Cultural Restitution
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Egypt recovers a stolen sarcophagus lid known as the ‘green sarcophagus’ from a U.S. museum
01 February 2023
Stolen from an Egyptian necropolis south of Cairo in 2008, the lid of a 2,700-year-old sarcophagus, believed to have belonged to a priest named Ankhenmaat, has been returned to Egyptian authorities by the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Houston, Texas. It was looted from the Abusir necropolis south of Cairo, before being smuggled into the U.S. via Germany. “This stunning coffin was trafficked by a well-organised network that has looted countless antiquities from the region,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg. Weighing nearly half a ton, it is made out of a green-coloured wood lined with golden motifs and hieroglyphs. After an extensive international investigation, the U.S. announced they would be handing back the coffin lid last September. At this press conference announcing its return, Egypt’s Tourism Ministry said it will be sent to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo where it will be examined thoroughly before restoration.
Geneva’s Museum of Ethnography returns two sacred objects to the Haudenosaunee Confederation
07 February 2023
In the presence of a delegation from the Haudenosaunee Confederation, a sacred mask and a rattle, acquired nearly 200 years ago, were officially returned in a ceremony held at the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva. Museum officials said the cultural value of these objects to their owners, the Haudenosaunee, a First Nations people who live on both sides of the US/Canadian border, means they are unsuitable for exhibition. The City of Geneva had received a formal request for their return in August 2022.
Colombia’s government requests the return of 35 sculptures currently in Berlin’s Humboldt Forum
13 February 2023
In December 2022, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced they’ve requested the return of 35 statues from the San Agustin culture, currently in the collections of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum. The statues had been removed in 1913 by German ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss while conducting fieldwork in San Agustin and surrounding areas in southern Colombia. The statues arrived in Berlin in 1923 and have never been returned. There were some concerns expressed at the time about their removal, but more than fifty years passed before more serious attempts to recover the statues got underway. A failure by Colombia’s government to press for their return led Hermann Parzinger, current president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, to write in 2013 that “a basis for downright repatriation does scarcely exist, given the lapse of time and the fact that the Columbian [sic] government has obviously known about the sculptures’ whereabouts in Berlin without having submitted any concrete claim for repatriation to the German government.” However, recent initiatives by Germany’s federal government to return looted artefacts suggest the Humboldt may be prepared to respond more favourably this time. All the same, there remain serious concerns among Colombian civil society activists about local authority and national government commitment towards restitution and where the statues would be returned.
Hyperallergic
New report reveals the extent of looted Benin artefacts in Swiss museum collections
15 February 2023
This month the Swiss Benin Initiative (SBI) published a major report that connects twenty-one works in eight Swiss museum collections to the 1897 British raid on Benin City. Launched in June 2021, the SBI has issued a statement describing their primary focus on “the collaboration and exchange of information with Nigeria for the purpose of investigating the provenances of the collections from the Kingdom of Benin”. Between a network of eight Swiss museums, they hold a total of 96 Benin items. For the 21 items identified as Category One, “records in writing or circumstantial evidence such as burn marks provide a direct link to the fateful events of 1897”. Category Two items, which number 32 objects, are described as “probably looted”, but no written evidence links them to the 1897 raid. The report says the museums concerned “express their openness to a transfer of ownership of the looted and probably looted objects.” The report goes on to say, “this could involve a repatriation of the works, a circulation or loans to Swiss museums.” In addition to research based on Western records and archives, the SBI team also worked closely with anthropologist Dr Alice Hertzog and Nigerian historian Dr Enibokun Uzebu-Imarghiagbe.
Canadian museums return important Indigenous artefacts to their rightful owners
22 February 2023
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Royal British Columbia Museum both repatriated important artefacts belonging to First Nation families this month. A saddle and ceremonial pipe owned by Chief Poundmaker, an influential leader of the 19th century, have been returned to his descendants after being held for 99 years by the ROM. The return of these two items is due to the lobbying efforts of Pauline, Brown Bear Woman, who has been working tirelessly to repatriate all Chief Poundmaker's former belongings from museums around the world. Poundmaker, or pitikwahanapiwiyin, is now remembered as a peacekeeper during the North-West Resistance of 1885. His conviction for treason was exonerated by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2019.
In another development, the Royal British Columbia Museum has repatriated a long-lost Snow family totem pole to Nuxalk territory, four years after the Nuxalk Nation’s initial request. The totem pole was carved between the late 1800s and early 1900s by Louie Snow and stood outside the family longhouse in Talyu (South Bentinck). It was lost in the early 1900s when members of the Nuxalk Nation moved from Talyu to Bella Cool to escape the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic. It was purchased in 1913 by an English researcher Charles F. Newcombe on behalf of the Museum’s ethnographic collections. However, hereditary Chief Snuxyaltwa wasn’t aware of its existence until a few years ago. After filing a complaint with the BC Supreme Court in early 2022 that the Museum were taking no steps to return the totem pole, the Museum finally agreed its repatriation. Chief Snuxyaltwa told the Canadian media his great-grandfather’s spirit, remaining inside the totem pole, can now rest upon its return to the Nuxalk nation.
Saskatoon.ctvnews
Cambodia celebrates the return of 77 looted gold relics from the collection of Douglas J Latchford
February 2023
The return of a hoard of 77 gold relics from the collection of disgraced antiquities dealer Douglas J Latchford was celebrated in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh this month. The hoard includes jewel-encrusted diadems worn by Angkor royalty, belts and necklaces woven from fine gold filaments, and body ornaments shaped into rosettes and scrolling vines. The return of these items amounts to “getting back the crown jewels of the Angkor Empire”, according to Had Touch, secretary of state with Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. The gold appears to have been looted from ancient temples and burial grounds; it’s also believed that some of this gold adorned the earliest Angkorian kings who founded the Khmer Empire (802 to 1431). "We did not know these items existed,” said Touch. “This is much more than what is in our museum.” Each of the items came from Latchford’s own large collection of Cambodian antiquities. Research indicates that he bought many of them directly from the leaders of organised looting gangs, or from dealers in Thailand who bought from the same gangs. Latchford was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on charges of illegally trading in Cambodian cultural artefacts in November 2019 but died before standing trial. His daughter and heir, Nawapan Kriangsak, agreed to return his collection. This hoard of gold formed part of that agreement, but its return to Cambodia was delayed by security and customs issues.
ArtDaily
The Smithsonian will return 77 looted objects to the Republic of Yemen, but only once the situation in Yemen improves
February 2023
Seized from a New York art dealer more than a decade ago and held in storage ever since, it’s been announced that a collection of 77 looted artefacts will be returned to the government of the Republic of Yemen. But not yet. Yemen is still to emerge from an humanitarian crisis and an 8-year civil war. “It is not the right time to bring the objects back into the country,” said Mohammed Al-Hadhrami, Yemen’s ambassador to the U.S. For the next two years at least, the objects will be housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C. The objects include 65 funerary stelae from Northwest Yemen, dating to the first half of the first millennium B.C., a bronze bowl and 11 folios from early Qurans. The initial two-year agreement, which Yemen can request to extend, enables the Smithsonian to store, document and care for the objects. They will be able to exhibit the collection, “to foster a greater understanding of ancient Yemeni art,” according to a museum statement. The objects had been smuggled into the U.S. via the United Arab Emirates sometime between 2008 and 2009 by Mousa Khouli, also known as Morris Khouli. Khouli operated from the now defunct Windsor Antiquities Gallery. He pleaded guilty to smuggling in 2012.
ArtDaily
Vatican City signs agreement to return three fragments of sculpture from the Parthenon
08 March 2023
At a special ceremony held at the Vatican, an agreement was signed to return three 2,500-year-old sculpture fragments removed from the Parthenon - the heads of a horse, a bearded man and a boy. The sculptures have been in the Vatican Museums’ collection for the last 200 years. Pope Francis announced plans to return these sculptures last December. At this ceremony in March, it was confirmed the transfer to the Acropolis Museum in Athens will take place on 24 March 2023. This latest repatriation of a fragment of sculpture from the Parthenon follows an agreement made by the Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum in Palermo, Sicily, in January 2022 to return their marble fragment from the Parthenon (the foot of a goddess). Papamikroulis Emmanouil, attending the ceremony on behalf of the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, said the restitution marked “a historic event”, adding that he hoped Pope Francis’ gesture would “be imitated by others”.
The Art Newspaper
The remains of nine Indigenous people are being returned by the Netherlands to the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius
16 March 2023
Between 1984 and 1989, while excavating a site at the airport on the small Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius (also known as Statia), the archaeologist Aad Versteeg uncovered bone fragments belonging to nine Indigenous people. Some of the objects his team excavated dated back to the 5th century. Versteeg was excavating on behalf of the Archaeological Centre of the Leiden State University in the Netherlands and the Archaeological-Anthropological Institute of the Netherlands Antilles on Curacao. All the materials his team uncovered were shipped back to the Netherlands for further study. Since then, a restitution project for the Statia government and community has been identifying objects that should be returned to the island. The remains of the nine Indigenous people were returned to Statia in March. Other artefacts, including boxes of ceramics and coral, will be returned later in 2023. The government is also planning to recover a collection of Statian artefacts at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The Art Newspaper
Turkey loses its attempt to recover an ancient marble idol known as the ‘Stargazer’ but succeeds in recovering objects from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
March 2023
The Republic of Turkey is having mixed fortunes in its attempts to recover its cultural heritage. A New York court ruled this month against Turkey’s latest attempt to recover a nine-inch marble idol known as the ‘Stargazer’. For the time being, the idol remains in the collection of hedge fund billionaire Michael Steinhardt. Turkey’s government has been trying to recover this 6,000-year-old idol for several years. Their first attempt failed when they tried to sue the auction house Christie’s and Steinhardt when the idol was offered for sale in 2017. They were thwarted again in 2021 when Alison J. Nathan of Manhattan’s District Court ruled they couldn’t recover the object. Nathan claimed that Turkey had “slept on its rights” in its wait to make a claim. In their latest attempt this March, Judge Raymond Lohier in a New York court denied their appeal on grounds the country had not sufficiently proven ownership of the object.
Meanwhile, Turkey has had greater success recovering twelve objects looted from their country, some of which were held by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Investigations by Manhattan District Attorney’s Office traced some of these objects to the looting activities that took place in 1967 at two archaeological sites in Turkey - Perge and Bubon. Recovering objects looted from Bubon has been a major goal of the Turkish government. The Met subsequently acquired two items linked to these illicit excavations at Bubon: a bronze head of Emperor Caracalla c. 211 A.D.) and a 7-foot bronze headless statue of Septimius Severus (c. 225 A.D.). The statue of Severus has been a major exhibit in the Met’s Greek and Roman galleries.
The Art Newspaper
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