Reference News Network reported on March 7 that the March issue of National Geographic magazine published a title entitled "Do museums want to spread cultural heritage, or do they seize stolen treasures?" by Andrew Currie. The full excerpt is compiled below:
Over the past few decades, a new generation of museum leaders has been delving deeper into how collections fit into their museums. Now they have taken another step forward: moving art, sacrificial objects and human remains out of display cases and storage rooms and back to the group to which they originally belonged. This process is called repatriation or return.
Last year alone, Germany transferred ownership of hundreds of items to the National Museum Board of Nigeria; France returned 26 antiquities to Benin; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York also reached an agreement to transfer ownership of dozens of sculptures to Greece.
Many museum leaders hope that this shift will usher in a new era of cooperation between museums and the groups and countries to which their collections originally belonged. But at the same time, critics worry that restitution could set off a ripple effect that would dismantle "all-inclusive" museums with international collections that are a unique way to see how the world is interconnected.
France kicks off its return
If museums have seen a revolution in their collections over the past five years, perhaps the tinder was lit in France, the birthplace of too many revolutions. French President Emmanuel Macron travels to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in November 2017. Burkina Faso was a French colony in West Africa. Macron confessed to the "crimes" of French colonialism in front of an auditorium filled with students, before his speech took an unexpected turn.
Macron told the audience: "I cannot accept that a large part of the cultural heritage of several African countries is preserved in France. There are historical reasons for this, but there is no valid, enduring and unconditional one. In five years, he said, "I hope that the conditions for the temporary or permanent return of African heritage will exist."
Marie-Cecil Zinsu runs a foundation focused on contemporary African art. She was in her gallery in Benin when she saw Macron's speech. Benin was also a French colony. "No one knew this moment would come," she said. It's like a thunderstorm. "Just a year ago, the President of Benin asked France for items stolen by French soldiers in the 80s of the 19th century, a request that was completely ignored. "France has been saying 'no,' all the time," Zinsu said. ”
Shortly thereafter, Macron asked Benedict Sava, a professor of art history at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany, and Fervine Saar, a Senegalese scholar, to prepare a report on French colonial collections. The French Ministry of Culture released an 89-page document in which the two researchers called on France to return objects looted by colonial armies, as well as objects looted by other countries' armies but housed in French museums. They also pushed for the return of artifacts acquired by "scientific" expeditions sent to Africa in the early 20th century to collect artifacts for French museums, often at gunpoint.
Previously, from Ghana to Greece, many countries have been demanding the return of their antiquities, some for more than half a century. Now, governments, museums and the media are finally listening to them.
Shortly after Macron's speech, Benin's president, Patrice Talon, again made a request for antiquities. In 2020, French parliamentarians passed a limited law authorizing the restitution of specific cultural relics. In February 2022, the artifacts were unveiled at Benin's presidential palace in Cotonou. Speaking to reporters at the unveiling, Talon said: "Benin's heirlooms are back. ”
In the following four months, nearly 200,000 people visited the exhibitions. Sometimes there are hours of queuing for a chance to see these returned artifacts. The vast majority of visitors are Beninese, countering the idea that Africans are not interested in their own history or museums.
Macron's 2017 promise is being fulfilled, and museums are taking on a new role: a place to talk about the future, not just capture the past.
The British Museum refused to return it
Not all museums think so. The British Museum in London has become a global symbol of refusal to return artefacts.
While museums elsewhere grappled with the issue of returns, the British Museum seemed to be in hiding.
But even the longtime defenders of the British Museum seem confused. In 2016, writer Tiffany Jenkins defended the British Museum with an essay titled "Retaining the Marble Statues," arguing that modern museums should focus on telling the stories of ancient artifacts and the makers of those artifacts, away from political showmanship.
Surprisingly, Jenkins now admits that for several years, the debate has taken a sharp turn, leaving the British Museum behind. She points out that the British Museum staff has almost stopped using encyclopedic museums as arguments, but has retreated to technical details: for example, in the 19th century, Britain signed an agreement with the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Athens at the time, to remove marble statues from the Acropolis; Alternatively, many artefacts were taken from Africa and Asia when Britain had not signed a treaty prohibiting looting, so it was legal, albeit unethical, to acquire them; There was also a 1963 act passed by the British Parliament to prevent museums from handing over their collections. Jenkins said: "Just pointing to paperwork is not the answer to the problem. If they were to debate like this, they would definitely lose. ”
German museums explore the "middle ground"
Maybe there's a middle ground. Hermann Pachinger is president of the German Prussian Heritage Foundation, which manages more than a dozen museums in Berlin, including the Berlin Museum of Ethnology, which houses hundreds of thousands of artifacts, most of which were accumulated during the heyday of German colonization in the late 19th century.
For decades, Pachinge and the foundation's successive presidents have resisted demands for the return of artifacts from Egypt, Turkey and African countries that were former German colonies. However, since 2018, the Prussian Heritage Foundation has proceeded to return a number of artifacts, including a statue of a goddess to Cameroon, ceremonial and cultural objects to Namibia, Maori remains to New Zealand, and remains and burial objects to Native Hawaiians and Alaska Natives in the United States. This is a sign of how quickly the debate turned.
Last year, the Prussian Heritage Foundation participated in the sensational return of Beninese bronzes. Although called "bronze", it also includes items such as ivory, wood, and brass. In 1897, a heavily armed British expeditionary force invaded the Edo Empire, overthrew the hereditary king, and sacked the royal palace in Benin, its heartland. Blurry photos show British servicemen grinning amid piles of ivory and metal statues. Some officers even named some of the photos "robbery". Later, at an auction to pay for the looting, the head of the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, Germany, purchased hundreds of bronzes.
More than 5,000 artifacts taken from that 1897 looting are now housed in museums around the world, not in the National Museum in Benin City. Theophiles Umogbai, who was the head of the museum, said: "The precious artifacts taken by the British have been passed down in the royal palace for centuries. They create a vacuum in our history and leave a void in our library. ”
The well-documented looting of Benin, combined with decades of sustained pressure from royal family Edo and Nigerian officials, make the bronzes one of the most prominent test cases for the return of antiquities. Strong moral arguments, combined with public and political pressure, seem to be turning the debate around.
Last July, representatives of the German government issued a bilateral statement announcing the transfer of legal ownership of Beninese bronzes from museums across Germany to Nigeria, totaling more than 1,000 bronzes, 500 of which came from the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. At the signing ceremony, Nigeria's Minister of Culture said it was "the largest known return of antiquities in the world."
The moment is highly symbolic, and Pazinger says it's a win-win. Many of these artifacts will be on long-term loan to Germany for the next decade, and others will remain in Germany until Nigeria builds a new museum with German help. After that, Nigerian officials would lend the artifacts to Germany on a rotational basis.
"I want to show Benin art in my museum," Pachinge said. Whether these artifacts are borrowed or belong to my museum is not that important in the end. ”
Source: Reference News Network