'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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
Cyprus is a much negelected spot in colonial history. This documentary Film trailer by Zimbabwean artist Sithabile Mlotshwa is made possible through a collaboration with historian Paraskevas Samaras and videographer Michalakis Georgiou with contributions and support from Dinos Toumazos, Agora Dialogue, Oz Karahan and others.
The past decade has seen a worldwide tendency to re-examine human remains found in old museum collections. To obtain a full picture of the life history of the individuals under consideration, an anthropological study might be mandated, although this approach is not yet systematic.
Museums hold thousands of ‘things’ from all around the world. In larger institutions like Te Papa, the histories of these ‘things’ are not always known. This blog is looking at ways to start recovering these lost stories and histories.
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.
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.
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.
The African Renaissance made restitution central to reclaiming cultural sovereignty. But the reality is that implementation is still shaped by donor-led systems that often bypass African agency and African audiences.
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 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.
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.
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.
[ in English, French and Spanish ] From a continental European perspective, islands have long been considered as separated and isolated spaces, disconnected from one another and from the rest of their environment. This special issue of the ICOFOM Study Series rethinks such a perspective on islands by bringing together papers from around the world that draw on alternative views, notably from the Pacific and Caribbean regions concerning oceanic islands.
In 'Rethinking Histories of Indonesia - Experiencing, Resisting and Renegotiating Coloniality', editors Sadiah Boonstra and others provide a critical evaluation of histories of Indonesia from the formal period of colonisation to the present day. The volume approaches Indonesian history through the lens of coloniality, or the structures of power and control that underpin colonisation and which persist into the present.
On 7 July 2025, the French National Assembly has approved the restitution to Ivory Coast of the Djidji Ayôkwê, an important talking drum, stolen in 1916. In the same period, the British Museum came with a statement that it is unwilling to restitute an equally important drum to the Pokomo council of elders in Kenya.
[ in Spanish ] This special issue of Revista Memorias Disidentes shows debates and reflections on restitution, repatriation, return and reburial of ancestors in South America.
[ 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?
In 2021, the University of Aberdeen returned a looted Benin object to the Oba of Benin, becoming the first UK institution to agree to an unconditional return. Neil Curtis [University of Aberdeen] outlines the process of giving back a pillaged object without a repatriation request being made.
Thupten Kelsang quotes Clare Harris: 'The bulk of Tibet’s portable cultural heritage has been retained everywhere other than Tibet, and is now most readily at the disposal of everyone other than Tibetans.' About a 'doubly colonial' Tibet.
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.
[ 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.
Repatriation is urgent and important work and should be recognised as one of the UK museum sector’s top priorities. It is widely acknowledged that a lack of funding and capacity are two of the main reasons that more museums in the UK do not engage with repatriation, writes Amy Shakespeare.
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.
Christian missionary collections have contributed much to the development of the exhibitionary complex, but have received significantly less notice than imperial states using violence to acquire collections, and subsequent demands for restitution.
This working paper provides an analysis of grounds for return and restitution frameworks based upon them in different national contexts. One European policy context, namely the German, is analyzed alongside three Latin American legislative contexts: the Argentinian, Chilean, and Brazilian.
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.
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.
In “Relooted” players find themselves in a major museum, busting through walls, arms full of ill-begotten African artifacts to be returned to their rightful homes. The game features a crew of Robin Hood-esque thieves staging elaborate heists to take back stolen artifacts from Western museums, and repatriating them to the peoples from whom they were taken.
[ in Dutch ] Daantje van de Linde delves into the history of a power statue that has been called the face of the World Museum Rotterdam's Africa collection. Her conclusion: case of involuntary loss of possession.
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.
This working paper offers an inventory of missionary orders and societies active in German colonial regions in Africa and Asia, the information available about them and the options for further research.
Since 2018, the Association on American Indian Affairs has monitored 1,159 auction houses worldwide and provided auction alerts regarding the sale of sensitive cultural heritage. The Association’s work to monitor domestic and international auctions help fill this gap by identifying and reporting items that may warrant repatriation. The alerts have been shown to stop improper sales and support the return of important items.
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?
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.
Within the national museum context, the Repatriasi exhibition risks becoming a missed opportunity to critically engage with the afterlives of returned objects, beyond marking their physical return.
[ 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.
Mike Rutherford, curator of Zoology and Anatomy at the Hunterian, University of Glasgow, speaks at a conference in Manchester. Case-study: Repatriation Jamaican Giant Galliwasp.
This article about 500 palm-leaf manuscripts, looted during the conquest of Lombok by the Netherlands East Indies in 1894, is especially urgent as the demand for provenance research grows. It helps to better understand the complex historical trajectories of these cultural heritage objects.
'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.
Rematriation is more than the return of land or cultural items. It is a sacred process of restoring Indigenous relationships to land, water, language, and spiritual responsibility.
Lucky Igohosa Ugbudian writes: Switzerland has witnessed curators playing an increasingly significant role in the restitution debate surrounding Benin artworks. The looting of these cultural objects in 1897 led to the illicit global circulation of these objects. The forceful trafficking of these items, alongside international laws and conventions, prompted Nigerian and Pan-African groups to demand restitution.
This Provenance Research Reports Series shows the variety of approaches to provenance research on specific objects, collections, collectors, and regions. This is the first of four issues.
Dominic Senayah presents an in-depth exploration of reparations using Ghana as a case study. He highlights the multivalent dimensions of reparations and has a set of recommendations.
During the 19th century colonial wars, the library of the rulers of Palembang in Sumatra was looted by British and Dutch troops; its manuscripts were transported to other places and some of them are lost. Alan Darmawan looks for traces of some of these mishandled treasures.
In her book 'Colonial Ambitions and Collecting Anxieties: Aboriginal Objects and Western Australian Frontiers, 1828–1914' Nicola Froggatt assesses how non-Aboriginal collectors understood Aboriginal objects, and what this reveals about colonial relationships, anxieties and ambitions.
The paper 'Nkali and Kolo-collecting in Eastern Nigeria: interrogating colonial collections of ọfϙ and Ikenga, Igbo objects of sovereignty and authority' explores the changing narratives of Ọfϙ and Ikenga, sacred objects of sovereignty and authority among the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria, currently in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), University of Cambridge (UK).
Cameroonian prof. Albert Gouaffo made an interim assessment of the debate on the looting and restitution of Cameroon’s cultural heritage in Germany. 'This work requires preparation and prudence and not a rush, as the German side would like.'
Zainab Tahir: The Marine Heritage Gallery, a gallery managed by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries in Jakarta, sparked conversation about the complexities surrounding the display of three thousand commercially salvaged artefacts.
[ in German ] In a new book, German author and former SPD politician Mathias Brodkorb denounces the development of ethnological museums in Europe, especially Leipzig, Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna.
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.
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.
The aim of the project is to reveal and connect all collections of material made in Africa that are held in 32 Scottish museums, including lesser-known as well as better-known ones, and to connect these collections with relevant and interested diaspora and descendant communities.
Deliberate avoidance, lack of interest, or lack of sources, African arts have found themselves to the margins of the history of spoliations, destruction and displacement of works of art during the 1933-45 period, with research largely focusing on European art. Conference on 13 November 2025 in Paris.
(Re)collecting Natural History in Europe is a research project that examines how natural history and ethnographic collections are curated and displayed, with a particular focus on European museums.
The paper argues that the ensuing negotiations and the state-imposed criteria for reburial reflect an ongoing colonial impulse to control Indigenous bodies and restrict ontological and political self-determination.
Rohan Fernando emphasises the colonial roots of India’s great contemporary museums and the role of the British in rediscovering India’s past. Muhammad Nishan Hussain [University of Lahore] takes an opposite view and sees them as a tool of colonial control.
To Sell or Not to Sell: The British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology’s Position on the Trade and Sales of Human Remains in the UK pleads for improved legislation if the UK is to end this industry.
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.
Te Papa collection manager and kaitiaki taonga Moana Parata brings home a precious taonga, a raranga vest collected by Carl Freeze, an American Mormon missionary in the early 1900s.
A European art collector challenged Conan Cheong's commendation of the Dutch Government’s return of the Singhosari stone Bhairava, Nandi, Ganesha and Brahma statues to Indonesia the year before.
Markus Scholz discusses the missionary practice and ideas of the Bavarian Capuchins among the Mapuche in Araucanía in south Chile from 1895–1896 onwards. Distinguishing themselves as defenders of Indigenous land rights and as linguistic experts on the Mapuche language, they also assembled a rich collection of ethnographic artifacts and natural specimens, which could be problematic today. [ open access ]
The article 'Journey of No Return: The Impact of Looted Heritage on Nigeria’s Cultural Legacy' explores the profound impact of looted heritage on Nigeria’s cultural legacy, highlighting the historical, cultural, and economic implications of the plundered artifacts.
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 collaboration between the Académie des Traces and C& explores the traces of colonial heritage today in several texts by emerging scholars and museum professionals from the African and European continents.
