The Debate of Museum Repatriation, Part 1

From Executive Director Carolyn Venne - You may remember that last summer I wrote a Musing about my experiences at museums in Philadelphia.  This summer, seeing as we only have a handful of summers left before they leave for college, my husband Brad and I took our boys to London.  In 2001, as college students, Brad and I studied at the London School of Economics and were housed in dorms on High Holburn Street.  My room faced north where I had a view of the (then) new glass roof of the British Museum, and I spent a lot of time there.  But visiting again (four times!) as a museum director more than twenty years later, I had very different thoughts about what I encountered.

The British Museum and its Collections

If you've never been, the British Museum is massive, crowded, hot and confusing to navigate, which all somehow adds to its spectacular museum vibe.  But the museum's name is a misnomer, as it doesn't highlight what you might expect, like tapestries, swords and crowns.

Instead, the British Museum has a remarkable number of important artifacts from the ancient world, namely Egypt, Assyria (ancient Iraq) and Greece.  The items described below, and others, make the British Museum's collection one of the most contested in the world.  

 Some refer to contested artifacts as stolen, pillaged, plundered or looted and believe that these objects should be repatriated, or returned, to their original owners or countries.  Others prefer words like salvaged, rescued or saved and contend that most items are better off in museums.

The Benin Bronzes

Consider the Benin Bronzes, of which about 900 pieces are located at the British Museum.  They date to the 16th century in the Kingdom of Benin, located in present-day Nigeria.  Beginning toward the end of the 19th century, European nations invaded and colonized nearly 90% of the continent, a period known as the "Scramble for Africa."  Amidst turbulent times, in 1897, several British delegates and 200 conscripted African porters were killed in the Kingdom of Benin for imposing on sacred rituals.  In retaliation, within a month the Kingdom fell under British rule.  The Kingdom's palaces were burned and stripped of thousands of bronze and ivory sculptures which were donated to museums or sold around the world by the British.  The Benin Bronzes is such a vast collection worldwide that a digital initiative has been created to research and catalog all items seized in 1897, currently connecting 5,246 objects from 131 institutions in 20 countries.

In recent years, institutions including the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and several state-run museums in Germany have repatriated Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, with the goal that they will be reunited by 2026 in a yet-to-be-built museum in Benin City.  More and more institutions are joining their ranks as repatriation efforts sweep the globe.

What is Cultural Repatriation?

The modern debate over cultural repatriation extends back to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the "Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property."  (UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.)  This landmark stand against the illegal trafficking of cultural artifacts also urged the repatriation of items to their rightful owners or countries.   

These days, a professional museum's collection policy will specify guidelines on provenance (origin and rightful ownership) prior to acquisition.  (As an example, check out section IV-E in the Met's policy here.)  But determining or proving provenance can be difficult if not impossible when an item is already in a museum, whether it's thousands of years old or was looted by Nazis in just the past century.  

The Rosetta Stone dates to 196 BC Egypt and features a decree by Egyptian priests in three different scripts - Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian Demotic and Ancient Greek.  Unearthed in 1799 by French soldiers, it was turned over to the British after Napoleon's military defeat and made its way to the British Museum by 1802.  The stone was soon studied by many scholars and in 1822 it was successfully deciphered, unlocking the mystery of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Ancient Assyria was located in northern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), where lion hunting was the sport of kings.  Several rooms at the British Museum display relief sculptures of lion hunts, like the one above, which date to 645–635 BC.  Originally showcased in the North Palace of Nineveh (present-day Mosul, Iraq), they were excavated by British archaeologists in the 1850s.  Many more reliefs were recently discovered as archaeologists work to restore sites damaged by ISIS.

The Pros and Cons of Repatriation

The strongest argument for repatriation points to the wrongful removal of artifacts through colonialism, university-funded excavations or examples of modern looting (such as ISIS in Iraq or Russia in Ukraine), and thus by retaining them, museums are justifying these unethical actions.  In particular, when cultural artifacts are held in wealthy western countries and cities, some believe that they are exercising privilege and are exclusionary.  Therefore, cultural activists feel that the reunification of artifacts to their home nations, even when actual provenance cannot be determined, is important for the preservation of cultural identity and promotes healing.   

On the other hand, many art historians support the idea of encyclopedic or universal museums such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York City or the British Museum, believing that these institutions educate the public by providing a "representative sample of the world's many cultures in a scientific and objective manner" (Rivard).  Moreover, these institutions can provide the highest degree of scholarly research and care. 

"Many criticize the British Museum's collection for having been built on plunder, at the expense of subjugated, faraway lands.  And yet, as a sightseer who's mindful of this questionable legacy, the collection can still be appreciated for what it is:  the chronicle of Western civilization."  - Rick Steves' London, 24th Edition

Those against cultural repatriation also point out that many contested artifacts have "no connections beyond geography to the modern people living on the land" (Weiss).  This could be said of the downfall of the Kingdom of Benin in present-day Nigeria or the Rosetta's Stone lack of connection to modern Egypt's Muslim population.

Then there's the (often disputed) idea that artifacts are safer in professional museums.  Cited examples which (sort of) support this claim include the Bust of Nefertiti (on display in the Neues Museum in Berlin) being found upside-down in rubble, conjecture that the Rosetta Stone had been used to construct a well, and the fact that the Parthenon was largely already in ruins by the time Lord Elgin cut out chunks of marble and had them shipped overseas (see right).  While those cases often refer to the state of the artifact's location when it was first found, questions about future facilities management and visitation are largely considered in the debate.  Do you think you're more likely to see the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs if they remain in London or are repatriated to Iraq?  

Read statements from the British Museum on contested objects in their collection here.

The Parthenon Sculptures are a large collection of marble decorations from the temple of Athena (the Parthenon) in Athens, Greece, which date between 447-432 BC.  By the late 19th century, present-day Athens was ruled by the Ottoman, or Turkish, Empire, and the Parthenon was largely in ruins.  British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, removed about half of the remaining sculptures of the Parthenon (as well as from other buildings on the Acropolis) between 1801 and 1805, declaring that doing so would be "beneficial to the progress of the fine arts."  It's unclear whether he had permission to do so, and if he did, from whom.  The "Elgin Marbles", as they are often referred to, have been housed at the British Museum since 1816.  Today, the term "Elginism" refers to acts of cultural vandalism or theft, particularly if it benefits a wealthier country.  The first formal request from Greece for the repatriation of the Parthenon Sculptures was made in 1983. 

Stay Tuned for Part 2

In this Musing I didn't mention the precedence of human remains on display in museums and their impact on the repatriation debate.  Be forewarned that in part 2, I'll share a picture from the British Museum of a naturally-preserved mummy known as Gebelein Man.  (He had previously been referred to as "Ginger" because there's some red hair still visibly attached to his skull.  Yeah.)  The subject of human remains and ceremonial grave goods are a particularly hot topic right now in the United States.  I'll explain why.

For Further Reading

- 9 Stolen Artifacts That Are Still on Display in Museums Today

- British Museum is the World's Largest Receiver of Stolen Goods

- For U.S. Museums With Looted Art, the Indiana Jones Era Is Over

- A Modern History of Museum Lootings

- Why Do the World’s Top Museums Still Resist Repatriation?

- Not Looted: The World's Treasurers in Western Encyclopedic Museums

- Why Artifacts Belong in Museums