This begins of course in France, where the inalienability of public collections has always been sacrosanct – and where, just last week, the Senate approved a new legislative bill introducing a “framework” for the restitution of cultural goods illicitly appropriated between 1815 and 1972 (a development that postdated the filing of my column below 🤷♂️ ); it still needs to pass the National Assembly.
In addition to the type of framework law now proposed, solutions include special laws specific to each object/collection being restituted (a long & cumbersome process), long-term or renewable loans, the “fudge” of striking an object from the inventory and – if you happen to be the Pope – issuing an apostolic letter which overrides the inalienability of public collections.
This last action was indeed taken for the Vatican collections by the late Pope Francis exactly three years ago (February 2023), which laid the legal groundwork for transferring Parthenon fragments to the Archbishop of Athens and, more recently, 62 indigenous objects to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
