Restitution Of Cultural Property To Germany Out Of Question - Russian Culture Ministry

Vladislav Kononov, the head of the museums department of the Russian Culture Ministry told Sputnik Thursday that there can be no discussion about returning cultural property that was removed from German territory following World War II.

Earlier in the day, the Izvestia newspaper reported, citing sources in the German Embassy in Moscow, that Berlin intended to call on Russia to return the cultural property that was removed from the country's territory during the war and post-war years. "There can be no discussion about the return of cultural property ... This issue should not even be raised. There can be some intergovernmental agreements or exchange deals, but the question of returning what was fixed in 1945 should not be raised," Kononov said. According to Kononov, Russian museums do their own searches for artifacts that could have been stolen during WWII and purchase them using either their own funds or the national budget.

France Returns Some Benin Art to Africa

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that France will return 26 artworks taken from the west African state of Benin in the colonial era. The 26 thrones and statues were taken in 1892 during a colonial war against the then Kingdom of Dahomey. They are currently on display in the Quai Branly museum in Paris. Benin officially asked for their return some years ago (BBC: 'Benin artworks: France to return thrones and statues', 23rd Nov 2018).
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BBC What do you know about Africa's 'looted treasures'?

BBC Quiz: 'What do you know about Africa's 'looted treasures'?

During colonial rule in Africa, thousands of cultural artefacts were seized from the continent by western countries. But on Friday, France is expected to launch a report calling for thousands of African artefacts in its museums to be returned to the continent. What do you know about Africa's 'looted treasures'? Take the quiz to find out

Or perhaps not. Not very impressive dumbdown. Presenting it in the format of a Treasure hunt (on a treasure map) simply harks back to colonialist stereotypes about the continent. Maybe you 'know' about the Rosetta Stone, elephants and man-eating lions but I don't think you learn anything much from this, in what way is one type of 'loot' from Africa comparable to another? There is a "learn more" link which goes to  'A guide to Africa's 'looted treasures'. This deals with Benin Bronzes, the stuffed lions known as the Man-eaters of Tsavo that the Kenya National Museum wants returned, the Rosetta Stone, the 'Bangwa Queen' , the Maqdala Palace Treasures and Zimbabwe bird sculptures.

France Urged to Change Heritage Law and Return Looted Art to Africa

Le Point s'est procuré le rapport Sarr-Savoy 

sur les restitutions du patrimoine culturel africain, 

commandé par Emmanuel Macron en 2017. Explosif.

Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy
Photo: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images

A 108-page report commissioned by Emmanuel Macron has been leaked to a French magazine before its publication on Friday (Laureline Dupont. 'EXCLUSIF. Œuvres d'art africaines: un rapport préconise de tout rendre (ou presque)!' Le Point  20/11/2018). It has been revealed - somewhat alarmistically - that it will call for thousands of African artworks in French museums taken without consent during the colonial period to be eligable for return to the continent, after President Macron announced that he wanted this process to begin within five years. Unless it could be proven that objects were obtained legitimately, they should be returned to Africa permanently, not on long-term loan, as reportedly said the authors of the report, the Senegalese writer and economist Felwine Sarr and the French historian Bénédicte Savoy (Ruth Maclean, 'France urged to change heritage law and return looted art to Africa'  Guardian Wed 21 Nov 2018).

The extent to which France, Britain and Germany looted Africa of its artefacts during colonialism is not known, but according to the report, which will be released this Friday, about 90% of Africa’s cultural heritage currently lies outside the continent. The report’s authors travelled to Mali, Senegal, Cameroon and Benin and looked through the works held by the Musée du quai Branly, a museum focused on non-European cultures in Paris, and found that about 46,000 of its 90,000 African works were “acquired” between 1885 and 1960 and may have to be returned. [...] The systematic looting of African art took different forms: the researchers found that as well as being the spoils of war, theft and pillage, many of the works had been “bought” for fractions of their real value. 

The report has recommended changing French law to allow the restitution of these cultural works to Africa.   

A law would need to be passed in France to change the code of patrimony, and then African countries would have to request that their stolen works be returned. They would be better equipped than ever to do so, because the researchers have sent them lists of the objects. “Travelling in Africa, we saw the effect that these inventories can have, especially on museum directors,” Savoy told Libération. “They never had access to these lists, and never in such a clear and structured way. Highly knowledgeable researchers and teachers were really incredulous when we told them there were so many of their countries’ objects at quai Branly.” 

See also: Kate Brown, 'In a Groundbreaking Report, Experts Advise French President Macron to Begin the ‘Restitution’ of Looted African Arts' ArtNet News November 20, 2018 (scare quotes in original)

The contents of the 108-page study could have far-reaching implications for not only French institutions but also international museums that are facing increasing calls to return works of art and artifacts that come from countries in Africa and beyond, which were arguably stolen. According to the French weekly magazine Le Point, which has previewed the report, its authors [...] support the permanent restitution of African heritage, taking a groundbreaking position on the hotly contested issue. They refer to artifacts acquired through “theft, looting, despoilment, trickery, and forced consent,” in support of their use of the word “restitution.” [...]  “Behind the mask of beauty, the question of restitution invites us to go right to the heart of a system of appropriation and alienation, the colonial system, of which some European museums are today, in their own right, public archives,” begins the eloquently written report.

The report has a limited brief, and in fact does not consider objects from all of Africa in a like manner:

 According to Le Point, the introduction states that the report “concerns only the sub-Saharan part of Africa.” That means that all of French North Africa—modern day Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia—are excluded. In total, France occupied or colonized, at various times, at least 20 current or former countries in Africa. The nation was a foremost player in the continent’s European colonization and several African nations are still dependent protectorate territories.

The publication of the full text seems likely to provoke resistance in the museum world (and one suspects the dealers of so-called 'tribal art' who will probably now be faced by new demands from their customers for proper documentation as they realise that there may be changes afoot in how such objects are seen):

The report has been anxiously awaited by the directors of French museums and galleries, many of whom hope the document will temper some of the more radical proposals that have been suggested. It seems that the opposite is the case. [...] The appropriateness of the term “restitution” has been disputed within the French museum community, but Savoy and Sarr take a strong position in their continued use of the word. “This term reminds us that the appropriation and enjoyment of the property being returned is based on a morally reprehensible act (theft, looting, despoilment, trickery, forced consent, etc.),” they write.[...] Addressing the major concerns that French museums could be “emptied,” the two recommend the creation of duplicates or facsimiles of objects, where appropriate. France’s holdings of cultural objects from its colonial empire are vast, so there will likely be a strong reaction from the museums when the full report is released at the end of the week.

Savoy and Sarr write that “transitional solutions,” like temporary returns or loans, should be in place only “until legal mechanisms are found to allow the final and unconditional return of heritage objects to the African continent.” The report was written with consultations with around 150 specialists in France and on the continent and comes 'at a time when the subject of colonial restitution has been catapulted from an insider topic within museum communities to a worldwide public issue'.

 The report also recommends rigorous examination of various criteria in determining which objects should be restituted. Works that can be proven to have been acquired with “free, fair, and documented consent” may be retained by French museums. Objects seized during 18th- and 19th-century military campaigns and scientific missions, or objects that were gifted to museums by any agents of colonial administration or their descendants without consent of their original owners, will have a different fate. [...]

'Savoy and Sarr offer a radical shift on how respective parties must view the issue of colonial era artefacts':

They write that the problem arises when a museum is not affirming a national identity but is instead conceived as a museum of “the other,” keeping objects taken from elsewhere and assuming the right to speak about these others, or on their behalf. “Through the objects and stories held in so-called ethnographic collections, controlled representations of societies, which are often essentialized, have been put in place,” they write. “To speak openly about restitution is to speak of justice, rebalancing, recognition, restoration and reparation,” continue Savoy and Sarr. “But above all, it is to pave the way for the establishment of new cultural relationships.”

Exactly how the report is received by Macron and put into action remains, for now, an open question. The full text will be available on Friday, November 23, in English and French at www.restitutionreport2018.com
 

French museums have 90,000 African artefacts

French museums have 90,000 African artefacts, most of which were acquired during the colonial period. Macron promised a return within 5 years (Catherine Calvet et Guillaume Lecaplain 'Vers une remise en Etats des œuvres africaines' Liberation 20 Novembre 2018):

African countries where the artwork of the Quai Branley museum in Paris were made. 

In France debate has been invigorated by the publication of a report by French art historian Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese academic writer Felwine Sarron on how to deal with the issue: Kate Brown, 'In a Groundbreaking Report, Experts Advise French President Macron to Begin the ‘Restitution’ of Looted African Arts' ArtNet News November 20, 2018 (scare quotes in original)

The introduction states that the report “concerns only the sub-Saharan part of Africa.” That means that all of French North Africa—modern day Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia—are excluded. In total, France occupied or colonized, at various times, at least 20 current or former countries in Africa. The nation was a foremost player in the continent’s European colonization and several African nations are still dependent protectorate territories. The report also recommends rigorous examination of various criteria in determining which objects should be restituted. Works that can be proven to have been acquired with “free, fair, and documented consent” may be retained by French museums. Objects seized during 18th- and 19th-century military campaigns and scientific missions, or objects that were gifted to museums by any agents of colonial administration or their descendants without consent of their original owners, will have a different fate. Addressing the major concerns that French museums could be “emptied,” the two recommend the creation of duplicates or facsimiles of objects, where appropriate. France’s holdings of cultural objects from its colonial empire are vast, so there will likely be a strong reaction from the museums when the full report is released at the end of the week. One of the most prominent collections is that of the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, which holds 450,000 objects from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. artnet News reached out to Stéphane Martin, the president of the museum, to comment on the preview of the report, but the institution said he will wait to respond until the full document can be read on Friday. Exactly how the report is received by Macron and put into action remains, for now, an open question. Regardless, Savoy and Sarr offer a radical shift on how respective parties must view the issue of colonial era artifacts. They write that the problem arises when a museum is not affirming a national identity but is instead conceived as a museum of “the other,” keeping objects taken from elsewhere and assuming the right to speak about these others, or on their behalf. “Through the objects and stories held in so-called ethnographic collections, controlled representations of societies, which are often essentialized, have been put in place,” they write. “To speak openly about restitution is to speak of justice, rebalancing, recognition, restoration and reparation,” continue Savoy and Sarr. “But above all, it is to pave the way for the establishment of new cultural relationships.” 

 The full report will be available on Friday, November 23, in English and French at www.restitutionreport2018.com 

Artefact Repatriation: Colonial Ghosts Haunt Europe's Museums

Colonised Africa in 1914, the only
independent nations being
Liberia and Ethiopia.

As a result of the scramble for Africa 1880-1914, most of the continent was invaded and annexed by European powers (Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Italy and Spain). As a result of this, cultural property from these countries was taken away and displayed as trophies in European museums, and this prompted the desire for museums elsewhere (the US for example) to also be able to acquire display such items. The UNESCO Convention against the export of illicit cultural goods adopted in 1970 called for the return of cultural property taken from a country but it did not address historic cases, including from the colonial era. With museums fearing they could be forced to return artefacts, former colonial powers have been slow to ratify the convention: France only did so 1997, Britain in 2002, Germany in 2007 and Belgium in 2009.

Expatica Belguim (Art Repatriation: colonial ghosts haunt Europe's museums' Expatica Belgium, 21st November 2018),  gives a useful overview of disputes over artefacts in Europe looted from former African colonies.

Photo still from Marvel's Black Panther.

Britain is one of the prime culprits. The British Empire in Africa included lands in North Africa, such as Egypt, much of West Africa, and huge territories in Southern and East Africa.The country's museums and collectors are a prime destination for looted African art. So far many museums have refused to entertain the notion of letting the 'natives' of their former colonies claim their heritage back:

The British Museum holds a major collection of bronzes from the African Kingdom of Benin that were seized by the British army in 1897. Nigeria, which today covers the ancient territory, wants them returned. The museum says it is ready to send them back but only on loan. London's Victoria and Albert Museum has also said it is open to the long-term loan to Ethiopia of jewellery and manuscripts looted by British soldiers in 1868 when they stormed the Fortress of Magdala during the reign of Emperor Tewodros II. Ethiopia is demanding the return some of the most significant "treasures of Magdala", including a royal crown. Leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has promised to return stolen art to its countries of origin should he become prime minister. 

Another major coloniser was France, though most of these colonies were in the Saharan region, but military escapades elsewhere also led to artefacts being taken away. In total, France occupied or colonized, at various times, at least 20 current or former countries in Africa. The nation was a foremost player in the continent’s European colonization and several African nations are still dependent protectorate territories.

In 2016 Benin demanded the repatriation of a part of its treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey. They include totems, sceptres and sacred doors from the Royal Palaces of Aboma, which French troops took between 1892 and 1894 and are exhibited in the Quai Branly museum in Paris. While that request was initially denied, it has since found a more sympathetic hearing from French President Emmanuel Macron.

The article then goes on to mention the speech of Macron in Burkina Faso in November 2016 when he promised to "return African heritage to Africa". It then goes on to mention the recent report of  French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to draw up the conditions that proposes modifying France's heritage law to allow the restitution of cultural works if bilateral accords are struck between France and African states.

Germany is also considering what to do with the items stolen from its colonial-era African empire, which ran from 1884 to the end of the First World War. Among Germany's colonies were German Togoland (now part of Ghana and Togo), Cameroon, German East Africa (now Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania), and German South-West Africa (now Namibia).

In September 2017, minister of culture Monika Gruetters suggested a model similar to that used by the German Centre for Lost Cultural Property. The centre seeks out owners of art plundered by Nazis in order to return the items. The debate could ignite again in 2019 when a major new ethnological museum, the Humboldt Forum, opens its doors. Its collection includes artefacts taken from former German colonies.

The Humboldt Forum in Berlin, will house a major collection of objects from Africa and Asia. Bénédict Savoy resigned from her position on Humboldt Forum’s Advisory Board in a surprise move last year, and this preceded her appointment by Macron to contribute to the French report. 

Belgium was also a coloniser and controlled two colonies during its history: the Belgian Congo from 1885 to 1960 (the personal property of the country's king, Leopold II, rather than being gained through the political or military action of the Belgian state) and and Ruanda-Urundi from 1916 to 1962.

Belgium's debates over its colonial past have coalesced around the vast transformation of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, near Brussels. It was built in the 19th century under King Leopold II to showcase Belgium's presence in the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The renovated museum will reopen in December after five years and promises to offer a "critical view" on colonialism. But in September a collective of associations, universities and Congolese personalities published an open letter demanding the restitution of its works of art. "We can not base intercultural dialogue on former pillaging by colonial murderers: stolen cultural goods must be repatriated," they said.

Intangible values versus the Museum Selfie - Hoa Hakananai’a in Bloomsbury

Stolen and Lost Friend in Bloomsbury

A delegation travelled to London on November 20th  from Rapa Nui ('Easter Island') in the southeastern Pacific Ocean to persuade the British Museum about the need to return to the island the 2.5m tall moai basalt statue that entered the BM's collection 150 years ago when there was no possibility for Londoners to get on a plane and visit monuments like ths in their countries of origin (Naomi Rea, 'Delegates From Easter Island Meet With the Top Brass at the British Museum to Demand the Return of a Monumental Head Sculpture Museum authorities will travel to Rapa Nui to continue the discussion in the coming months' Artnet news November 20, 2018). They have named the statue Hoa Hakananai’a, which translates to “lost or stolen friend”. The statue is currently on view in the BM's Wellcome Trust Gallery, and is said to be 'one of the most popular and most photographed exhibits among its six million annual visitors'. It is only one of about a dozen   examples of the approximately 900 extant Moai created by the island’s early Polynesian inhabitants between 1100 and 1600 A.D. in museums around the world, including in France, Belgium, New Zealand, and the United States. The British Museum example is one of only ten made of the harder basalt.

The Rapa Nui people have noted that the basalt statue [...] is sacred in their culture. The objects are considered living incarnations of indigenous ancestors, the spirits of which watch over their family members. The figure of Hoa Hakananai’a was taken in 1868 by the crew of the HMS Topaze and gifted to Queen Victoria by the naval captain Commodore Richard Powell the following year, along with a smaller head known as Moai Hava. In turn, the Queen donated the statues to the British Museum. [...]  During the meeting, the group spent time with Hoa Hakanana’ia and held a ceremony with offerings, dances, and songs before engaging in a “warm, friendly and open conversation,” according to the British Museum spokesperson. “It was a pretty positive meeting,” the Chilean minister, Ward, said in a statement. “The fact that the authorities of the British Museum have been able to witness the meeting of the representatives of Rapa Nui with the Moai, opens an important door.” 

The visit of the islanders to the statue was an emotional one (Carla Herreria, 'Easter Island Natives Plead For British Museum To Return Ancient Rapa Nui Sculpture' Huffington Post 21st Nov 2018).

“I believe that my children and their children also deserve the opportunity to touch, see and learn from him,” Tarita Alarcón Rapu, governor of the Chilean island, said of the sculpture, according to the Agence France-Presse. “We are just a body. You, the British people, have our soul,” she added.  [...]  “You have kept him for 150 years, just give us some months, and we can have him,” Rapu said in tears outside of the British Museum this week.  “We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction.”

Anakena Manutomatoma, a member of Easter Island’s development commission, told John Bartlett ('Moai are family': Easter Island people to head to London to request statue back' The Guardian Nov. 16 2018).

 “Once eyes are added to the statues, an energy is breathed into the moai and they become the living embodiment of ancestors whose role is to protect us,” she added.

There is a broader context to this visit.

In recent years, the Rapanui people have ramped up efforts to preserve the island’s indigenous culture and gain independence from the Chilean government, which in 1888 annexed the island. Easter Island is located some 2,200 miles from the South American continent. The campaign to return moai to the island is a part of those efforts. “Perhaps in the past we did not attach so much importance to Hoa Hakananai’a and his brothers, but nowadays people on the island are starting to realize just how much of our heritage there is around the world and starting to ask why our ancestors are in foreign museums,” Rapanui sculptor Benedicto Tuki told BBC. 

The islanders hope that the British Museum will exchange the Hoa Hakananai’a  for an identical  modern replica made by Tuki

 “Perhaps it won’t possess the same ancestral spirit, but it will look identical,” he said. “My only wish is for him to return home; for me this is worth far more than any amount of money. As long as I live, I will fight to see our ancestors returned to the island.”

And the exotic look of the items is what counts to most of the selfie-posing tourists that currently visit the attraction in London, who probably are totally unawaere of the intangible bvalues attacted to it by the islanders from whose home it has been taken.

BM officials now Claim the Need for an Easter Island Jolly on Taxpayer' Expense

Tarita Alarcon Rapu, Governor of Easter
Island outside the British Museum
on November 20, 2018.  Photo by
Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images.

Delegates From Easter Island have convinced British Museum authorities to travel to Rapa Nui soon, to continue the discussion over the Hoa Hakananai’a ownership. As 'Elginism' notes, that's a better treatment than the British Museum has ever given Greece over the Parthenon Marbles.

Naomi Rea, 'Delegates From Easter Island Meet With the Top Brass at the British Museum to Demand the Return of a Monumental Head Sculpture Museum authorities will travel to Rapa Nui to continue the discussion in the coming months' Artnet news November 20, 2018

Although the meeting did not result in a concrete resolution, British Museum authorities did accept an invitation from the delegation to continue the talks on Rapa Nui. [...] the most important outcome of this initial meeting, Ward said, was an invitation extended by the Rapa Nui people to British Museum authorities to visit the island and continue the talks there. “That was accepted on the spot by the museum authorities and we are happy with that,” Ward said following the meeting with top officials, including the museum’s director Hartwig Fischer and deputy director Jonathan Williams. The visit will be finalized in the coming months.

Thailand Claims Rights to Items Removed to Foreign Museums

Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
from Northern Thailand.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Ministry of Culture in Thailand is intensifying its efforts to recover cultural property now housed in museums all over the world, primarily in museums in the US, the UK and Australia (Javier Pes, Thailand Is Ramping Up Efforts to Recover Cultural Heritage From US Museums, Including the Met. artnet News  November 6, 2018)

Thailand has stepped up its efforts to reclaim bronze and stone sculptures that have been in US museum collections for decades. The Kingdom of Thailand’s culture minister announced last week that the country is seeking the return of 23 antiquities, some of which have been housed in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art since the late 1960s. Unnamed Institutions in the UK and Australia are also in the Thai government’s sights as it intensifies its efforts to recover sculptures and other artifacts it claims were illegally removed from temples and archaeological sites. Culture Minister Vira Rojpojchanarat is leading a task force to recover more than 700 artifacts in collections abroad that Thailand claims were stolen, the Bangkok Post reports.

Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
from Northern Thailand.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Among the works being contested are an 8th-century statue of the four-armed Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, which the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased in 1967,  and carved stone lintels in the collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. They came from temples in Northern Thailand (and include one from the collection of Chicago industrialist Avery Brundage whose vast collection was donated to the city in the 1950s and 60s on the condition that a museum was built to house it).  The Norton Simon Museum is also on the list and says that the works from Thailand in the museum’s collection “were properly purchased in the 1970s and 1980s or donated”.

 Joyce White, the executive director of the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology in Philadelphia, tells artnet News that the Thai government’s current push to recover objects they consider to have been illegally exported means that museums and collectors “can no longer assume disinterest on the part of the Thai concerning these activities.” She urges institutions to be more transparent about their past acquisitions, including by publishing collecting histories. “Shining a light on this murky area of the museum world will hopefully be a trend in the 21st century,” White says. “If museums have clear legal backing for particular acquisitions, they can make their case in a court of law. Transparency should not be a problem for them.”

We will see what documentation they produce.

Native American group denounces Met’s exhibition of indigenous objects

Wooden war club ('Anishinaabe or  Ojibwa')
Charles and Valerie Diker Collection

A new exhibition in the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Art of Native America: the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection) is provoking criticism (Gabriella Angeletti, 'Native American group denounces Met’s exhibition of indigenous objects', The Art Newspaper, 16th November 2018 ). The exhibition is assembled from more than 100 promised gifts and loans, as well as some items that have entered the museum’s permanent collection, from the collection of the two New York philanthropists. It was spun by Charles Diker as 'the first show of Native American works to be presented as American art rather than tribal art' (which if true in itself is pretty disgusting). But a Native American advocacy group is sharply criticising the exhibition contending that it violates ethical practices:

Shannon O'Loughlin, the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA), argues that curators “did not consult with affiliated tribal representatives to perform their due diligence, but their first mistake was to call these objects art”. She adds, “Most of these items are not art: they are ceremonial or funerary objects that belong with their original communities and could only have ended up in a private collection through trafficking and looting”. The Met counters that it has regularly conferred with Native American representatives. [...] The museum did not specify which communities have been consulted. [...] O'Loughlin adds, “We’re past the time where institutions and archaeologists tell our story—museums should give us the basic respect to tell our own stories”.

Sylvia Yount (the Lawrence A. Fleischman curator in charge of the American wing of the museum), countered that the Met is “committed to representing cultures from around the world”.

 She adds, “The Met has a panel of tribal advisors who regrettably did not connect with the tribes and determine whether it was appropriated to show these works”. She invokes the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a law passed in 1990 that obligates museums receiving federal funds to have their holdings of Native American objects and human remains inventoried and to allow Native American tribes the right to repatriation. However, the law is not applicable to private collections or promised gifts and loans.

 The Association on American Indian Affairs has not yet received a direct response from the museum

British Museum Has Too Much Stuff

As 'Elginism' says, relocating the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece would be a great way of freeing up space to display other artefacts...

"The British Museum’s hidden basement galleries are to remain closed under its new masterplan for a sweeping redisplay of its collections."

'Surfaced' by 1955, Sotheby's Tried to Sell it

Not very nicely mounted
70cm tall head

In London, a lopped off Buddha head has been withdrawn from auction: (Simone McCarthy,'Buddha statue pulled from Sotheby’s auction on suspicion it may be from China Unesco site', South China Morning Post, 14 September, 2018). It looks like the head has been broken off a statue in the ancient Buddhist Longmen Caves, a kilometre-long system of grottoes carved in limestone cliffs in central China’s Henan province which is now aUNESCO World Heritage Site. The item was published by Japanese researchers    Tokiwa Daijo and Sekino Tadashi who documented the Longmen Caves in the 1920s and 1930s, (see: Cao Zinan, 'Chinese Buddha statue in Sotheby's resembles lost relic' China Daily 14.09.2018). In the catalogue, the broken fragment was said to have appeared  in 1955 in the auction catalogue of a French antique dealer that sells Chinese art, and was later bought by the US collector Stephen Junkunc. A large number of Buddha heads were stolen from the the Caves during the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and the Republic of China (1912-1949) period. According to estimates, 600 to 700 Buddha statues in the Longmen Grottoes have been damaged and stolen during the period. The estimate of this item indicates that its sellers were expecting it to raise  between US$2 million and US$3 million.

The cost of the art market to heritage values, Longmen Caves before and after

I do wonder, just where do dealers and collectors 'think' (I use the term loosely) that lopped-off statue heads like this come from?

According to the McCarthy text:  

[...] this case reflects a larger, ongoing conversation within China about the repatriation of a huge number of artworks and artefacts stolen or plundered from China by foreigners and foreign soldiers, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. Catherine Maudsley, a Hong Kong-based curator and art adviser, has observed the growing phenomenon over the years as collectors and institutions in China look to buy back artefacts which have left the country. “When a nation gains confidence, strength, and influence, it’s natural that looking into patrimony and repatriation will occur,” she said. Maudsley attributed this interest both to China’s economic and political strength, as well as to the vastly expanded digital access to collections of museums and galleries around the world. “Globally we are now more aware of what pieces are in what museums. Anyone with a computer can do this kind of research,” she said, explaining that this had raised awareness about how many Chinese artefacts were housed outside China.

US Museum Acknowledges Problem

One of several new provenance labels now in the African galleries at the MFA Boston

Berlin Museum Returns Artifacts to Indigenous People of Alaska

From left, a wooden mask, painted; a wooden idol; and the fragment of a wooden mask, which were returned to a representative of the Alaskan Chugach people in Berlin on Wednesday.CreditEthnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Berlin Museum has returned nine artefacts to indigenous communities of Alaska. “The objects were taken from graves [in the 1880s] without permission of the native people, and thus unlawfully,” said Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin's publicly funded museums. “Therefore, they don’t belong in our museums,” he added In front of members of the media, Mr. Parzinger handed a fragment of a large wooden mask to John F.C. Johnson, a representative of the Alaskan Chugach people. Both men, wearing white cotton gloves, held the mask between them for photographers.(Christopher F. Schuetze Berlin Museum Returns Artifacts to Indigenous People of Alaska, New York Times, 16th May 2018)

The items, which included several masks, a wooden idol and a baby basket, had been in the collection of Berlin’s Ethnographic Museum, though they were never exhibited publicly. Between 1882 and 1884, they were taken by Johan Adrian Jacobsen, a Norwegian adventurer and amateur ethnographer acting on behalf of the museum. [...] The return of the items comes at a time when European museums are being called on to put more effort into provenance research and to return objects acquired in ways that were unethical and would now be unlawful.[...] In Germany, where most provenance research has focused on art looted during the Nazi years of the 1930s and ’40s, the subject of provenance research into objects taken during earlier times has been the matter of some controversy. Although Germany’s empire was much smaller than France’s or Britain’s, it had several African colonies and acquired many objects for its museums from these territories, as well as from other parts of the world. 

 Once the objects get back to Alaska, they will be returned to the Chugach community displayed in community centers or local museums.

Germany Releases a Code of Conduct for Colonial-Era Artifacts

Germany  has just released a Code of Conduct for Colonial-Era Artifacts in an effort to correct a blind spot in its cultural policies.  The 130-page guidelines “Guide to Dealing With Collection Goods From Colonial Contexts” outline methodologies for provenance research and possibilities for restitution ( Kate Brown, ArtNet News 17th May 2018).

Since taking office for a second term, Grütters has made confronting Germany’s colonial history a centerpiece of her platform. Last month, she announced that the German Lost Art Foundation—originally established to investigate Nazi-looted art in public collections—would dedicate some of its funding and research to colonial-era objects. Her effort coincides with a similar push by French president Emmanuel Macron, who has been vocal about his support of the full restitution of African colonial-era artifacts. Public outcry over Germany’s forthcoming Humboldt Forum, which will hold its Asian and ethnographic collections in the reconstructed Prussian palace in Berlin, has also played no small role in instigating the German government to become more proactive about its colonial restitution policies. Still, some critics say the new guidelines represent more talk than concerted action. They note that the code is non-binding and largely only governs objects that violated the “legal and ethical standards” in former colonies at the time. [...]  Eckart Köhne, the president of the German Association of Museums, has said that he hopes the code of conduct will generate global discussion. The association is also soliciting input from other countries, particularly those in Africa, and plans to publish a revised version of the guidelines in a year and a half.

The guidelines will be published soon also in English and French,

German museum to return stolen grave artifacts to Alaskans

Nine Alaskan burial artifacts brought to 19th century imperial Germany are to be returned next week to indigenous Pacific coast residents. A Berlin-based museum trust has long admitted that the items were stolen ('German museum to return stolen grave artifacts to Alaskans' DW 09.05.2018).

Germany's SPK Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation confirmed Wednesday that its president Hermann Parzinger would hand over the artifacts to envoys of the Chugach peoples due to visit Berlin next week. The items, including two broken masks, a child's cradle and what is thought to be a shamanic figure, originate from Chenega Island, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Anchorage, along the Pacific coastline of the US state of Alaska. Norwegian adventurer Captain Johan Adrian Jacobsen, who toured Alaska's southwestern coastline in 1883, brought them to the-then Royal Museum of Ethnology, the forerunner of Berlin's ethnological museum within the SPK foundation's cluster of Berlin-based institutions. "At the time, these objects were taken without the consent of the Alaska Natives and were therefore removed unlawfully from the graves of the deceased, so they do not belong to our museums," Parzinger stated last December. "From Adrian Jacobsen's travel journal, it is clear that the graves [on Chenega Island] were opened solely for the purpose of removing their contents, said the foundation in December when its board agreed on the returns.

Maqdala Trophies in Britain

Damola Durasomo, 'Taking Back Our History: Understanding African Art Repatriation' OkayAfrica Apr. 16, 2018:

Earlier this month, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London responded to a claim by the Ethiopian government to retrieve items taken from the 1868 battle of Maqdala by suggesting that Ethiopia take them out on a long-term loan. The items, which were taken from the mountain capital of Emperor Tewodros II in the area formerly known as Abyssinia, include a gold crown, a royal wedding dress, the bones of Prince Alemayehu, Emperor Tewodros II son who was captured and taken to Britain where he died at just 18, and more. The audacious suggestion that the items be "loaned" back was a clear disregard for cultural ownership, a reinforcement of colonial attitudes that once again stripped African countries of their culture and agency. 

Durasomo,spoke to Brooklyn-based cultural anthropologist ed cultural anthropologist Niama Safia Sandy  about it:

The Victoria and Albert Museum's position smacks of the hubris produced by white hegemony and centuries of imperialist attitudes. Tristram Hunt's supposed "philosophical case for the cosmopolitanism" in the nature of museum collections is totally undercut by virtue of the fact that the items were stolen. Furthermore, they were stolen from places that have a tremendous amount of cultural and spiritual importance to Ethiopians. Provenance, the method in which an item was acquired, matters. Let us not forget the "Abyssinian Expedition of 1868," from whence the majority of these artifacts came, was essentially a campaign to put Abyssinia (as Ethiopia was known then) in its place. They brought nearly 40,000 British and Indian soldiers and logistics personnel, and almost 30,000 animals including elephants to Ethiopia to retrieve about a dozen people being held by Emperor Tewodross II. Tewodross II is the first modern ruler to unite the many kingdoms of Ethiopia, hence the title negus negast or "King of Kings." He was the first to make efforts to modernize the country. They wanted to make an example of Abyssinia and show the might of the British Empire. The British military literally burned his entire citadel to the ground, but not before desecrating his body, the place he worshiped, and pillaging the entire village of Maqdala. Today there is still a lock of the Emperor's hair in the Imperial War Museum. In the context of all of this, it is inconceivable that a reasonable person would suggest a "long-term" loan. Ethiopians, including Emperor Yohannes I and citizen groups like AFROMET (the Association for the Return of The Maqdala Ethiopian Treasures), have been rallying to return these items for over a century! 

She adds that the whole affair has a political context:

This, and many other things in the museum world, is about power. The thinking for leadership at museums and heritage institutions is "if we return this country's artifacts, we'll have to return that country's artifacts" and it is basically a matter of blood in the water. What is to stop every country in the world outside of the West from requesting their cultural artifacts back? I agree that a fully inclusive and cosmopolitan view of the world's histories and heritages must be shown and preserved but the manner in which the items are procured really should be considered.

Turkey seeking the return of more than 150,000 objects from Foreign Collections

Turkey is seeking the return of more than 150,000 objects, some exported hundreds of years ago, that are currently in museums and collections in Europe and the United States.

 A lot of items from Turkey have been stolen, now located in museums in the United States, England, Portugal, Denmark, France, Germany and Greece, one of the leading members of the repatriation commission, Serdal Kuyucuoglu, told Al-Jazeera Monday. [...]  In recent months, the Commission's members have visited museums and collections that contain items from Turkey.

Berlin Museums Chief Calls for Rules on Restitution of Colonial Artefacts

Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), has called for international guidelines to help museums handle collecting history research and repatriation of illegally acquired colonial heritage in public collections (Catherine Hickley, 'Berlin Museums chief calls for rules on restitution of colonial artefacts' The Art Newspaper 16th Feb 2018) . These guidelines would be the equivalent of the Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated art.* He postulates that international organisation such as UNESCO or the International Council of Museums (ICOM) should take the lead in organising conferences to devise the guidelines. The issue of colonial art in European collections is becoming increasingly uncomfortable in western Europe, for example in France, where President Emmanuel Macron has pledged “a temporary or definitive restitution of African heritage to Africa” over the next five years.

There has also been much debate on  the collecting histories of non-European artefacts from former colonies in Berlin, prompted by the construction of the new Humboldt Forum, due to open in 2019. The building will provide a new home for the SPK’s ethnographic and Asian art collections, the ethnographic collections of the former Prussian state.

Bénédicte Savoy, an art historian and member of the advisory committee of the Humboldt Forum, abruptly resigned from the board last July complaining about a lack of attention to provenance research. The German culture minister Monika Grütters agreed, saying that “we have for a long time paid too little attention to the subject of colonialism” and that the debate over provenance research “was absolutely necessary”. She pledged government funding for such research. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its potential coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, have agreed that investigating and coming to terms with the country’s colonial past is a priority for the new government. Parzinger, a founding director of the Humboldt Forum, says the new museum will seek to provide full information on the provenance of its exhibits for visitors who are interested. The SPK received funding last year for a project to transcribe and digitise all its acquisition documents for the Ethnological Museum from 1830 until after the Second World War. “This is an important step towards transparency,” he says. “The project has been approved for three years but it will take many more. Our collections of world cultures will keep us busy for many years to come.” The foundation is also working with curators and scholars from Tanzania on an exhibition of objects that were removed from the country at the time of the Maji Maji War, an 1905-07 rebellionof against German colonial rule in German East Africa. “If you are conducting provenance research, then you also have to expect that you will come across objects that came into the collection illegally, and you have to be willing to hand them back,” Parzinger says.

*
The Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated art were endorsed by 44 countries in 1998. They call for “just and fair solutions” to be applied to art in public collections that is claimed by the heirs of Jewish collectors who were allegedly robbed by the Nazis. They provide guidelines on provenance research on art in public collections and establishing processes to deal with disputes over claims. 

A Restitution Revolution Begins?

Bénédicte Savoy (professor at the Collège de France in Paris) has an opinion piece in Le Monde, reprinted in the Art Newspaper ('The restitution revolution begins ' 16th February 2018) arguing that France's President Macron is ushering in a new era for the return of displaced heritage

In two minutes and 33 seconds, on 28 November 2017, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, swept aside several decades of official French museum policy. He did it publicly, in the crowded lecture theatre of Ouagadougou University, in front of several hundred students, under the gaze of Burkina Faso’s president, Roch Kaboré, and the cameras of the news channel France 24. He did it in the name of youth—of his own youth, evoked seven times in the speech. “I am from a generation of the French people for whom the crimes of European colonialism are undeniable and make up part of our history, he said, adding: “In the next five years, I want the conditions to be created for the temporary or permanent restitution of African patrimony to Africa.” There were whistles and applause. On Twitter, the Elysée (the presidential office and residence) drives the idea home: “African heritage can no longer be the prisoner of European museums.” 

She hails this as the beginning of a revolution. The move has delighted those who have long called for the restitution of displaced heritage from Africa. In Berlin, Macron’s speech has added power to the 'heated debate about the colonial amnesia that seems to have afflicted the planners of the Humboldt Forum'. 'In a letter to Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, 40 organisations of the German African diaspora asked her to react to “the historic initiative of the French president”...'.

Although it concerns Paris and its prestigious collections of African art first of all, the Ouagadougou speech also implicates Europe and the colonial or missionary basis of all its ethnographic or “universal” museums. From the British Museum (which has more than 200,000 African objects) to the Weltmuseum in Vienna (37,000), the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium (180,000), the Humboldt Forum (75,000) and France’s leading ethnographic museum, the Quai Branly in Paris (70,000), the history of African collections is a shared European history—a family affair, if you wish, where aesthetic curiosity, scientific interests, military expeditions, commercial networks and “opportunities” of all kinds contributed to the justification for domination and national rivalries. The museums of our European capitals are brilliant conservatories of human creativity, but they also derive from a darker history of which we are not sufficiently aware. 

In the museum world, the mere word “restitution” 'sparks an almost kneejerk defensiveness and withdrawal'. Curators feel a certain unease, what if such acts become commonplace? Calls to repatriate items stolen in military actions and colonisation in the past  have been hotly contested by museums eager to hang on to such items:

No one in France has forgotten the trench warfare conducted by curators at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 2010, when, as a corollary to trade negotiations, the then president Nicholas Sarkozy ordered the return to South Korea of nearly 300 precious manuscripts deriving from a bloody French army expedition in 1866. No one in Italy has forgotten the 50 years of negotiations it took before the return to Ethiopia of the Axum obelisk, seized by Benito Mussolini in 1937. And no one in Berlin wants to return the massive fossilised skeleton of the world’s biggest dinosaur, Brachiosaurus brancai, to Tanzania, where it was taken in 1912 from territories then under the protectorate of the Reich.

She discretely fails to mention the Parthenon Marbles, mainly because, shamefully, they still have not been returned to Greece.

The time seems right for such a move. Interestingly, Macron’s proclamation in Ouagadougou —contrary to expectations— has not sparked the institutional outcry that we have been used to in recent years.

On the contrary: the president of the Quai Branly museum, Stéphane Martin, was pleased to bend in Macron’s direction, stressing that “nowadays we cannot have an entire continent deprived of its history and artistic genius”. So a second revolution, an institutional change, has taken place.

In the final part of her text she outlines how consensual restitutions of such artefacts should be 'motivated by the dual interests of peoples and objects' and in which the stake would be neither purely strategic nor political, but cultural. She urges a multi-sided dialogue, in which the parties listen to each other. There is no place for the object-centred lobbyists of the market countries dictating to the source countries how they should treat their own heritage, even if they do so masking their smokescreen as due to concerns for the 'safety of the objects':

we must listen to each other. And then we must be careful not to interfere in the decision-making remit of others. After Waterloo, when France returned the works removed to Paris during the Revolution and the Empire from other countries in Europe, it did not dictate to the pope and the sovereign states of Germany, Austria, Spain and elsewhere the proper way of looking after their collections. It often takes decades and much debate for “modern” heritage policies and suitable infrastructure to develop. In Berlin, for example, it was not until 1830 that the works France had returned 15 years earlier were displayed in a public museum. We must give time to those who recover works to find solutions that suit them.