The provenance of a Chinese honorary tapestry – which disappeared from China in 1901 and became part of the collection of Mission Museum Steyl under circumstances that are not entirely clear – has been investigated. The SVD missionaries played a role in fuelling the Boxer Rebellion.
Whilst repatriation alone does not equal a decolonised museum, elements of the repatriation process provide learnings that can be applied to anti-colonial museum practice more broadly. Amy Shakespeare puts forward a new practical framework for anti-colonial museum practice and museology – The Radicals.
A group of students at University College London’s (UCL) Institute of Archaeology critically examined the Petrie Palestinian Collection (PPC) to explore colonial legacies embedded in Western institutions. This reflection foregrounds Palestinian experiences with the collection.
Rachel Gatehouse and Jin Gao examine UK heritage institutions’ repatriation practices through a new database of repatriated items from 2010 to 2022. The dataset records 491 items across 29 case studies, returned to 7 countries, with most material consisting of human remains from London-based national museums, particularly the Natural History Museum. The list, created by Tamara Newton, is publicly accessible.
Four authors argue that the rise of social media has amplified international trafficking of mummified humans and animals. However, these preserved remains pose health and biosecurity risks due to the toxicity of embalming methods and/or suboptimal storage that can promote microbial growth. This article investigates these risks by analysing 128 online posts from Meta platforms, e-commerce sites, web-stores, and auction houses.
Suzette Bell-Roberts writes: As Benin invests in museums, welcomes the return of looted royal treasures and stages the Festival of Masks, it is advancing a new vision of heritage in which ritual, scholarship and cultural policy converge, challenging conventional understandings of what museums preserve and how history is told.
As Benin invests in museums, welcomes the return of looted royal treasures and stages the Festival of Masks, it is advancing a new vision of heritage in which ritual, scholarship and cultural policy converge, challenging conventional understandings of what museums preserve and how history is told.
Amir Al-Khafaji writes: Western museums stripped my homeland (IRAQ) of its ancient soul under the banner of "civility." Today, they hold my ancestors’ legacy behind paywalls.
For Native Hawai‘ian advocate Edward Halealoha Ayau, caring for the dead has been a lifelong duty. It has also been a matter of steadily increasing legal traction.
[in German] Thomas Fues argues that the handover of six Maka ancestors in Freiburg University has not brought the breakthrough for the German-Cameroonian reappraisal of the colonial heritage that many had hoped for.
Language and culture advocate Gulwanyang Moran writes: Be honest with each other about history. Archives on this continent were working tools of colonial administration: mission records, protection board files, the paperwork of surveillance and control over Aboriginal lives. Many of our languages survive in the records of the very systems that punished our old people for speaking them.
“We deeply regret what was done at the University of Freiburg in the guise of science. Unfortunately, we cannot undo the injustice and suffering committed by researchers in the past. But we will do everything we can to help heal the wounds and return the ancestors to their homeland.”
In 'Towards Decolonising Dutch Museums: Provenance research, participatory methodologies, and Indigenous tattooists', Talisha Schilder critically reflects about museums, after doing provenance research with Sylvester (Iban), Talisha (Dutch-Indo), Pai (Bidayuh), and Yanto (Punan) at the depot of the University Museum Groningen. Her conclusion: the inclusion of Indigenous tattooists in provenance research is an important step towards decolonising museums.
Edna Arisbet Roque García's PhD project analyses restitution governance and the role of imperial museums in the foreign policy of states, with Germany as the main case study. The project demonstrates to what extent the restitution governance involves dialogue of interests, negotiation between states, and even the management of political repercussions. This is compared with the situation in Austria and in Switzerland.
Contemporary discourses concerning cultural property have focused on that which is easily defined as ‘cultural’: artworks and antiquities, sacred artifacts, perhaps ancestral human remains or ethnological collections. Natural history museums remain largely unaffected by many of the legal and political issues of ownership, stewardship, conservation, and justice which have begun to concern museum staff, civil society, and governments in the Global North and Global South alike. This theme for the 2027 volume of the International Journal of Cultural Property puts a spotlight on natural history specimens and collections.
Reilly Clark argues that, if the return of African cultural objects ends with the literal return of physical objects, it does little to address legacies of colonial theft, value extraction, and epistemicide but can reinscribe the power of Western interpretive frameworks and reproduce Western patterns of state power by returning objects to Western-style institutions within postcolonial nation-states...
Drawing on his broad research, Chipangura explores how ethnographic museums holding African collections are confronting the enduring consequences of colonialism. His presentation moves beyond familiar debates on restitution and repatriation, asking a more fundamental question: What are museums for, and whom do they serve?
Ireland has never had a formal mechanism for determining restitution or repatriation claims. However, this may change with the recent publication of a report from the Advisory Committee on the Restitution and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage. Ronan Bergin thinks it is a 'refreshing advice:
[in French] Vicky Victoire Muke (Kinshasa Uni) shares a new preliminary study devoted to the colouring materials of the costumes and heritage fabrics of the Democratic Republic of Congo, based on the inventory records of the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac. His questions: How did you dye a kuba loincloth a century ago? Where does the deep red of mbuti adornments come from? And why is mangbetu black called "earth pigment"?
Adrian Plau of the Wellington Trust that recently returned Jain manuscripts to the Jain community in GB, argues: Restitution is not a remedy for the past alone – it’s about the future we can create together.
Emiline Smith argues that the 3,000-year-old Iranian gold discs, which American actress Zendaya showed at a London photocall for Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming adaptation of The Odyssey, are emblematic of a market that has spent decades quietly dismantling ancient objects for parts.
In her article 'From Cultural Hub to Crime Scene: British Museum Refuses Repatriation of Thefted Colonial Loot', Sierra Kinsey-Lawton argues that the British Museum is currently facing intensified pressure over the scale of its unprovenanced non‑European collection, following an internal review that found that more than 40% of those objects lack sufficient documentation to establish legal ownership.
[in French] The metaphor of “objects as ambassadors” - used to refer to Kanak objects originating in New Caledonia and currently kept outside the territory, and sometimes returned there temporarily for exhibitions, arises in a context of institutional decolonisation and the aspiration for full Kanak sovereignty, with New Caledonia remaining a sui generis French overseas collectivity.
Okechukwu Uwaezuoke argues: The homecoming of Yinka Shonibare’s work from the 2024 Venice Biennale “Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul” to Benin City seemed to complete one historical circle while quietly opening another debate.
In the Marejesho Research and Information Centre in Moshi, Tanzania, 150 representatives of different communities in the Kilimanjaro and Arusha regions focused on the Marejesho initiative's history (from mobile exhibition to provenance research project), current research goals, restitution and repatriation efforts, and findings about cultural belongings and ancestral remains in German museums. With some remarkable conclusions.
Art historian Muhammad Nishat Gurmani writes: The bronze figurine of the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro was made 4500 years ago by the Indus Valley Civilisation. She resides in a museum in India but she comes from what is now Pakistan. She has been the subject of various controversies in recent years...
NAGPRA specialist Rachael Carnes warns: Museums and AI Consultants build AI interfaces that let visitors "ask the collection" questions directly. Objects that answer. Catalogues that talk back. But listen closely to whose voice.
Joan-Mary Ogiogwa writes: When we hear the word archive, most of us imagine shelves lined with documents, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and official records. But what if some of a people's oldest and most enduring archives have never been written down?
For many museum professionals, the answer appears self-evident. Collections exist to be preserved. Conservation safeguards objects for future generations. Museums are institutions built around permanence. Johm Moses challenges these assumptions. Rather than taking conservation, collections, or even museums themselves as given, Moses invites us to begin elsewhere: with people, languages, relationships, and the continuity of cultural life.
The practice of provenance research has exploded beyond museum staff and investigative journalists to become a nearly mainstream area of academic study across the developed world. But the general public still knows very little about what the word actually means. Art historian Melissa Metzgar shows steps towards making provenance more accessible and decolonising collecting practices.
Zimbabwean archaeologist Mutyandaedza Bright argues: The global movement to repatriate African cultural heritage has gained unprecedented momentum. While much attention has been given to whether objects should be returned, far less attention has been paid to an equally important question: Are local communities prepared to receive them? Yes, they are, but strengthening institutional capacity is essential.
Nigerian art curator Yahuza Rabiu Garba argues: We need to decolonize our understanding of heritage spaces. The Eurocentric model insists on the "four walls" idea, a quiet archive where artifacts are curated to be looked at, but never touched. But...
[in French] French authors Alexandre Decroix and Asena Poyrazer write: Despite an increasingly important presence in the public debate, the term "restitution" is misunderstood. In contrast to the "new relationship with Africa" promoted by Emmanuel Macron, the issue of the restitution of African cultural property betrays a colonialism that is still very much alive. France retains tight control.
Legal expert Ayale Do Vale Vales argues: While Indigenous peoples have long mobilised against appropriation, sometimes succeeding in claims to have their appropriated heritage returned to them, discussions on restitution have largely focused on tangible heritage. By contrast, the restitution of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), despite its importance and vulnerability to misappropriation, remains underexplored.
Moon Above Art Advisory argues: For decades, the auction room was considered the theatre of the art market. Today, some of the most important transactions are happening elsewhere: quietly, privately, and with far greater strategic control.
[in French] Radio Télévision Suisse looked into the sale of human remains in the program 'Vraiment' de Cécile Tran-Tien. She finds skulls, skeletons and even fetuses on the open market and reveals the extent of the trade in human remains via Ricardo, Vinted, Instagram...
Senior Ethiopian researcher Tadesse Simie Metekia argues: To implement the landmark UN slavery resolution, reparations should be defined as a framework for truth, responsibility, repair, reconciliation and global justice.
[in French] Vicky Victoire Muke (Kinshasa Uni) writes: This is a first effort to the heritage costumes of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as they appear in the online collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA – AfricaMuseum, Belgium). It is intended as a situational resource, intended for anyone wishing to familiarise themselves with the diversity of costumes, loincloths and adornments preserved in these collections.
On 29 June 2026, at the National Museum in Lagos, three Swiss museums formally returned 18 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, alongside a bronze bracelet and four archaeological monoliths seized during criminal investigations. Lawyer Kai Loon Loh analyses what makes the Swiss approach distinctive, and why it matters for cultural heritage law and practice.
Nepali content creator Nikki Thapa writes: Decades of looting turned living Deities into costly global commodities, but the era of quiet disappearance is giving way to one of recovery and return.
On 25 June 2026, the 41st Ordinary General Assembly voted to adopt the revised ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums. The vote marks the culmination of a multi-year participatory process. It also touches carefully) restitution issues.
Hansjörg Dilger writes: Ethnographic collections can be understood as affective forces: relational entities that connect people, institutions, histories, and more-than-human worlds, while shaping contemporary debates about care, collaboration, and restitution. (open access)
Ganga Rajinee Dissanayaka writes: When I conduct my work as a provenance researcher, reconstructing how some piece of Kandyan art from Sri Lanka came to be in a museum in Amsterdam or Berlin, I am engaging precisely these traditional archival documents, and I am repeatedly realise that they were created for the purposes of ruling us, not remembering us.
'Law no 2026-351 of 9th May 2026 on restitution of cultural property which has been illicitly acquired' is a step forward and shows, at the same time, that many in France are not ready to accept their colonial past and continue to deny their brutal history in Africa.
Sierra Kinsey-Lawton discovers a long-running pattern: French cultural institutions, their leadership, and their overseas partnerships have a history of corruption, self-dealing, and ethical blindness. She has a special case too: that of former Louvre Abu Dhabi's director Manuel Rabaté. 'Manuel Rabaté is a symptom, not a cause. The disease is the system that created him.'
ThomasFues writes about a recent report by the Culturebene portal in Cameroon that the government there is getting serious about the repatriation of human remains and cultural belongings from Germany. It is reported that Culture Minister Bidoung Mkpatt has granted the Maka community permission to recover the remains of their ancestors that were looted in 1905.
These two bronze zodiac heads once formed part of the clepsydra (water clock) that adorned the entrance to the Western style Yuanmingyuan or Old Summer Palace gardens in Beijing. After the sacking of the Summer Palace by Anglo-French forces in 1860, the zodiac heads were stolen and dispersed among private collections.
This issue of Museum International (309-310) is the second of two volumes addressing the challenges faced by museums today in establishing the provenance of their collections. Many objects, collections and ancestral remains found in museums today lack a clear or full provenance: conditions that reflect the historical conditions under which they were assembled.
This book, edited by Regina F. Bendix and Jonatan Kurzwelly explores the complex and contentious transition from this legacy to the contemporary imperative of rehumanisation and restorative dignity. It recognises that restitution offers a necessary, yet only partial, redress to the profound disruptions of the past.
This Special Issue of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie / Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology is about a large-scale three-years project. which explores new ways of dealing with the collections on many levels of the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin in collaboration with various experts from the regions of origin.
This article describes the sensitive historical and cultural contexts of the collection and gives a special place to the significance and relevance of these artefacts for the Mapuche today, and their integration into cultural and social processes in relation to historical events and provenances.
In this podcast, Jessica Coldrey asks Miriama Bono to share her insights on the interconnectedness of land, culture, and ocean in Polynesian perspectives. She discusses her work in museums, repatriation efforts, and the importance of storytelling in preserving heritage. So far, 20 objects came back, be it most of them on a six years loan.
Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) contemplate the world through an interconnected lens, reflecting the integrated way life is lived and the symbiotic relationship between humans and their immediate tangible and intangible environment. Open Restitution Africa sees how the invocation of an IKS lens shifts the means and desired ends of restitutionary work around African cultural belongings and human ancestors.
Dutch museum collections contain ethnographic objects originating from Suriname, many of which were acquired in a colonial context. This search guide provides information on the most common ways in which these objects ended up in collections in the Netherlands and other countries in the Global North. [In English and Dutch]
Erin Canning argues: Museums are responding to the presence of offensive, biased, and harmful language in catalogue records through the practice of ‘critical cataloguing’: an umbrella term encompassing a range of tactics such as revising records, applying content warnings, adding paradata, and more.
How do museum-exhibitions enable visitors to critically engage with the complex histories of colonial collections and reflect on their potential (re)distribution? The Wereldmuseum Amsterdam’s Unfinished Pasts: Return, Keep, or...? brings this question into curatorial focus. Pao-Yi Yang assesses how its interpretive design both deepens and complicates the viewing experience.
Livia Solaro investigates how a museum—especially one with a problematic past, such as an ethnographic institution—can critically confront its colonial heritage while keeping the public informed and actively involved in the process.
Sierrea Kinsey-Lawton argues: Museums and art houses have never acknowledged that the living descendants of enslaved Africans are, themselves, looted cultural heritage. Solutions for stolen people are not analogous to solutions for stolen bronzes. You cannot deaccession a person.
Natural history specimens from former colonial territories reflect both the scientific curiosity and the power imbalances and violence of the era. Often acquired alongside human remains or cultural objects, they raise questions about the responsibilities of natural history museums. This volume explores these questions as they concern the collections of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Andreas Giorgallis argues that prevailing approaches often frame decolonisation as a series of discrete corrective interventions, rather than as a challenge to the structural foundations through which heritage is constituted and governed. Unless the enduring colonial architectures embedded in these frameworks are addressed, decolonisation risks remaining symbolic rather than transformative.
[in French] Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (Uni Lumbumbashi, DRC) explores the question of the restitution of cultural objects looted from communities in his country. With two case studies he establishes a dialogue between written and oral sources.
'Cultural Capital: African Art, Repatriation, and Restitution', a critical documentary by Reilly Clark on art from Africa in western museums, will be released on 19 May 2026.
Ganga Rajinee Dissanayaka explores how heritage, power, and narrative relate to each other, and how the subtle, insidious dependencies shape who tells the story of a culture in 2026 and who becomes little more than a footnote at the back of a museum. In Sri Lanka, Vedda cultures, coastal Muslim traders, Tamil ritual practices, and Catholic-Sinhalese syncretism could be studied ethnographically, none qualified as heritage.
Eberhard As Seen By Amit is a composite film documenting a life of work. It draws on footage from Eberhard Fischer’s many ethnographic films, alongside images shot by Dutta in India and more recent sequences filmed by Fischer himself at his residence in Switzerland. “Through his eyes, I began to see my own heritage with a clarity and depth I never knew.”
Kate Fitz Gibbon notes that Chinese cultural claims to the return of artifacts looted during the attack on the Summer Palace in 1860, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, and the Japanese invasion in the first half of the 20th century support the country's anti-Taiwanese and nationalist propaganda. But she also wants China to become more self-critical, not to exaggerate about the number of lost relics and to also tackle the abuses in its own country.
Open Restitution Africa (ORA) describes restitution as a pan-African process of remembrance, research, and the digital sharing of knowledge – an interview with Chao Tayiana Maina and Karen Ijumba. 'The bulk of the work in the restitution lies on the African side: the work of reintegration, the negotiation, and supporting people in dealing with the return of the artifacts.'
Yrine Matchinda examines in her disseration *Presence and Absence of Cameroonian Religious Objects in Colonial Collections of German Museums (1884–1919): Cultural and Religious Implications for Communities in Cameroon* how the musealisation of sacred/religious objects affects cultural identity, collective memory, and intergenerational transmission within communities of origin.
Emotional Provenance refers to the emotional, spiritual, ritual, and affective histories embedded within artefacts through their creation, use, displacement, performance, and institutional representation.
Ahmad Mohammad writes: As a wave of NAGPRA repatriation filings hit the Federal Register, this article asks what repatriation cannot reach, and why the limit is not accidental.
Ahmed Mohammad examines Germany's new Coordination Council for Returns of Cultural Property and Human Remains from Colonial Contexts — weighing what it genuinely achieves against the structural challenges that remain. The council's limitation is that it remains unclarified whether it will issue binding rulings or operate in an advisory capacity. The question of human remains is where this limitation is sharpest.
Mahlet Mehdi writes: The return of Empress Tiruwork Wube’s hairpin to Ethiopia underscores how much remains unresolved. Most artifacts taken from Magdala remain abroad. Legal frameworks offer limited recourse. Private markets remain opaque. And restitution continues to depend on chance discovery, rapid response, and negotiated compromise. The hairpin is less an endpoint than a case study.
Sierra Kinsey-Lawton takes the Musauem of Us in San Diego, California, as a case study: the Museum of Us hired a decolonization team because it was fashionable. Every museum was doing it. But the moment the team pushed for something larger—a major repatriation, a public apology, a shift in governance—the discomfort became too great. The team became a problem. And problems are easier to eliminate than to solve. Budget shortfalls became the perfect excuse. They are neutral and impersonal. They allow the museum to avoid saying what it really means: we no longer wish to fund this work.
The fact that cultural possessions, which were brought from China at the beginning of the twentieth century, are spread throughout Europe and the US is proven by the Skušek Collection in the Ethnographic Museum of Ljublijana. Ivan Skušek had served in the Austro-Hungarian navy and was in a Chinese prison from 1917-1920, had several dozens of boxes filled Chinese art objects. The circumstances under which he had acquired such a mass of Chinese art are not yet completely clear.
Kate Fitz Gibbon writes: The restitution of Asante-linked instruments from Los Angeles to Ghana exposes the limits of standard repatriation narratives, particularly when provenance is uncertain and human remains are involved. Rather than resolving historical injustice, the case highlights competing claims, ethical ambiguities, and the need for negotiated, context-specific outcomes.
Paul P. Stewens wonders: The restitution of cultural property has become a hot topic. Museums grapple with restitution claims and colonial legacies. Did I say museums? I meant to say: cultural museums that house artworks, antiquities, or ethnological collections. Natural history museums, on the other hand, have barely been touched by the general turn to restitution. Why is that?
Books, oral histories, artefacts, images, textiles, posters, manuscripts, architectural documentation, and cultural records across Africa, the diaspora, and the Global South. It contains 70 locally indexed records · 300,000+ archive horizon · static-hosted discovery architecture, etc.
Lloyd Makonya writes: The systematic removal of cultural heritage formed part of a broader colonial strategy to undermine African civilisation. Against this historical backdrop, the handover of the Zimbabwe Bird and ancestral human remains by South African authorities to Zimbabwean officials marks the latest victory in Zimbabwe’s sustained push to reclaim its cultural inheritance.
How did the colonial matrix of power continue to shape the modern world? The question is central to the exhibition Postcolonial?, presented by the House of European History in Brussels from 17 April 2026 to 14 March 2027. This book combines contributions from the people behind the exhibition.
[English version, French version] Alioune Samb, provenance researcher in Senegal: African museums are too often described as if they were catching up with Western museums. What if they are exposing the poverty of the Western model itself? That is a question the sector still avoids.
Lia Iannarilli and Malaika Bunzigiye conclude: The story of looted art from the Democratic Republic of the Congo is inseparable from broader struggles of political sovereignty. By holding on to these items, European powers are holding on to the narrative of their colonial rule. In a world shaped by imperial legacies, the decolonial project must be both material and symbolic. To repatriate art is to repatriate power.
To finance their lifestyle, a young French couple, Claire and André Malraux, went in 1923 to Cambodia to steal antiquities. They did almost everything wrong, and their failure started a battle of reclamation. Text Joshua Hammer, photographs Justin Mott.
The V&A’s collections include around 90 objects from Ethiopia. The majority of these are in some way associated with a British military expedition to Ethiopia from 1867 – 68 against Emperor Tewodros. The museum also holds a selection of Ethiopian paintings from the 1940s. Restitution is out of the question. A provenance report.
[in English, in German] For the reconstruction of more than 90 % of human history, there are no other sources than archaeological ones. The ethical questions that arise in connection with the excavation, investigation, and exhibition of this central source group have been the subject of intensive study in English speaking countries for decades. Remains of colonial regions are part of this. How are these questions dealt with in Saxony Anhalt and other German speaking places?
Makana Eyre thinks that the exhibit at The British Museum, “Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans,” poses questions that have historically been uncomfortable for museums. Many items, though certainly not all, are sacred, intrinsically linked to ceremony, community, even Hawaiian sovereignty.
Over 1,000,000 known African artefacts unwillingly held outside the continent. Of these, less than 1,000 have been returned... The Open Restitution Project is an Africa-led project seeking to open up access to information on the restitution of African material culture and human ancestors, to empower all stakeholders involved to make knowledge-based decisions.
Thomas Fues (Dekolonial Erinnern) is monitoring all restitutions from German museums and universities to former colonial regions. Wherever possible, with a source. In 2026, Māori taonga („Pou of Hinematioro“) was returned to New Zealand by the University of Tübingen.
The lechwe skin cloaks are a rare remnant of Batwa people's traditional intellectual, cultural and social worlds. They were recently rediscovered in a museum collection in Stockholm, Sweden. These belongings were slated for digital repatriation, along with +/- 100 other belongings, through a collaborative project between the Women's History Museum of Zambia, and the National Museums of World Culture, Sweden.
[Italian] In “Restituire”, Maria ia Guermandi reconstructs, with historical precision and critical clarity, the complex path that has brought the issue of restitution from the halls of the UN to museum policies, from the claims of African countries to the struggles of indigenous communities in so-called settlement colonies.
[English version, French version] In 2025, the tribal art market returned to its cruising speed. With a turnover of €42.7 million, it followed the trajectory of previous years: more selective, more demanding, yet also more cautious.
The landscape of cultural property restitution has undergone a fundamental transformation over the past three decades. What was once a world governed by gentlemanly agreements between dealers, collectors, and museum curators has become a forensic battleground where digitized trafficking archives, scientific testing, and aggressive legal enforcement determine the fate of objects. This document provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state.
This interdisciplinary Research Handbook brings together scholars from different disciplines to explore art, culture and heritage law, their definition, protection and contestation. It critically assesses legal frameworks and ethical practices through four challenges: sustainable development, intergenerational equity, decolonisation and cultural rights. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.
An important moment! Congolese and Belgian experts presented their recommendations for the future of institutional provenance research at an open forum: ‘The current framework is insufficient.’
[in French] Recently, the restitution of cultural belonging has been stirring up the web. We talk about treasures, but there is no treasure without archives. However, colonial archives, true treasures of history, are often forgotten in discussions about restitution. This book offers a suggestion...
Coloniality is ever-present. Even decades after the period of formal colonisation has ended it has persisted through structural forms of privilege and bias. Beyond their more obvious manifestations such as the racial stratification of labour and the proliferation of inequality and racism, there is the coloniality of knowledge, which is hard to discern and much more insidious to overcome.
The PAESE project (Provenance Research in Collections from Colonial Contexts in Lower Saxony) ran from 2018-2022. As part of the next phase, PAESE 3.0, we are updating and expanding this database. They do so recognising that the data concern the people, communities, and descendants from the regions where these *objects* come from.
Alioune Samb writes: As part of my research, I developed and tested a system called SYDOCOM. Not to “add voices”. But to create conditions where different forms of knowledge can exist without being reduced to a single authorised version.
How can we trace and reconstruct the provenance of objects, collections and ancestral remains that were amassed in the past, and are now placed in museums as mundane and lifeless objects frozen in a timeless past without adequate information and context? The renewed interest in provenance research can be understood as part of the broader agenda to decolonise these museums.
In new episode of podcast "Decolonial Memories", Flaubert Djateng, coordinator of the civil society organisation Zenu Network in Cameroon, talks about remembrance work on the German colonial era in his country.
This DARCA decision aid is designed to support trustees of cultural institutions in coming to a decision about whether they might be under a moral obligation to return a cultural artefact in their possession.
Tracing the course of Britain’s wars with the Asante alongside the course of its plundered relics, Barnaby Phillips weaves a thrilling and poignant tale of imperial ambition and African resistance. Travelling from the Gold Coast to the museum galleries, officers’ mess rooms and aristocratic homes of Britain, The African Kingdom of Gold confronts us with urgent questions about the legacy of Empire and, in particular, how our museums should respond.
Bradley J. Gordon, Melina Antoniadis & Sokunthyda Long write: Cambodia is among the countries most profoundly affected by the large-scale looting of cultural heritage, particularly from the 1960s to the 1990s—before, during, and after civil war and genocide—as well as during the French colonial era, which saw the large-scale removal of artifacts.
Reilly Clark writes: Two Benin plaques were among the ones looted by the British from the palace of the oba in Benin. Later, they were given to the British Museum and later still, to the Nigerian National Museum in Lagos. The plaques were removed without permission from the Nigerian National Museum between 1950 and 1991.
[in French] Cécile Mendy, a student in Heritage Professions at the Gaston Berger University of Saint Louis in Senegal, discusses her research on endogenous conservation – the idea that conservation practices grounded in local knowledge can act as a form of cultural sovereignty.
Reilly Clark writes: Despite the return of Benin belongings, the relations between Africa and the West have remained fundamentally unchanged. African cultural objects were taken from the continent as part of the dual projects of Western imperialism and resource extraction.
Ahmad Mohammed: Digital collections have become core infrastructure for heritage work. But as collections move online and become more searchable, recombinable, and transferable, “good stewardship” is no longer only a technical matter of storage and backups.
The Tangué is a ship’s beak carved from wood and placed on the bow of the ship of the royal Bele-Bele family. This mystical and sacred belonging symbolises power, particularly the ultimate authority of the King over the water tribes of the Douala kingdom, and is an integral part of socio-cultural and spiritual practices. n 1884, it was stolen by German military. Currently, it is in the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich.
[in English, in Portuguese] Pedro de Niemeyer Cesarino and Lucas da Costa Maciel raise important questions: What if so-called objects in museums are not just that? What if they refuse such constraints?
[in French] The PROCHE project, implemented by the Royal Museum for Central Africa, is part of the 2022 Belgian law on the restitution of colonial collections. It aims to retrace the conditions of acquisition of the museum's so-called "ethnographic" and musicological objects, in close collaboration with Congolese institutions and cultural actors.
Jennifer Howes writes: Amaravati Stupa was the first Buddhist site in India to be systematically excavated by the British. Its first colonial excavation in 1816–17 led to 51 sculptures being removed from the site by amateur antiquarians. Some of these were sent to museums, but most of them were transported to the market town of Machilipatnam, where they were used to construct an eccentric marketplace monument.
[in English and in German] The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) transfers custody of three ancestors to the Molelia family of Tanzania. They now have sole control over the remains. Howe ver, immediate repatriation to Kibosho is not possible because it requires the approval of the Tanzanian government, which has not yet responded to the SPK’s offer to return the remains.
Thomas Laely writes: The debate on the repatriation of (in)tangible cultural heritage and belongings has developed a broad dynamic in recent years. This sudden activism raises questions. What is its background, what are the goals behind it, and how are they to be achieved? Is it primarily about African or rather European interests?
Around 1900, the Isanzu chief and seven of his bodyguards were arrested and hanged and/or beheaded, and their bodies were not returned to Isanzul and given for burial. Currently, they are in the University of Göttingen. Since the emptying of graves, there have been significant periods of drought and famine in the area. The Isanzu people believe that these environmental calamities are as a result of their human ancestors being dishonoured.
[in French] Yasmina Zian, Aline Bosuma, Alexandre Chevalier and Laurent Licata make critical remarks about Belgium's decolonisation of museums effort. Belgium keeps control over decisions and there is a lack of a balanced dialogue with the DRC.
[in French] This issue of Relations Internationales, edited by Anne Sophie Gijs, Matthieu Gillabert and Serge Jaumain offers a range of interesting articles about restiution issues, museums, diaspora groups and communitie sof origin, mostly in Switzerland and Belgium and in African countries as Cameroon and DR Congo.
[in Spanish] The exhibition "Hotel of the Plundered Artifact" at the National Museum of Anthropology in Madrid reinterprets the history of the colonizers in Africa through the collections, with care and new ways of listening.
In addition to private and institutional collectors, natural history traders have historically been important sources of specimens and information for natural history museums in the past. However, the history and significance of the natural history traders is still little known and researched. One such naturalia trader with worldwide trading partners was the long-established Hamburg company of the J. F. G. Umlauff family.
In the last hundred years, France has restituted only twenty-nine looted artefacts to Africa (26 to Benin, 1 to Senegal, 1 to Côte d’Ivoire, 1 to the Malagasy Republic). At this rate, how long will it take France to return the other 96 971 looted African artefacts in France? Kwame Opoku points to an African scholar and his troubling support who actively enables the Louvre/Musée du Quai Branly to retain, among others, the statue of Gou, the Vodun divinity from Benin, in Paris.
Ed Gaskin writes: History is often taught as if serious art followed a single European arc—from classical Greek sculpture to Renaissance realism to modern museums—while Africa appears late, peripheral, or confined to masks and ritual objects. This framing is not only incomplete; it is false.
Restitution debates – the question of whether a cultural object should be returned from a museum or other collection to a person or community – often begin with a deceptively simple question: who owns an object?
[in German] Anna Schäfers and Katharina Erben talk with representatives of Indigenous peoples, international partners and fellows, people from Berlin’s pluralistic urban society and the museum staff who collaborate with them all, including curators, art educators, and conservator-restorers.
[in English, in Mozambiquan Portuguese] The five texts in this richly illustrated issue nr. 9 of Troubles dans les Collections trace how new local contexts in Mozambique and global debates have resonated in the country since the restitution debate gained heightened visibility. Civil society actors play a crucial role in raising the restitution issue.
The presence of non-Western material heritage in Western museum collections poses one of the most significant challenges today, raising critical questions about provenance, ownership, and the concept of “art”. This collective volume, structured as an ABC of arts and museums, offers an overview of the intersections between art history and postcolonial studies. Book presentation on 30 January in Geneva.
The Taonga Files, a new investigative podcast exploring the journeys of Aotearoa’s taonga now held in museums around the world — and the complex systems, histories, and relationships that shape their return.
Where and to whom do ancient things belong? What happens when they are stolen—not by a colonial power, but by a national museum claiming them as state patrimony? What kinds of healing and restitution can follow?
DARCA, or the Decision Aid for the Restitution of Cultural Artefacts (DARCA), is a user-friendly tool designed to assist museums and others in understanding the moral issues relating to restitution, developed by practical ethicists at the Oxford Uehiro Institute and supported by the philosophical literature in this field.
In the column, Alexander Hermann takes a look at the principle of INALIENABILITY that applies in many countries, barring the removal of cultural objects from #museum collections, including for purposes such as #restitution.
The restitution project, undertaken in Namibia from 2019 – 2024, was centred around 23 cultural belongings, which were selected from a collection of +/-1400 cultural belongings in the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, on the basis of their rarity, ability to travel well (fragility, arsenic poisoning etc), cultural, historical and aesthetic significance, as well as their connection to the history of Namibian fashion.
[in French] Issue 2025/8 of L’essor des contre-muséologies is about several types of museums. Confronting the dominant model of the museum—born of the French Revolution and rooted in bourgeois values—reformist museologists strive to democratize it, while popular or community-based initiatives attest to its rejection.
[English version, German version] Cultural heritage of the Nso in Germany - Episode with Dr Bulami Edward Fonyuy (Cameroon) by podcast Decolonial Memories (on all major platforms). In the podcast, Dr Bulami calls on the German government to play a long-term role in the healing process between the two countries, going beyond the restitution of colonial loot.
Grounded primarily in historical investigation into post-colonial memory, Edith Isoken Erhokpaidamwen examines how colonial conquest and Western ideological domination produced enduring psychological and cultural consequences without idealizing pre-colonial societies.
Cultural heritage occupies a paradoxical position in law: It is protected as property but experienced as a repository of identity, memory, and dignity. This article examines whether cultural heritage could, in principle, be recognized as a subject of law, drawing on emerging developments in environmental and nonhuman personhood.
[in French] The 60-page guide is meant for directors and scientific officers of museums in France, and public collections under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture. The guide focusses on Nazi-looted art works, human remains, colonial collections and the ongoing illicit trade in art and antiquities.
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.
[ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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 Spanish] ¿Qué hacemos con el pasado colonial? - Justicia, reparación y memoria offers a critical analysis of how inequality, ongoing dispossession, and discrimination are deeply intertwined with imperial histories. By examining these connections across different national and thematic contexts, the book reveals not only a past that has yet to be fully confronted, but also the ways in which colonial logics continue to shape contemporary forms of injustice.
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.
Much of the scholarly attention for decolonisation and restitution in English has centred on developments in the Anglophone world. A special Issue - Portuguese Studies Review will bring together new studies on parallel and emerging developments within the Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) world.
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 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.
[mostly in French] Based on research in the DR Congo, Vicky Van Bockhaven explores a tension within contemporary museum and cultural policies, focusing on the decolonisation of colonial collections and associated knowledge production. These initiatives often remain under the control of Western institutions, leaving the concerned countries and communities unequally involved.
Eds. Tal Adler and Sharon Macdonald write: Artistic provenance research (APR) mobilizes artistic approaches and sensibilities to engage with questions concerning the histories and ownership of objects, including the very modes of investigating
these. It can thus be seen as both a form of and a reflection on provenance.
research.
[ 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.
Laura Petersen argues that authors and artists have also taken up a responsibility for restitution. Deploying the literal translation ‘making-good-again’, this book focuses on the ‘making’ of law, literature and visual art to argue that restitution is a practice which is found in different genres, sites and temporalities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'Investigating Online Heritage Crime - New Directions, New Technologies, Emerging Markets' offers an introduction to a crucial new field of interest to all heritage researchers.
[ 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.
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.
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.
[ 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.
The documentary Elephants & Squirrels by Swiss filmmaker Gregor Brändli chronicles a Sri Lankan artist’s discovery of looted artefacts in Basel and her mission to return them to Sri Lanka, exposing Switzerland’s uneasy reckoning with its colonial entanglements.
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.
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.
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 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.
[ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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”.
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.
[ 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).
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
[ in Dutch ] Heritage organizations preserve and make accessible archives, publications, and objects that tell interesting or moving stories. At the same time, these same collections often contain heritage that reflects painful and poignant histories. This heritage raises questions or even comes under fire.
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.
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.
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?
Nigeria should establish a bilateral negotiating group with Germany on reparations to pay for its crimes against humanity, comprising the indigenous peoples of Nigeria and other African nations. Not as charity, but as a binding act of justice and a guarantee that such atrocities will never be repeated.
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.
