments and institutions.
The project, running until March 2025, highlights objects associated with the ship Saida. His Majesty's Ship Saida was built in 1878 and sailed from the main naval harbour of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in Pula, Croatia. From 1884 to 1897, ship's doctors and other crew members collected objects, partly on behalf of the museum, during four so-called training voyages.
[ in German ] The draft law on the return of cultural property from colonial contexts has been shelved for the time being. It did not meet with the approval of the ruling Österreichische Volkspartei ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party).
Justin M. Jacobs examined the allegedly immoral provenance of Western museum collections and challenges the widely accepted belief that many of Western museums’ treasures were acquired by imperialist plunder and theft.
Although there is no lack of information on individual repatriated works, the larger picture of where they came from and how, who is returning them and why can be lost in the anecdotes. This is where the Museum of Looted Antiquities (Mola) comes in—a new digital platform that traces not only the histories of specific repatriated objects but also compiles metadata in order to better understand smuggling networks and the museum industry’s intensifying repatriation efforts.
Anmol Irfan, a Muslim-Pakistani journalist, writes: Governments delay the process; museums often answer to wealthy donors. Complexities arise that require each case to be handled individually. But the first step of acknowledging the generational hurt and trauma caused by the removal of these culturally important and sacred artifacts has opened doors to broader solutions on a global scale.
Panorama of the Nord Deutsche Rundfunk wrote an extended commentary on a 35-minute-long documentary: ‘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 German).
Although there is no overarching framework for the repatriation of human remains at the international level, most repatriation efforts now operate within a more rigorous legal framework at the national and subnational level, which includes national laws and guidelines from public authorities.
2024 marks the 140th anniversary of the start of the historic Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884/85. Germany is working hard to come to terms with its colonial history, including restitution.
