The Republic of Indonesia, he said, did not exist when these statues were brought legally to the colonial Netherlands in the 19th century, and so cannot be said to be their rightful owners.
Better for them to stay in Europe, cared for by museums and private collectors like himself.
Hadn’t I heard about the recent fire at the National Museum of Indonesia?
Conan Cheong did not think he managed to formulate a coherent response to him at the time, but what came to his mind later was that most of these tired objections to cultural heritage restitution efforts tend firstly, to fixate on the past — having recourse to juridical justifications from the colonial era — and secondly, to privilege the dormant object over communities of people who have suffered their absence for many years.
