UN General Assembly adopts Resolution on “Return or restitution of cultural property to the countries of origin”

UN General Assembly adopts Resolution on “Return or restitution of cultural property to the countries of origin” (New York, 9 December 2015)
The Resolution was unanimously adopted by the Plenary of the UN General Assembly, following a Greek initiative. 

The Resolution enjoyed wide acceptance, as it was co-sponsored by a total of 74 states, including many member states of the European Union, a significant number of Latin American states, as well as a number of Arab and African states. This initiative bolsters the return of cultural property to countries of origin, as well as the effort to protect cultural heritage. These two dimensions of the Resolution are seen as particularly timely, given that the Middle East daily suffers destruction of works and monuments of world cultural heritage, while the link between trafficking in cultural property and funding of terrorism is well known. Special mention is made in the Resolution to the “Ancient Olympia Recommendation,” which calls on member states to mobilize for the return of stolen cultural treasures, with express reference to the return of the Parthenon Marbles. Another, equally important, dimension of the Resolution is the condemnation of the destruction of monuments of world cultural heritage in areas of armed conflict, including in occupied territories, and of illegal trafficking of cultural property by armed terrorist groups, such as ISIS. 

Greece Drop Legal Pursuit of Parthenon Marbles

Greece Drop Legal Pursuit of Parthenon Marbles. Good, in my opinion, it did not stand a chance, and when lost would have set the cause back.   
 

Andover Newton Theological School Artefact Collection

“These objects embody the spirits of our ancestors [...]
The current generation is tied both to our ancestors and to our
future generations, so it basically ensures our cultural survival.”

Rosita Worl

Another 'Native artefact repatriation' featuring Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, which represents several native Alaskan peoples: Malcolm Gay, 'Seminary eyes repatriation after clash over artifacts' Boston Globe  December 05, 2015

Federal officials have accused the Andover Newton Theological School of running afoul of the law in its handling of a collection of Native American and native Hawaiian cultural objects, the culmination of an institutional clash that brought to light a little known treasure trove of artifacts. Portions of the collection — owned by the seminary but housed by the Peabody Essex Museum since the 1940s — could now be returned to descendants and affiliated tribes for whom the objects have special cultural significance. In a letter to Andover Newton, the Department of the Interior charges that the school has failed to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a 1990 law that seeks to return funerary objects, sacred items, and objects of cultural patrimony to their rightful tribal heirs. In a first step toward returning the objects to indigenous people, the officials have advised the Newton seminary to make a list of all the Native American cultural items in the collection and submit it to any tribe that may have an interest, as well as to federal officials. [...]  most of the Andover Newton collection was assembled in the 19th century through missionary work. Although the seminary and the Salem museum partnered for decades to care for the collection, the relationship began to sour in 2014, when Andover Newton began actively exploring the possibility of selling roughly 80 of the collection’s most valuable Native American items. For the museum, the prospect of a sale was troubling.

There are around 160 Native American and native Hawaiian objects in the roughly 1,100-piece collection, which also includes artifacts from other cultures. The collection is thought to contain objects associated with 52 Native American tribes and native Hawaiians, including many items that Worl said are no mere artifacts. The museum had earlier advised the school that only 10 Native American items in the collection were subject to the federal protection law.
Worl said  “I keep hoping these guys, who are supposedly Christian, would do the Christian thing and return these objects that they are holding illegally”.

Chilkat Robe Returning to Alaska

Texan eBay seller artist George Blucker was offering  a sacred Chilkat robe a metre and a half across once used by native Americans (Tlingit, Haida or Tsimshian)  of Southeast Alaska. Similar robes have sold for upwards of $30,000 at auction.

  Blucker purchased the robe at a flea market in Illinois approximately 25 years ago. “I saw the blanket lying on top of a VW bus and at first I thought it had to be a fake,” said Blucker, who holds a master’s of fine arts and has worked in art conservation. “But I knew it could not be a fake with that kind of weaving - who could fake that?” The flea market seller told Blucker he had bought it at an estate sale in the 1980s. The robe was acquired by a grandfather of the estate’s heirs. The grandfather had traveled to the Yukon gold rush in the late 1800s to seek his fortune and came home with the robe. The robe appears to be a funerary object because of the frayed edges at the top where it may have been attached to a plank and fixture that was placed above a gravesite. It was first thought to be a Raven design, but it might be a Hawk, Eagle or Thunderbird, according to experts. There is no record associating it with a clan or community.

Tribal members alerted Sealaska Heritage Institute to the auction on November 16 and SHI decided to try and buy it, but was able to raise only the reserve amount of $14,500 through donors. Staff contacted the seller, imploring him to sell the robe to SHI at the reserve price and immediately end the auction, given the significance of the piece. After researching SHI and learning that the robe was sacred, even though bidding had already by this time reached a higher sum, the seller opted to sell at the reserve price.

“When I found out that it had religious significance and it had a spiritual presence, that’s when I thought I would put it where it should go,” said Blucker, who has since received messages from buyers who were peeved that the auction ended early and who were prepared to pay a high price. “This is unheard of,” [SHI President Rosita] Worl said. “It is remarkable that a seller would take a loss to do the right thing and repatriate a sacred object to the tribes. We are indebted to him for his noble act of kindness.”

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will hold a public ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015 for the return of the sacred Chilkat robe.

'Sacred Chilkat Robe Returning Home' SIT News November 29th, 2015

Mike Dunham, 'Southeast Alaska cultural group buys Chilkat robe that showed up on eBay' Alaska Dispatch November 19, 2015

Hat tip Donna Yates

Cornelius Gurlitt Collection: Reconstructing Collecting Histories

Philipp Jedicke 'Task force investigating art trove inherited from Nazi collector achieved 'embarrassing' results' Deutsche Welle, 26.11.2015

Since 2013, a task force, soon to be disbanded, has sought to clarify ownership of the artwork found in Cornelius Gurlitt's apartment. Now people are asking: what has it achieved, and where do we go from here? [...] Berggreen-Merkel's team of researchers has been able to determine the exact provenience of four works, and a fifth was mentioned at the parliament hearing. Regarding slightly over 500 of a total of 1,497 works found in Schwabing and Salzburg, the task force rules out "appropriation as a result of Nazi persecution." Clarifying the origins of the rest has proven impossible. Regarding 104 works, 114 concrete claims and 300 requests from Germany and abroad have been filed with the task force.

The "Süddeutsche Zeitung" criticised the team suggesting that auction houses are able "to determine proveniences within 48 hours." I'd say that "determine" is perhaps not always the right word here....

Queen may face legal challenge over Koh-i-Noor - stolen cultural heritage

 Queen may face legal challenge over Koh-i-Noor - stolen cultural heritage

A lobby group made up of Indian businessmen and actors is mounting a legal challenge against Queen Elizabeth II demanding the return of the world famous Koh-i-Noor diamond to India. The 105-carat stone, believed to have been mined in India nearly 800 years ago, was presented to Queen Victoria during the Raj and is now set in a crown belonging to the Queen’s mother on public display in the Tower of London. [...]The Koh-i-Noor, which means “mountain of light,” was once the largest cut diamond in the world and had been passed down from one ruling dynasty to another in India. But after the British colonisation of the Punjab in 1849, the Marquess of Dalhousie, the British Governor-General, arranged for it to be presented to Queen Victoria. The last Sikh ruler, Duleep Singh, a 13-year-old boy, was made to travel to Britain in 1850 when he handed the gem to Queen Victoria.

In 2013 British Prime Minister David Cameron while on a visit to India, defended Britain’s right to keep it saying he did not believe in “returnism”.

Looted marble bust returned to Poland

The bust (in the window) in the palace before the war

Julia Michalska.'Looted marble bust returned to Poland' The Art Newspaper 2 November 2015

A marble bust of the goddess Diana has been returned to Poland. The 18th-century sculpture by Jean-Antoine Houdon, which was part of the collection of King Stansilaw August, was taken from the Royal Lazienki Palace by the Nazis in 1940. It was listed on Interpol’s database of stolen works of art.  Employees of the Polish ministry of culture spotted the work in a catalogue of the Viennese auction house Im Kinsky where it was offered for sale in the summer. [...] The Houdon sculpture, along with 56 paintings from the National Museum of Warsaw, was seized by the Nazis and transported to the headquarters of the general governor Hans Frank in Krakow. Polish authorities estimate that around half a million works were plundered or destroyed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

The bust was recovered from the market due to the efforts of  Christopher Marinello, the chief executive of the London-based Art Recovery Group and will be returned to the Polish government at a ceremony in Warsaw later this month.

No 'Respect', Universal Museum Trophy Artefacts meet Sesame Street

Ridiculed and humiliated in America

Billed as "the biggest" one outside Egypt, Penn Musum's sphinx was found near the Ptah Temple at Memphis, excavated by Petrie. It bears the royal names of the 19th dynasty pharaoh Ramesses II and his son and successor Merenptah, and the museum like doing silly things with their trophy to celebrate capturing it:

To celebrate the Sphinx in all of its splendor, join the Penn Museum for quizzo on Oct. 2, a Young Professionals Event on Oct. 11, a Halloween event on Oct. 17, a sleepover on Oct. 18, and workshop on Oct. 26. On Oct. 19—almost 100 years to the day that the Sphinx arrived at Penn—the Museum will host a “Hijinks with the Sphinx” event from 1 to 4 p.m..

This apparently consisted of:

stories of the Sphinx, and an exclusive display of Egyptian kitsch, items from pop culture based on ancient Egyptian themes [...]. Guests matched wits in a True/False game about ancient Egypt, raced through an Indiana Jones-style obstacle course, and enjoyed an ancient hairstyles demonstration. Penn Museum members receieved (sic) an exclusive behind-the-scenes Sphinx history tour in the Museum Archives, while everyone joined the Sphinx for a celebratory slice of cake.

Universal Museums meet Sesame street. Perhaps if displaying it in the kitschy way they do, and treating it like just another pop-culture sideshow to be gawped at and played with, is the best the Americans can do with it, the sculpture would be better off going back to Egypt. It would do better for it to stand again in Memphis so it can be seen in a better context than entrapped by foreign dumbed down stupidity and treated as a alien object of fun.

Collectors say that accumulating these things and removing them from their context they are showing and teaching 'respect' for, and understanding of, other cultures. I see no respect or enhanced understanding  here whatsoever.

'Saving' the Marbles

 
"Perhaps Elgin did save them," said Eddie O'Hara, the chairman of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. "But that's a bit like taking someone's washing in because it's raining and not giving it back."

Don't Export Sekhemka, but not for these reasons...

Something called a "PRESS STATEMENT FROM SAVE SEKHEMKA GROUP EGYPT"  seems to have been written by twelve-year-olds. It states that

"Sekhemka is a pharaonic statue which belongs to the Egyptian people  [...] Selling a stolen statue which is owned by the Egyptian people is a crime against all international norms and standards. The British government need to act fast in order to prevent this crime by taking civil and criminal responsibility in abiding by the international law".

What? Not only is that complete gibberish, its legal status is completely lacking. It gets worse:

We send an appeal to the Human Rights Institute in London that it is against humanity to conceal information about a stolen antique. To be sold to an unidentified person and sent to an unknown place goes against civilisation and is a huge crime against humanity. We therefore ask that the Human Rights Institute intervene in stopping this offence and standing up with the Egyptian people in the International Criminal Courts to defend and save Sekhemka from the illegal trade.

Where is the definition of the illegality of this transaction? Come on people, get a proper lawyer. Moreover:

We appeal to the British Prime Minister to take the necessary legal proceedings against Christie's Auction and against Northampton Museum for having introduced and sold this antique which was stolen from Egypt as it is Egypt's right to to be given compensation.

No it is not. Where did they get this from? Off the back of a cornflake box?

Furthermore, we appeal to the UNESCO in supporting in tackling this illegal trade crime as mentioned in UNESCO's law dated 1970, Article 7. 

I suggest they read Article 7 again (It is not a "law"). While we are all for the statue staying on public display (but far away from Philistine Shoe Town), it is totally counterproductive for activists to attempt to utilise the sort of (non-)arguments that can only bring the whole notion of what to do with antiquities into ridicule and disrepute. Stop this amateurishness please. 

The Sindika Dokolo Collection

 

Sindika Dokolo, a Congolese businessman and art collector, and his wife Isabel dos Santos, one of Africa's richest couples, are buying up colonial and other looted African pieces to 'save' them. Dokolo is  on a crusade to force Western museums, art dealers and auction houses to return Africa’s art, particularly works that might have been removed illegally during the colonial era.

“Works that used to be clearly in African museums must absolutely return to Africa,” Mr. Dokolo said in an interview [...] “There are works that disappeared from Africa and are now circulating on the world market based on obvious lies about how they got there.” To forward his cause, Mr. Dokolo’s foundation has set up a network of researchers and dealers to comb through archives and monitor the art market in search of stolen African art. Any time such artwork can be identified, Mr. Dokolo said, its owner will be offered a simple choice: Either sell him the work for the price at which it was acquired or face a lawsuit for theft. Mr. Dokolo, 43, has the financial wherewithal to turn such a threat into action. Besides his own family wealth, he and his wife are one of Africa’s richest couples: She is Isabel dos Santos, the eldest daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, the president of Angola since 1979. [...]  Mr. Dokolo’s deep pockets have allowed him to amass a massive collection of African art — more than 5,000 works of mostly contemporary pieces he has stored in Angola and Belgium. (He declined to estimate the total value of the collection.) His latest initiative is to set up a European subsidiary of his Luanda-based art foundation in Porto, and to open within two years an exhibition space with educational programs to promote African art. [...] In addition to his Porto project, Mr. Dokolo’s foundation also plans to build a museum and a music school in Luanda, as part of his push for African countries to create their own cultural institutions. 

The interview (Raphael Minder, 'Collector Fights for African Art' The New York Times, 9th July 2015) focues on the issue of items missing from museums:

Mr. Dokolo asserts that some African museums have been looted by Westerners, citing the national museum in Kinshasa for one. He has been trying to locate 6,000 pieces made by the Chowke people of Central Africa that were in the Dundo Museum of Angola and that disappeared during the Angolan civil war. So far, Mr. Dokolo said that he has managed to recover a few masks, including one of the masks missing from the Dundo Museum, which he bought from a private Dutch collection. 

Greece's Acropolis Museum Celebrates Sixth Anniversary

 Greece's Acropolis Museum Celebrates Sixth Anniversary

 

 

Greece drops legal action plans for Parthenon Marbles.

Helena Smith ' Greece drops option of legal action in British Museum Parthenon marbles row Guardian, Wednesday 13 May 2015.

The new Greek cultural minister Nikos Xydakis said the route to retrieving the treasures lay in diplomatic and political channels and not international courts where outcomes were far from assured. [...]  What was needed, he insisted, was “low-key persistent work” as the climate was gradually changing.

Indeed it is. The days of cultural property philistinism are numbered. 

The minister was speaking barely 48 hours after receiving a 150-page dossier from Amal Clooney and fellow leading human rights lawyers at London’s Doughty Street chambers exhorting the Greek government to pursue legal channels immediately. The report, outlining the options Athens faced in its decades-long struggle to win back the fifth century BC carvings, described a “now or never” opportunity for Greece and advised it to take the British Museum to the international court of justice. “The British adhere to international law,” said Clooney who co-authored the report with Geoffrey Robertson and Norman Palmer, British QCs regarded as pre-eminent experts in cultural restitution. “The Greek government has never taken advantage of this Achilles heel. You must take legal action now or you may lose the opportunity to do so due to future legal obstacles.”

I think it is a wise move not to take the lawyers up on it. It is difficult to see what legal arguments would stick. If they lose the case the Marbles stay. We do not need a legal judgement to say the Marbles should be returned. The moral case is clear. Crystal clear.

James Cuno on Museums: The Case Against (sic) Repatriating Artifacts

Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs, recently sat down with Cuno to discuss his case against repatriating museum artefacts. It seems to me that he is gently parodying Cuno's views. They initially employed a dyslexic typing monkey to provide the transcript but it has been silently corrected since. Of course what he gracelessly avoids talking about are the objects in US museums that are sent back to the source country because they ended up in the US illegally - which is absolutely the number-one reason why these repatriations take place. the man is muddying the waters.

.

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Right now, this nonsense about "repatriation". Note this is an American term. If Cuno is going to get pedantic about it, let us remember that there is an allied term depatriation. This is what Cuno is arguing for. So when is Cuno going to advocate for the USA withdrawing from the 1970 UNESCO Convention where cultural property and nations go together? The problem seems to be that America has no real national culture of its own, mainly what it has taken from others and the deletion of much of what was there before the European dominance.

This follows his "Culture War The Case Against Repatriating Museum Artifacts
" in the same periodical at the end of last year - described by the American Committee for Cultural Philistinism, as an "important article". Well, they would, wouldn't they?

The sixth blood antiquity from a US museum went back to Cambodia this week. Cleveland Museum at last admitted that there were problems with "their" Hanuman.

Robbers Return Maori Loot

A week ago, fourteen 19th-century Maori artefacts dating from the 1800s were stolen from a private collection during the burglary of a rural home near the small town of Hastings in northeastern New Zealand.  Included in the haul were a number of items made of greenstone (known in New Zealand as pounamu), several ceremonial mere, a club [patu] made from whalebone, and a ceremonial adze with a pounamu blade. Some of the important ceremonial items taken were registered as national treasures [taonga] with New Zealand's Natonal Musuem, Te Papa Tongarewa, and thus protected from export under New Zealand law. In a public statement, detective sergeant Craig Vining of the Hawkes Bay Police called for the return of the items, explaining that the artifacts had significant cultural and monetary value:

"We appeal to the people who took these items to return them immediately so they can be cared for by their proper guardians and remain in their turangawaewae [resting place].

"He added “This will have a major impact on local Maori. We appeal to the thieves to do the right thing and bring the taonga home".

On Friday the items mysteriously resurfaced and were taken to the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington. No other details of the return have been released, though one may speculate that the thief's intention may have been to get these sacred (?) objects out of private hands.

Judge Arthur Tompkins, 'Stolen Treasures Mysteriously and Anonymously Returned' ARCA Blog April 24, 2015

Henri Neuendorf, 'Stolen Artifacts Returned to New Zealand Museum in Peculiar Theft', Artnet, April 28, 2015.

British Museum's response to a UNESCO proposal to enter into mediation over the Parthenon Marbles.

British Museum's response to a UNESCO proposal to enter into mediation over the Parthenon Marbles.

After full and careful consideration, we have decided respectfully to decline this request. We believe that the more constructive way forward, on which we have already embarked, is to collaborate directly with other museums and cultural institutions, not just in Greece but across the world.

On the Elginism blog, the timing of the response - issued on the last day of Parliament - has attracted attention: "the timing of this announcement merely highlights the level of awkward obstructiveness that is faced when anyone tried to actually engage the British Government or the British Museum in discussions on the issue".

The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky

A horse effigy carving, c. 1880, by a Hunkpapa
Lakota artist (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York took a step to realise its vision of being a truly encyclopaedic museum when it put on a show of the work of highlights of the art of a group of the indigenous population of the USA, which otherwise gets  a poor showing in the Met (“The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky” to through May 10). It is reviewed by Holland Cotter in the New York Times:

Some of the earliest surviving art by native North Americans left America long ago. Soldiers, traders and priests, with magpie eyes for brilliance, bundled it up and shipped it across the sea to Europe. Painted robes, embroidered slippers and feathered headdresses tinkling with chimes found their way into cupboards in 18th-century London and Paris, and lay there half-forgotten. Now, in “The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, some of those wondrous things have come home. Of the about 130 pieces in the show, on loan from more than 50 international collections, those sent by the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris are exceptional: a drawing, on animal hide, of a half-abstract bird with prismatic wings; a raven-plume bonnet with feathers swept back as if hit by wind; and a bead-encrusted shoulder bag with a double-crescent design. They are all part of an exhibition that has to be one of the most completely beautiful sights in New York right now

The exhibition chronicles the rise of Plains Indian society and its development from the settled farming communities to a more mobile lifestyle until it too was smashed:

The United States government, with the Army and frontier settlers as its enforcer, stripped Native Americans of their land and contributed to all but wiping out the natural resources that sustained them. Reduced to the status of hostile aliens, American Indians battled one another over whatever scraps were left. The exhibition’s curator [...] could have ended the show there, on a tragic vanishing-people note. But wisely, and realistically, they did not. Instead, they bring the story into the present with work by inspired artists who carry Plains traditions into the 21st century.

The China Collectors

Shareen Blair Brysac and Karl E. Meyer, 'The China CollectorsAmerica’s Century-Long Hunt for Asian Art Treasures' 2015 ISBN-10: 1137279761 ISBN-13: 978-1137279767 

North American museums now possess the greatest collections of Chinese art outside of East Asia itself. How did it happen? The China Collectors is the first full account of a century-long treasure hunt in China from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion to Mao Zedong's 1949 ascent. The principal gatherers are mostly little known and defy invention. They included "foreign devils" who braved desert sandstorms, bandits, and local warlords in acquiring significant works. Adventurous curators like Langdon Warner, a forebear of Indiana Jones, argued that the caves of Dunhuang were already threatened by vandals, thereby justifying the removal of frescoes and sculptures. Other Americans include George Kates, an alumnus of Harvard, Oxford, and Hollywood, who fell in love with Ming furniture. The Chinese were divided between dealers who profited from the artworks' removal, and scholars who sought to protect their country's patrimony. Duanfang, the greatest Chinese collector of his era, was beheaded in a coup and his splendid bronzes now adorn major museums. Others in this rich tapestry include Charles Lang Freer, an enlightened Detroit entrepreneur, two generations of Rockefellers, and Avery Brundage, the imperious Olympian, and Arthur Sackler, the grand acquisitor. No less important are two museum directors, Cleveland's Sherman Lee and Kansas City's Laurence Sickman, who challenged the East Coast's hegemony. Shareen Blair Brysac and Karl E. Meyer even-handedly consider whether ancient treasures were looted or salvaged, and whether it was morally acceptable to spirit hitherto inaccessible objects westward, where they could be studied and preserved by trained museum personnel. And how should the U.S. and Canada and their museums respond now that China has the means and will to reclaim its missing patrimony?

Reviews

Publisher's Weekly (January 12, 2015)
Kirkus Reviews (December 7, 2014)

Toledo Museum of Art will return Astrolabe to Germany.

US museum returns War-looted piece

Toledo Museum of Art is returning to Germany a rare, 450-year-old astrological compendium. The Museum purchased for $6,500 in 1954. The return is due to the fact that documentation has shown it was probably one of many pieces of German art stolen after World War II.

The Toledo museum said it is making preparations to return it to Gotha Museum in Germany next month. The Gotha Museum contacted the Toledo museum about the piece in 2013, supplying what Toledo museum officials described as "extensive documentation, including photographs, which convinced TMA officials that the Toledo astrolabe was the same one missing since 1945." In return, the Gotha Museum said it plans to provide the Toledo Museum of Art with other unspecified pieces at a later date. 

 'Toledo Museum to return 450-year-old astrological tool to German museum', The Blade , February 19, 2015

Conflict with BM over Bark Art

Paul Daley - 'It taunts us spiritually': the fight for Indigenous relics spirited off to the UK ' The Guardian Saturday 14 February 2015


Three precious examples of bark art   – a shield, emu carving and a scene the British Museum controversially claims depicts a kangaroo hunt – taken from the Dja Dja Wurrung people in central Victoria in the 1850s were sold to the British Museum. Now these and other treasures could return to Australia – on loan only – as part of an exhibition :

They were taken by the Scottish settler John Hunter Kerr in the 1850s and sold to the British Museum. Bark art is usually synonymous with Indigenous people from northern Australia and the three Dja Dja Wurrung pieces from the comparative far south are believed to be the only ones of their period in existence. They may be precious to the British Museum but they are sacred to the custodians of the land around Boort from which they were taken. At least one of the barks is likely to be included in a forthcoming Australian exhibition of items from the British Museum’s collection. After five years of planning and extensive contact with Indigenous communities, the exhibition, Encounters, is due to open at the National Museum of Australia in November after a linked exhibition at the British Museum, which opens in April. In 2004, Murray, on behalf of the Dja Dja Wurrung, used the federal Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act to seize the barks while they were on loan to the Melbourne Museum (now Museum Victoria). After a protracted court case brought by the Melbourne Museum the barks were eventually returned to the British Museum, the repository of colonial treasure from all corners of the once-great empire it served.

More here...

Rapa Nui is Coming for the Moai

Rapa Nui people claim return of their Moai held in museums around the world

For generations, the people of Easter Island allowed several of its statues of volcanic rock to leave Rapa Nui and become museum pieces in distant places. But no more. Currently trying to arrange the return of some monuments scattered in the country, they contacted lawyers in Chile and the United States, and warned: "It is only the first step." [...] These other 11 pieces (between complete moai heads and pukao or hats) scattered in museums in North America, Europe and Oceania, represent 1% of the nearly eleven hundred monuments that have been identified so far in Rapa add Nui. Among these works are three parts in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC (an upright moai, a head and a pukao); two heads held by the French Louvre and Quai Branly, respectively; and moai in the of Liverpool and British museums.

The mysterious basalt sculptures with outsized heads were made some 500 to 750 years ago and have become a symbol of Easter Island, a territory annexed to Chile in the late 19th century. The current campaign is the result of concerns raised on the small island by plans to take one of the statues to France in 2010:

Italy's Mare Nostrum and France's Louis Vuitton launched the project to haul the Moai across oceans for public view in Paris two years ago. They aimed to introduce the island's culture to Europe in exchange for helping preserve its heritage with a fund that initially included half a million dollars. Archeologists and logistics coordinators had scoped out the site and preselected a statue five meters (16 feet) tall that weighed 13 tons. They had planned to insure it for two million U.S. dollars. The island's 4,000 inhabitants were informed about the project during public meetings before a referendum was held under the auspices of the International Labour Organization's convention on indigenous people. Out of 900 people who responded, 789 islanders said they opposed sending the Moai to France, while 94 said they supported the move.

Another focus of campaigners' attention re holdings of human skeletal remains removed from burial caves on the island, held in a number of museums.

Sources:
Jorge Poblete and Alejandro Jiménez, 'Rapa Nui va por sus moai', Capital Online January 23, 2015

Graciela Almendras, 'France won't get Moai after Easter Island snub', AFP April 10, 2010.