“Colonial Looting, Museums and Restitution, a dialogue about the return of cultural objects”
Purported looting by ordinary people made headlines during recent protests against institutional racism, but who are the real looters? Criminals often infiltrated those peaceful civil rights actions and took what wasn’t theirs under cover of legitimate marches. But larger institutions are likely the more egregious looters, and at a much grander and more devastating scale. Colonial looting is so pervasive (and reprehensible) that even John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight program devoted airtime to the often-hidden topic. In an episode last year, Oliver reported that when the UK was asked to return the 105-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond from the crown jewels, Prime Minister David Cameron said, "if you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty.” Yet that might be a necessary and equitable plan.
Patty Gerstenblith. Photo courtesy DePaul University.
A Chicago panel titled “Colonial Looting, Museums and Restitution, a presentation and dialogue about the return of cultural objects” addressed the slow and tangled process for repatriation of secret and sacred native artifacts, held at the Newberry Library as part of the fall Chicago Humanities Festival. Patty Gerstenblith, DePaul University’s Distinguished Research Professor of Law and Director of its Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law, launched the event with a slide show previewing her new book, Cultural Objects and Reparative Justice, A Legal and Historical Analysis.
Where to Start to Rehome Pilfered Cultural Objects
Using lenses of anthropology, archeology, history and the law to encourage an interdisciplinary approach, Gerstenblith questioned where should cultural objects that were removed without consent be rehomed? How did imperialism, the informal or formal political or economic domination of one country over another, and colonialism, where one country imposes physical control over another, feed the lust for destructive and demoralizing artifact theft?
Violent Colonial Expansion Begat Cultural Looting
Gerstenblith listed some reasons for how the looting of relics occurred simultaneously with violent colonial expansion. Many conquerors wanted to show off what they had stolen abroad back in their home countries, ostensibly as gifts to their monarchs. Toward that end, the British Museum opened in 1759, followed by France’s Louvre in 1793. During this period, stolen human skulls were also taken alongside objets d’art, ripped away from their homeland and people. Those human remains were then catalogued as superior and inferior, which fueled racist eugenics studies and created an unjust justification for chattel slavery, and fodder for today’s white supremacists.
The Rosetta Stone.
Military leaders during this time prompted their invaders to steal cultural treasures. Napoleonic campaign soldiers were urged to bring back as many antiquities as possible, to provide a “safe home” for masterpieces in large European cities. Sometimes armies were even accompanied and advised by art history experts. From Egypt, they pilfered the Rosetta Stone, a physical guide on how to translate Greek, hieroglyphics and demotic, or ordinary, languages. (When the British defeated the French, they took the priceless piece to the British Museum, where it remains today.) Marble metopes (rectangular architectural elements) from Greece were famously chiseled away in early 1800 by British diplomat Lord Elgin (and are still named for the imperial marauder as the “Elgin Marbles,” rather than as the Parthenon Sculptures. The British Museum has also damaged those sculptures while in its care due to improperly harsh cleaning and water damage in the building. So much for “safe homes.”).
Some of the Beijing Old Summer Palace Bronze Heads. Photo courtesy CGTN.
The mid-19th century Opium Wars between Great Britain and China saw the removal of the 12 bronze-cast zodiac animal heads from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace water clock fountain. These thefts were justified by that “rescue” narrative (rich nations are best suited to care for art) from which “everybody benefits” (all can visit in a “universal museum”). Items like cloisonné, Chinese enamel work, and Benin’s (part of modern-day Nigeria) pendant masks were stolen with abandon. The Benin Bronzes, stunning pieces created between the 13th and 16th centuries, kept the kingdom’s lineage in a carefully affixed order like a mounted metal diary. That cultural continuum was destroyed when they were stolen (photos of the antiquities as they were being ripped down were actually labeled as “loot” and “more loot”), sold or stashed. Lack of record-keeping at the time made tracking provenance almost impossible. That country’s history was effectively annihilated by looters.
Some Benin bronzes at the British Museum.
“Taking them away was like yanking off pages of our history,” said Prince Edun Akenzua of the Benin royal family. Today, the bronzes are at 161 institutions around the world, with only nine in Nigeria. The British Museum possesses the most, where most Nigerians will never see them. The institution refuses to repatriate any of the bronzes due to the British Museum Act of 1963, which prohibits any returns, ever. The British Museum stores much of its vast collection as well, so important antiquities might be languishing in a dark basement where the public, or the creators' community, can never see them.
Legislation to Address, and Obstacles to Overcome, in Artifact Repatriation
Gerstenblith mentioned several codes that have been enacted to curtail or prevent looting. Laws of armed conflict with respect to movables include the US Army’s Lieber Code of 1863, a Civil War code of conduct to protect both soldiers and civilians. That was followed by the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions (multilateral conduct codes for warfare, based on Lieber), and the Hague’s 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which prohibited pillage and seizure, and asked for restitution at the end of conflict or occupation. That preamble states that “any damage to cultural property, irrespective of the people it belongs to, is a damage to the cultural heritage of all humanity because every people contributes to the world’s culture.”
In 1970, UNESCO added to the conversation with the “Convention on the Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.” To address material and cultural theft in the current era, 18 museums across North America and Europe signed the Declaration on the Importance and Value of the Universal Museum in 2002 to “hold artifacts in one place on behalf of humanity,” another white, male, primarily English-speaking spin on the hegemonic supposition that wealthy, first-world nations will take better care of indigenous-crafted works. (Not to mention the fact that the British Museum has currently lost track of over 2,000 items. Or that Native human beings go missing at an alarming rate.)
The presentation outlined the problems of time and other obstacles on sensitive, effective repatriation as well. Non-European regions are not necessarily recognized as states, so therefore aren’t beneficiaries of these statutes. These treaties and legal provisions are also not retroactive to before 1970, or fall outside some statutes of limitations. Those people or communities suing for returns must do so in the courts of the former colonizers, and there are usually prohibitions on deaccessioning (museum removals) in countries including France and the UK.
The United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights was adopted in 2007 to establish minimal standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of indigenous peoples. This is a type of “truth and reconciliation” commission to attempt to face centuries of genocide and other atrocities, including the physical and spiritual separation of a people from their objects, which can obliterate cultural memories and degrade community connections.
A Modest Proposal for Cultural Artifact Repatriation
The extraction or deprivation of cultural objects causes untold harm and injury. Gerstenblith said that the first step in addressing looting is to acknowledge and apologize for these eons of egregious behavior. The next action should be to determine forms of reform and restitution, and then identify other types of compensation. Her “Modest Proposal” for repatriation would be, in principle, to return everything. That includes human remains (body parts or full skeletons) and burial goods, plus objects of cultural, historical, or religious significance (ways to “access the intangible through the tangible”). Objects taken through extreme violence should be returned as well, and monuments must be reunited with their integral pieces. Items most paramount for this redress would be where few or no objects that are representatives of a nation’s cultural heritage remain in the country of origin.
Panelists Discuss Repatriation Successes and Challenges
After her 45-minute lecture, Gerstenblith invited three other women to the dais to participate in a panel discussion: the Association of American Indian Affairs’ Chief Executive and attorney Shannon O’Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma; Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Curator for Provenance Victoria Reed; and the Field Museum’s Repatriation Director Dr. Helen Robbins.
Shannon O'Loughlin
The group talked about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Enacted by Congress in 1990, the law recognizes that human remains of any ancestry “must at all times be treated with dignity and respect,” which also includes sacred and funerary objects, plus items of cultural patrimony (objects that have ongoing historical, traditional or cultural importance). It’s an expensive and time-consuming proposition, and museums can move at a notoriously glacial pace. Plus, many US museums are private, so boards must get on board too. Some artifacts are hidden, possibly illegally, in private collections as well.
Transparency in this process is key, and working on these issues respectfully is tricky. O’Loughlin was quick (and correct) to point out that, despite Robbins’ efforts, the Field Museum doesn’t have a good reputation in Indian communities, especially since it’s still holding at least 1,300 human bodies and objects, which O’Loughlin offered as an example of institutional racism. The Field has even created a “heat map” of where the collection of human remains in its facility come from. In October 2023, New York’s American Museum of Natural History posted about human remains stewardship. But that institution still holds children’s toys taken from the 1895 mass murder at Wounded Knee, meant to be returned after NAGPRA was enacted. But those Native descendants haven’t had any of those objects returned yet.
Descendants Needed to Initiate Stolen Artifact Transfer
One of the primary difficulties in repatriation is that descendants are needed to make those requests, and sometimes it's impossible to determine who those people are, especially with pieces thousands of years old. Plus, most studies and research for these initiatives are funded by the very agencies or governments that committed the atrocities or thefts. The MFA created a website to track colonial-era provenance of some of its collection.
But the issue of control versus ownership is tense. How can origins be tracked, or how can a museum make items public when they don’t actually belong to them? Savvy, well-resourced O’Loughlin continued to hold her colleagues’ feet to the fire, noting that many of these artifact repatriation decisions are rarely made in consultation with the 574 federally recognized native tribes, who don’t necessarily share close DNA, but instead a crucial cultural connection.
Robbins reported that the Field did recently repatriate 100 pieces of human remains, including hair clippings. The American Alliance of Museums is also promoting decolonization, the act of reflecting, expanding and implementing change in those perspectives and voices that museums choose to portray. The Newberry Library itself has one of the largest collections of books and manuscripts on American Indian and indigenous studies in the world.
The British Museum.
Native Futures Powered by Restoring Native Pasts
Like the growing documentation of Afrofuturism, the nonprofit Center for Native Futures fine arts center was founded in 2020 to remember Native pasts and anticipate Native identities to come. Located in the Marquette Building in downtown Zhegagoynak (the Potawatomi word for Chicago), the all-Native, artist-led organization promotes the advancement of Native arts and artists. The organization also acknowledges the US government’s forced removal of the Potawatomi people from around Lake Michigan, and recognizes those who found a way to continually remain here. CNF also honors the solidarity of the Nishnabek people of this place: Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Odawa, Menominee, as well as the Ho-Chunk, Myaamia and Peoria people.
Heated discussions about the looting of cultural materials continue, and will hopefully crawl toward some respectful resolutions. Next on the Native reparations docket? #LandBack
The Chicago Humanities Tapes is a podcast hosted by Alisa Rosenthal, which features some notable chats from the last 30 years of programs. New episodes will drop in February 2024.