Cultural Restitution
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UNITED KINGDOM
Updated April 2024
Below is a schedule of successful restitutions made by the United Kingdom, together with other UK restitution news. Check our 'Archive' for more details about some of these restitutions. Entries are updated regularly.
April 2024
In a ceremony at Trinity College Cambridge, the four Gweagal spears taken by James Cook and Joseph Banks in April 1770 are permanently repatriated to the La Perouse Aboriginal Community
April 2024
Returning Heritage and law firm Leigh Day have initiated an investigation by the ICO over the British Museum's failure to disclose information regarding sacred Ethiopian Tabots
April 2024
Historian Andrew Heavens believes the coat and scarf of the Abyssinian emperor Tewodros II may be in Manchester and is urging residents to check their attics
March 2024
St Helena, a British overseas territory, is urged to return the remains of 325 formerly enslaved people to their ancestral kingdoms in Africa
March 2024
Guyana's president is seeking the return of artefacts, including a letter written by the leader of a 19th cent slave rebellion, held by the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies
March 2024
Jamaica is to consider requesting the British Museum returns several Taino artefacts in its collection using a similar arrangement as the Asante gold treasures loaned to Ghana
February 2024
Representing its government, the Ethiopian Heritage Authority has urged the vendor of a circular dome shield, looted from Maqdala in 1868, to withdraw the item from an auction due to be held in Newcastle upon Tyne
February 2024
An Abyssinian circular dome shield, engraved 'Magdala 13th April 1868', is to be auctioned on 29 February at Anderson & Garland
February 2024
Britain's arts and heritage minister has intervened in new Charities Act provisions enabling restitution on moral grounds by explicitly excluding national museums
February 2024
Westminster Abbey is reported to be in discussions about returning the Ethiopian Tabot, sealed into the back of the Lady Chapel altar since the 19th century
February 2024
British Museum interim director Mark Jones says he can envisage a relationship with the Acropolis Museum in Athens that includes mutual loans, including the Parthenon Marbles
January 2024
The V&A and British Museum agree to loan 32 Asante treasures to the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi, the capital of the Asante region, for a three-year, renewable period
January 2024
The lootedart.com database announces a collaboration with the OFP Project Berlin-Brandenburg to include details of 230 seized artworks belonging to 13 German Jewish families
January 2024
The Scottish Government accepts all six recommendations of the Empire, Slavery & Scotland's Museums steering group, including support for repatriation of looted items in Scottish collections
January 2024
The King's Own Royal Regiment Museum in Lancaster has engaged an Abyssinian specialist to research their collection for objects seized during the Maqdala campaign
November 2023
British Museum chairman George Osborne hopes the Museum can reach an agreement for some Parthenon sculptures to be seen in Athens and other Greek treasures to be seen in London
November 2023
The University of Edinburgh has repatriated the remains of four tribal warriors to the Mudan community (also known as the Botan tribe) in Taiwan
October 2023
Labour MP meets opposition from security guards at British Museum while attempting to hold a press conference demanding stolen artefacts are returned
October 2023
The Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford University Museum of Natural History have returned the remains of 11 Aboriginal ancestors to their respective communities in Australia
September 2023
London's national collections are lagging behind regional collections in repatriating contested objects
September 2023
The Manchester Museum has returned 174 cultural heritage items to the Aboriginal Anindilyakwa community of Groote Eylandt, marking one of the largest restitution projects in the UK
September 2023
Ahead of UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly's visit to Beijing, the leading Chinese state-run Global Times has urged the British Museum to return its "stolen artefacts" free of charge
August 2023
The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh has begun the process of returning a 37 ft memorial pole to the Nisga'a Nation in British Columbia following an agreement made in 2022
August 2023
British Museum director resigns after failing to act on warnings about widespread thefts, undermining confidence in security and governance at the Museum
July 2023
A poll commissioned by The Parthenon Project suggests 64% of the Briton's polled are in favour of returning the British Museum's Parthenon sculptures in a "cultural partnership"
July 2023
Two 10th century stone sculptures of Yogini Camunda and Yogini Gomukhi, stolen from India around 1980, have been recovered from an English woman's garden shed
July 2023
98 cows have been presented to Maasai families at an 'Inkirro' cleansing ceremony for reconciliation, enabling Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum to retain five culturally sensitive family heirlooms in their collection
June 2023
King Charles III and the Royal Collection Trust may face increased pressure from Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia for the return of objects looted during the reign of Queen Victoria
June 2023
Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival, the chair of Britain's National Trust confirmed the Trust is working on a policy on the return of stolen objects in its collections
May 2023
Buckingham Palace again rejects appeals to return the remains of Prince Alamayu buried at Windsor Castle on the grounds exhumation would disturb the remains of others
April 2023
The Naga community of Northeast India is in discussions with the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford to repatriate human remains and return them to their rightful homes
April 2023
The British Museum is loaning six important Oceanic items to Tahiti's main museum for three years, including the celebrated sculpture of A'a, described as "one of mankind's greatest artistic creations"
April 2023
A Right-wing think tank paper advises UK Government and British Museum against repatriating the Parthenon Marbles to Greece
April 2023
A report commissioned by Queen Mary, grandmother of Elizabeth II, held in the archives of the India Office reveals how priceless pieces of jewellery in the Royal Collection were extracted from India as trophies of conquest
March 2023
An investigation has revealed nearly 200 skulls belonging to non-European ethnic groups from colonial conquests in the 19th and 20th centuries remain in Aberdeen University collection
March 2023
After more than a decade of negotiations, Trinity College Cambridge has agreed to return four spears stolen by Captain James Cook in 1770 from Kamay, now known as Botany Bay
February 2023
The FT reports that a resolution to one of Britain's bitterest cultural battles finally comes into sight: inside the secret meetings
January 2023
Politicians fear handing back disputed assets such as the Parthenon sculptures would asset strip the British soul, but this claim is challenged
January 2023
London's Hunterian Museum has decided to retain the skeleton of Charles Byrne, a 'giant' taken from Ireland in 1783, despite appeals for its return and despite no evidence that further medical research is warranted
January 2023
While Greece's Prime Minister rejects the notion of a "long-term partnership" with the British Museum, a loan of the Parthenon Marbles looks less likely
January 2023
The return of seven objects by Glasgow Life Museums represents the first repatriation to India by a UK museums service
January 2023
British Museum confirms it is in "constructive discussions" with Greece over the return of some of the Parthenon Marbles
December 2022
The University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) is in talks to repatriate historic objects to Uganda in 2023 as part of the Repositioning the Uganda Museum scheme
December 2022
The Charity Commission has endorsed Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's transfer of 116 Benin objects to Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments citing their moral obligation
December 2022
The National Museum of Scotland has agreed to return a looted totem pole to the Nisga'a Nation of British Columbia - only the second totem pole ever returned to First Nations leaders by a European institution
November 2022
In a ceremony at London's Horniman Museum and Gardens to transfer formally ownership of 72 Benin Bronzes, the first six objects were handed back to Nigerian authorities
November 2022
George Osborne vows to change the British Museum's relationship with the world but warns against the dismantling of its collection
October 2022
UK museums are ready to cooperate with Zimbabwe over the return of human remains taken during the colonial era
October 2022
UK Government rejects Lord Vaizey's proposal to reform the 1983 National Heritage Act that restricts deaccessioning from the V&A, the Royal Armouries and the Science Museum
October 2022
New British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, rejects the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece
October 2022
Ethiopia renews calls on Westminster Abbey to return sacred Tabot
September 2022
Changes in the new Charities Act 2022, due this autumn, will enable trustees in national collections to return objects on compelling moral grounds
September 2022
Following a meeting with the Asante king, the V&A's director suggests the Museum may be prepared to return its Asante gold treasures to Ghana
August 2022
Plan to return seven stolen objects to India by Glasgow Museums later this year is believed to be the first repatriation to India by a UK museum
August 2022
New York-based Restitution Study Group is encouraging the UK Charity Commission to reject plans by Oxford and Cambridge universities to return Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
August 2022
Progress has stalled on the return of a Benin Bronze Head of an Oba in the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery
July 2022
An Iraqi court overturns the wrongful conviction of British geologist Jim Fitton for smuggling pottery shards and stones from ancient Sumerian site of Eridu
July 2022
London's Natural History Museum returns 111 Moriori skeletal remains and 2 Maori ancestral remains taken from Rekohu (Chatham Islands) to Te Papa
July 2022
V&A Museum returns a 3rd cent marble head of the Greek god Eros to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum on a long-term loan, initially for six years
June 2022
Sudan hopes that artefacts taken by British soldiers now in UK museums, including two skulls in the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh, are returned to Sudan
June 2022
Protesters at the British Museum marked the 13th anniversary of the opening of the Acropolis Museum calling for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles
June 2022
A retired British geologist on an archaeological tour of Iraq plans to appeal after being sentenced to 15 years in jail for smuggling fragments of stone and pottery
May 2022
The Cambodian government opens new phase in its attempt to recover looted Cambodian artefacts by calling on the British Museum and the V&A to return stolen items
April 2022
A Libyan-British lawyer is campaigning for the return of Roman columns removed by British officers from Leptis Magna in 1817 and now in the grounds of Windsor Castle
March 2022
A Cambridge college application to move a memorial plaque to the slave trader Tobias Rustat has been rejected by a church court
March 2022
London branch of antiques dealer Barakat voluntarily returns two stolen Nepalese temple artefacts removed sometime in the late 1980s
February 2022
Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has received a formal claim from Nigeria for the repatriation of Benin artefacts in the Museum's collection
February 2022
A Greek newspaper reports that experts sense an "important shift" in the British Museum's policy regarding loaning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece
February 2022
The Wounded Knee Survivors Association are calling for the return of three Native American artefacts now in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow
February 2022
Durham University has repatriated two Japanese 'good luck' flags taken during the Second World War to the descendants of their original owners
January 2022
Glasgow Life has received a formal request from Nigeria this week for the return of 29 Benin objects in Glasgow's museums
January 2022
Great North Museum: Hancock has agreed to return a Benin bronze stave understood to have been looted during the British 1897 sacking of Benin City
January 2022
The case for returning the Elgin Marbles to Athens has become compelling
January 2022
Katerina Ampela argues for the establishment of cooperative framework between Great Britain and Greece over the Elgin Marbles in order to reach a mutually acceptable solution
Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage
December 2021
As India prepares to celebrate 75 years of independence in 2022, the British Government should return Tipu's treasures to India
November 2021
University of Oxford publishes report including a list of 145 Benin objects looted in the 1897 raid that it expects will be repatriated
November 2021
The UK government has placed a temporary export ban on a gold finial from Tipu Sultan's throne from leaving the country to enable a UK-based collection to acquire it
November 2021
Prime Minister Johnson claims returning the Parthenon sculptures is a matter for the British Museum's trustees not the government - an apparent reverse of the government's position
November 2021
Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis calls on the British Prime Minister to return the Parthenon sculptures and has repeated an offer to loan Greek treasures to the British Museum
October 2021
Bristol City Museum returns a caribou hide hunting coat from the Cree First Nations people to Quebec, but no progress on return of Benin Bronze head
October 2021
Why the Elgin Marbles should not be returned to Greece..... Yet. If it is justice we care about, it is not the Elgin Marbles we should be focussing on
October 2021
Jesus College, Cambridge has agreed to return their Benin Bronze statue of a cockerel to a Nigerian delegation on 27 October 2021
September 2021
Cambridge Museum is set to return artefacts stolen during the colonisation of Africa to the Uganda Museum in Kampala
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
June 2021
Looted objects from Maqdala offered for sale in Dorset auction house are withdrawn following demands for repatriation by Ethiopian Embassy
April 2021
The Church of England agrees to return two Benin figures gifted to the then Archbishop of Canterbury almost 40 years ago
March 2021
The entire collection of Douglas Latchford is returning to Cambodia, along with records of other pieces in circulation across the world. Latchford was indicted in the U.S. for alleged trafficking antiquities
September 2020
The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, has overhauled its display of human remains, removing into storage its collection of tsantsas , skulls, scalps, Egyptian mummies and hair
September 2020
Three ancient idols stolen from a temple in Tamil Nadu in 1978 have been returned by the Metropolitan Police at India House, London
March 2020
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery expresses a desire to work with the Benin Dialogue Group to resolve the possible restitution of a late 19th cent Benin bronze head to the Royal Court of Benin
March 2020
Zambian government continues to pursue a claim, first made in 1972, for the return of the skull of 'Rhodesian Man' from the Natural History Museum, London
February 2020
After returning skulls to Sri Lanka in 2019, Edinburgh University is now in the process of returning Maori skeletons to New Zealand
February 2020
Two stolen artefacts offered for sale at auctions in London - an ox-driven cart sculpture and a three-piece Sidamara sarcophagus, both dated 3000-2000BC - are to be returned to Turkey
January 2020
British Museum and Art Loss Register arrange the return of an important 2nd cent A.D. Kushan sculpture, stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan and recovered from an online auction
January 2020
Hampshire family return to Sri Lanka a Buddha statue removed in 1919 by British archaeologist HCP Bell from the Temple of Tooth in Kandy
December 2019
A rare Mamluk era manuscript written by Sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri and dating back 700 years is returned by London auction house to Egypt
December 2019
Looted Benin artefacts to be returned by soldier's grandson
December 2019
British collector, founder of the Museum of Classical Art in Mougins, southern France, has returned seven Celtic helmets stolen in the 1980s from an archaeological site in Spain
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/collector-returns-stolen-celtic-helmets-to-spain-g26w5g9xl#
December 2019
Jesus College, Cambridge announce return of Benin Bronze Cockerel to the Court of Benin following the establishment of a Legacy of Slavery Working Party
November 2019
The University of Edinburgh returns the skulls of nine members of a Sri Lankan tribe, the ancestral remains of the Vedda people, to their descendents
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-50516316
October 2019
Manchester Museum agrees the unconditional repatriation of 43 Aboriginal ceremonial and secret sacred objects, collected on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific
October 2019
Oxford classicist accused of selling fragments of the Bible to the Museum of the Bible
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-50069365
July 2019
British Museum to return looted treasures from Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the Museum's work on cultural heritage
June 2019
Medieval sculpture of Saint Michael slaying the dragon, stolen in 1969 and sold at Sotheby's London in 1998, returned to Notre-Dame-du-Tertre in Brittany
https://www.returningheritage.com/medieval-sculpture-returned-by-sotheby-s-after-discovery-of-theft
March 2019
Locks of hair removed from body of Emperor Tewodros II after the Battle of Maqdala returned by the National Army Museum, London to Ethiopia
February 2019
The Culture Commissioner for Lagos State has requested the return of the Lander Stool, understood to be the first object removed from Nigeria during the colonial period
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/lander-stool-1455775
January 2019
A stone relief bearing the cartouche of Amenhotep I, stolen from the Temple of Karnak Open Air Museum in 1988, was recovered from a London auction house and returned to Egypt's embassy in London
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-46804806
December 2018
The private collection of an English collector, comprising more than 100 Bronze Age Cypriot antiquities donated to the Walk of Truth Foundation, is set to return to Cyprus
https://cyprus-mail.com/2018/12/23/more-than-100-bronze-age-artifacts-to-return-to-cyprus/
October 2018
Two stolen Etruscan artefacts, a bronze figurine and a terracotta drinking vessel recovered by London’s Metropolitan Police, were handed back to Italy
September 2018
Ancient marble engraved Attic column dating to 340 B.C., illegally exported from Greece, repatriated by Metropolitan Police after discovery at Sotheby’s auction house
https://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/09/09/rare-stolen-antiquity-returns-to-greece/
August 2018
A 12th cent statue of Buddha, one of 14 statues stolen in 1961 from a museum at Nalanda in Bihar, is returned to India by London's Metropolitan Police
May 2018
Descendants of General Robert Napier return a 19th cent necklace, looted following the Battle of Maqdala, to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa
May 2017
The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, hands over Maori ancestral human remains to representatives of the Karanga Repatriation Programme of Te Papa Tongarewa (The National Museum of New Zealand)
https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/article/repatriation-maori-ancestral-remains
June 2014
Two Benin Bronze objects, a brass 'bird of prophesy' and a brass bell, looted by the British Army in February 1897 and held since that date in a private British collection, are returned to the Royal Court of Benin
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/benin-bronzes-looted-by-the-british-returned-to-nigeria-46550
March & November 2011
The Natural History Museum returns indigenous human remains in two tranches to Torres Strait Islands. following a direct approach made by the Islanders in 2005
November 2010
After a 10-year campaign, the 12th cent Benevento Missal, removed during Nazi looting from the Benevento cathedral library, has been returned by the British Library
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/archive/how-the-art-newspaper-changed-the-law
March 2010
Following long negotiations with the University of London, Britain has returned about 25,000 ancient artefacts to Egypt
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/egypt-retrieves-prehistoric-artefacts-from-britain-qcschwjp0vg
May 2009
Brighton & Hove Museums agrees to return various human remains of Australian Aboriginal ancestry to Australia
May 2009
Human remains identified as Ngarrindjeri people held at the Natural History Museum, Oxford are returned to Aboriginal heritage committee (see Correction notice at foot of article)
https://www.smh.com.au/national/jealous-keepers-of-the-sacred-bones-20100312-q48m.html
January 2007
University of Aberdeen Museum returns tattooed Maori heads to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
November 2006
The Natural History Museum agrees to return the human remains of 18 Aboriginal people after twenty years of lobbying by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre
January 2005
Robin Symes, high profile British dealer in antiquities, sentenced to three years in jail after spending many years selling looted antiquities to private collectors and museums
March 2003
Unique ivory sculpture, thought to be the head of a Roman statue of Apollo, recovered by Italian police from a British private collector after a six-year enquiry into art smuggling
January 2002
An Ethiopian Tabot, gifted in 1868 to St John the Evangelist, a Scottish Episcopal church in Edinburgh, is returned to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
https://www.returningheritage.com/ethiopian-tabot-returned-by-edinburgh-church
August 2001
Britain's biggest museums are to return hundreds of Aboriginal art and artefacts
January 2000
An Egyptian stone head of Meryet, smuggled into the UK in 1990 disguised as a cheap souvenir, is handed back to Egypt at the British Museum
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/613109.stm
November 1998
A sacred Lakota Ghost Dance Shirt is returned to the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in the United States after seven years of negotiations
November 1996
The ancient Stone of Scone to be returned from Westminster Abbey to Scotland, 700 years after it was seized by the English
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/04/stone-of-scone-scotland-independence-1996
1995/97
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter agrees to return to Tasmania a necklace and bracelet that once belonged to Truganini, the last full blood Aboriginal Tasmanian
https://www.returningheritage.com/return-of-truganini-s-necklace-and-bracelet-by-exeter-city-council
August 1990
Aboriginal human remains collected from North Queensland, Australia repatriated by Glasgow City Council
https://www.returningheritage.com/aboriginal-human-remains-repatriated-by-glasgow-city-council
1985
A ceremonial Asante stool, looted by the British on their 1874 Kumasi expedition, was returned to Ghana
December 1981
A collection of South Arabian reliefs, attributed to the Himyaritic culture, returned to the Yemeni Museum Service by the Wellcome Trust, London
February 1965
Royal Cap and Seal of Emperor Tewodros II is returned by Queen Elizabeth II to Emperor Haile Selassie on a state visit to Ethiopia
1964/65
The Mandalay Regalia, seized from the Palace of Thibaw Min at Mandalay, Burma in 1885, is returned to Myanmar by the Victoria & Albert Museum
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