Repatriation – Illicit Cultural Property

Roof Tiles and Bronze Feet: What Sites Remember

Two places in the news this fall show how much an archaeological site can still tell us about objects that left it long ago. At Cerveteri, archaeologists have proposed that roof ornaments now in Berlin and Copenhagen perhaps originated from a newly excavated Etruscan temple. At Boubon, in southwestern Türkiye, evidence from the site helped send a Roman bronze home from Cleveland.

The news from Cerveteri concerned a monumental temple at Vigna Marini Vitalini. A Queen’s University team uncovered its foundations in 2024 and dated the temple to the early fifth century BCE. The detail that caught my attention was in the excavation report. Earlier digs in the nineteenth century had sent architectural terracottas from the site into museum collections. The archaeologists identified three antefixes, ornaments that capped the ends of roof tiles, now in Berlin and Copenhagen. Archival records put them in the same area as the new excavation. Their date, clay, and decoration suggest they may have belonged to the temple’s roof.

Berlin, Antikensammlung. Silen head antefix TC 6681.2c, from Vigna Marini Vitalini (Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz).

Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Silen head antefix HIN 55, from Vigna Marini Vitalini (Ole Haupt, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek).

A second Cerveteri story from this month shows the other way objects leave a site. At Monte Abatone, one of Caere’s (as it would have been called in ancient times) main cemeteries, emergency work to shore up collapsing tufa chambers turned up rock-cut thrones, walls with wide patches of red paint, and a nearly intact stamnos decorated with incised animals. Nobody planned a discovery. The tombs had been looted at some point in the past, and the jar survived only because the diggers missed it. The regional archaeological superintendency says it will go on display after conservation.

Taken together, the two Cerveteri finds show why the manner of an object’s removal matters as much as where it ended up. The nineteenth-century diggers at Vigna Marini Vitalini were not careful by modern standards. Still, they left enough of a paper trail that archaeologists can now trace three antefixes back to a single roof. Whoever emptied the Monte Abatone tombs left a damaged chamber and the pot they overlooked. Whatever they took is now somewhere without a findspot, and no archive will ever connect it to the thrones it was buried beside. Cerveteri has drawn this kind of digging for a long time. The Euphronios krater, which the Metropolitan Museum of Art returned to Italy in 2008, was dug out of a tomb near the town in 1971.

This bronze statue was formerly described by the Cleveland Museum of Art as likely depicting Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius as a philosopher. Now it is described as Draped Male Figure, around 150BCE-200CE. Roman or possibly Greek Hellenistic. The Cleveland Museum of Art — This bronze statue was formerly described by the Cleveland Museum of Art as likely depicting Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius as a philosopher. Now it is described as *Draped Male Figure*, around 150BCE-200CE. Roman or possibly Greek Hellenistic.

On November 2, the Istanbul Archaeological Museums opened No Escape: Boubon, an exhibition that brings together Roman imperial bronzes and fragments dispersed after looting in the 1960s. The sculptures once stood in the city’s Sebasteion, a sanctuary dedicated to the emperors and the imperial family. As Elizabeth Marlowe has explained, villagers found the bronzes in the 1960s and sold them to traffickers. When Turkish authorities arrived in 1967, mostly empty pedestals remained, inscribed with the names of fourteen emperors and empresses. The Turkish archaeologist Jale İnan spent years working with other scholars to match those bases to bronzes scattered across foreign collections.

One of those bronzes, a headless draped figure, spent nearly four decades at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland bought it in 1986 from the dealer Charles Lipson, who sold three of the four other Boubon pieces seized in the United States since 2022. For years its label read “The Emperor as Philosopher, probably Marcus Aurelius,” from “Bubon(?)” in Lycia. When the statue debuted in 1987, the museum displayed photographs of other Boubon statues beside it. By the time Manhattan prosecutors seized it in 2023, Cleveland had renamed it “Draped Male Figure” and said its identity “remains unknown.” Marlowe argued in The Art Newspaper that these erasures were “a defensive response by the museum.” Cleveland challenged the seizure, then agreed in February 2025 to transfer the statue after new scientific testing. Among the evidence linking the figure to Boubon was the fit between molds of its feet and the recesses in a stone pedestal at the site. Cleveland’s 2025 release still says the statue is probably not Marcus Aurelius but a Greek philosopher. The Turkish announcement calls it the Marcus Aurelius statue.

Cleveland was not the only museum to hold on to a Boubon bronze. In a guest post here, Marlowe took on the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek’s over-life-size head of Septimius Severus. Robert Hecht first sold the head, and the museum bought it in 1970. Whether it fit a body seized from the Metropolitan Museum was, she argued, a secondary matter. The real issue was whether the head came from Boubon. On her three criteria, it plainly did: it depicts an emperor, it surfaced on the market between 1964 and the early 1970s, and it has square bronze repair patches. The Glyptotek returned the head to Türkiye in late 2024.

There was an even closer parallel to Cerveteri at the Istanbul opening. Türkiye also presented 100 antiquities returned from the United States, among them 44 architectural terracotta fragments from Düver that the Getty had acquired between 1977 and 1979. Those roof fragments came from a different site than the Boubon bronzes. Türkiye has already brought home other Düver pieces, from the United States in 2022, Denmark in 2024, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2025. I’d be interested to see what researchers can learn about the buildings at Düver once they can study these fragments alongside pieces already returned.

These stories raise different questions about ownership. At Cerveteri, the proposed match gives Berlin and Copenhagen a reason to revisit how they catalogue and display the roof ornaments. At Boubon, evidence from the site helped resolve a contested seizure. The Glyptotek has been involved in both stories. It returned its Boubon head in 2024, and it still holds a Cerveteri antefix whose nineteenth-century excavation left enough of a record to trace. Monte Abatone shows what happens when there is no record at all. Little that the looters took from those tombs can be matched back to them. These stories make a case for putting excavation records, archival photographs, and museum files in conversation. A catalogue can tell us when an object entered a museum. The clay of an antefix or the recesses in a stone base can tell us where it was before it got there.

Fabio Colivicchi et al., The 2024 Field Season at Caere, Vigna Marini Vitalini: A New Etruscan Temple and Its Surroundings, 28 Etruscan & Italic Stud. 158 (2025), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12645824/;

Tutte le nuove scoperte archeologiche di ottobre 2026. Dal relitto romano fantasma al ricco guerriero dei Balcani, Artribune (Nov. 4, 2026), https://www.artribune.com/arti-visive/archeologia-arte-antica/2026/11/nuove-scoperte-archeologiche-ottobre-2026-balcani-cerveteri-liguria/;

Antefix with silenus head, HIN 55, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Tracking Colour, http://trackingcolour.com/objects/122 (last visited Nov. 11, 2026).

Dario Radley, Emergency repairs at an Etruscan cemetery in Italy uncover carved thrones, painted walls and a nearly intact jar, Archaeology News (Nov. 8, 2026), https://archaeologymag.com/2026/11/etruscan-cemetery-in-italy-carved-thrones-and-jar/.

‘No Escape: Boubon’ exhibition brings scattered heritage together, Hürriyet Daily News (Nov. 3, 2026), https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/amp/no-escape-boubon-exhibition-brings-scattered-heritage-together-228916.

Elizabeth Marlowe, Bronze Roman statue, believed to have been looted from Turkey, seized from Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Newspaper (Aug. 31, 2023), https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/08/31/cleveland-museum-art-roman-bronze-turkey-loot-seized.

Elizabeth Marlowe, Marlowe on the Real Issue with the Glyptotek Head, Illicit Cultural Property, http://illicitculturalproperty.com/marlow-on-the-real-issue-with-the-glyptotek-head/.

Danish Museum returns Roman Bronze Portrait to Türkiye, ArtDependence (Dec. 3, 2024), https://artdependence.com/articles/danish-museum-returns-roman-bronze-portrait-to-tuerkiye/.

Press Release, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art and District Attorney of New York Reach Agreement on Draped Male Figure (the Philosopher) (Feb. 14, 2025), https://www.clevelandart.org/about/press/cleveland-museum-art-and-district-attorney-new-york-reach-agreement-draped-male-figure.

Press Release, Getty, Statement from Getty Regarding Return of Fragments to Türkiye (June 24, 2026), https://www.getty.edu/news/getty-fragment-return-turkiye/.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Cemeteries, Crown Jewels, Fakes, and War

Recent cultural heritage events remind me that protection is often weakest before anyone thinks to call it protection. A cemetery becomes “vacant” land. A museum becomes a little too open. A forged provenance becomes plausible enough. A customs rule turns movement into uncertainty. A damaged monument returns to Italy. The dramatic theft still has its place. Crown jewels stolen from the Louvre will always draw attention. But the quieter stories may tell us more about how heritage is actually lost: slowly, administratively, through development pressure, through market incentives that reward thin provenance and quick sales, and sometimes violently, in the gap between what the law promises and what institutions are prepared to do.

Heritage can also disappear through neglect, development, poor records, wishful thinking, legal uncertainty, military force, or a stamp on the back of a painting that looks just plausible enough.

In Northeast Houston, residents are raising concerns that development may threaten an abandoned Black cemetery. The legally recognized cemetery parcel is small, but longtime resident Roscoe Bluitt remembers headstones extending more widely into the wooded land nearby. A 2014 survey reportedly identified possible graves at least partly outside the known cemetery boundaries, and Houston officials have placed a stop-work order on the site while the next steps are considered. Advocates are now calling for a more thorough investigation, potentially including ground-penetrating radar.

Roscoe Bluitt, a lifelong resident of northeast Houston, describes his memories of a now abandoned Black cemetery where developers are clearing a nearby property. Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle

The story is painfully familiar. Burial grounds, especially Black cemeteries, are often “forgotten” only after systems of ownership, recordkeeping, maintenance, and development have made them easy to ignore. By the time a neighbor notices bulldozers, the law is already playing catch-up. The question is not simply whether a parcel is listed as a cemetery. It is whether the community, the city, the developer, and the state are willing to ask what may have been missed.

A very different kind of vulnerability is on display in the continuing discussion of museum security after the Louvre crown jewels theft. The New York Times recently used that heist to examine a broader design problem for museums: how to protect collections without turning institutions into fortresses. The article notes not only the Louvre robbery, but also thefts from an off-site storage facility of the Oakland Museum of California, damage at Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, and the recent theft of works by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma.

The challenge is that the museum ideal of openness sits uneasily with the needs of security. Glass, light, gardens, open galleries, and accessible storage can all help museums feel less forbidding. They can also create blind spots, entry points, or tempting routes of escape. The best security seems to be less about a single dramatic barrier and more about layers: thoughtful site design, sightlines, lighting, staffing, cameras, object-level alarms, and best of all the good old-fashioned human response. A camera, as one consultant put it, cannot get out of its chair.

Then there are the fakes. A father and daughter have pleaded guilty in connection with a multimillion-dollar forgery scheme involving works presented as Banksy, Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, Richard Mayhew, Raimonds Staprans, Fritz Scholder, and others. Prosecutors described a scheme using forged works made in Poland, antique paper, and fabricated gallery stamps from defunct galleries to make the objects appear more credible. Forgery stories are often treated as colorful art-world scandals, and they are that. But they also show how fragile the market’s trust mechanisms can be in a market that continues to value privacy and discretion. Provenance is not just a nice story attached to an object.

This photo provided by Tulane University classical archeologist Susann Lusnia in October 2025 shows the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus, discovered in a New Orleans backyard. (Susann Lusnia via AP)

There was also a quieter and more hopeful story this week. A nearly 2,000-year-old Roman grave marker discovered in a New Orleans backyard has been returned to Italy. The marble epitaph, dedicated to Sextus Congenius Verus, was eventually matched to an object missing from a museum in Civitavecchia, near Rome. The likely path to New Orleans seems to have involved a U.S. soldier who served in Italy and later kept the stone at his home. The FBI coordinated the return, and the object is now headed back.

The movement of objects is also being shaped by a less romantic force: tariffs. The Art Newspaper reports that after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s unilateral tariffs as unconstitutional, the administration imposed a new tariff regime of up to 15 percent under a different emergency powers law, prompting further litigation and continued uncertainty for the art and antiques trade. Dealers described confusion over whether exemptions for antiques over 100 years old will remain secure, and whether shipping, tariffs, and fuel surcharges will make some transactions commercially impossible. Tariffs may seem far removed from grave markers, forged art, or museum alarms. But they matter because cultural objects move through ordinary commercial channels. Dealers, collectors, museums, conservators, shippers, and customs brokers all operate inside systems of cost and uncertainty. When the rules shift suddenly, especially around imports, the market adjusts. One suspects, uncertainty makes the already opaque parts of the trade even harder to see.

Finally, a much darker reminder that cultural heritage protection cannot be separated from the conduct of war. More than 200 scholars and cultural professionals (including me) signed a statement criticizing damage to Iranian cultural heritage during U.S.-Israeli strikes and the international response to that damage. The statement invokes the 1954 Hague Convention and argues that more than 130 registered UNESCO and national monuments and museums have reportedly been damaged since the start of the conflict. It also criticizes international institutions for what the signatories view as an inadequate response when powerful states are involved.

The Art Newspaper’s coverage notes reported damage to sites including Golestan Palace in Tehran, the Chehel Sotoun building of the Persian Garden in Isfahan, the Jame Mosque of Isfahan, and sites near the Prehistoric Sites of the Khorramabad Valley. UNESCO has acknowledged damage and expressed concern, while the statement’s organizers argue that concern is not enough when legal protections lack enforcement.

This is the hard edge of cultural heritage law. The 1954 Hague Convention rests on the premise that damage to cultural property belonging to any people is a loss to all humanity. But that principle is only as strong as the willingness of states and institutions to apply it consistently. The problem is not that we lack legal language. What is often missing is consequence.

Taken together, these stories point to the same larger lesson. Cultural heritage protection is not a single switch that the law turns on after something has gone wrong. The law matters. But the law often arrives late. The harder work is to build protection into ordinary practice, before the bulldozer, before the ancient stone becomes patio décor, and before a historic site is reduced to a damage assessment. Heritage is most vulnerable where attention is weakest.

Sam González Kelly, Houston Residents Worry Development Threatens a Black Cemetery. They’re Fighting to Protect It., Houston Chronicle (May 1, 2026), https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/black-cemetery-history-construction-22218009.php , archived at https://perma.cc/WJ6H-3J27.

Sam Lubell, After the Heists: Securing Museums Without Closing Them Off, The New York Times (Apr. 18, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/arts/design/museums-security.html.

Jake Offenhartz, Father and Daughter Admit to $2M Banksy and Warhol Art Forgery Scam, Independent, https://uk.news.yahoo.com/father-daughter-admit-2m-banksy-082920547.html, archived at https://perma.cc/HCQ6-5HZX (last visited May 2, 2026).

More than 200 Cultural Figures Sign Statement Criticising International Response to Destruction of Iran’s Heritage, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/04/15/more-than-200-cultural-figures-sign-statement-criticising-international-response-to-destruction-of-iran-heritage (last visited May 2, 2026).

Ancient Roman Gravestone Found in New Orleans Back Yard Returned to Italy, the Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/01/roman-gravestone-new-orleans-returned-italy, archived at https://perma.cc/75LC-7R43 (last visited May 2, 2026).

Art Trade Adjusting after US Supreme Court Struck down Trump’s Extreme Tariffs, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/05/01/trump-tariffs-struck-down-supreme-court-art-trade-adjusts (last visited May 2, 2026).

Security, Spectacle, and Return

It has been an oddly revealing week for cultural heritage.

On one end, Dutch officials unveiled the recovered Coțofenești helmet and two gold bracelets at a press conference in Assen, flanked by heavily armed officers in balaclavas. The helmet, stolen from the Drents Museum in January 2025 while on loan from Romania, was recovered with minor damage; though one bracelet remains missing. The recovery appears to have come as part of an agreement with suspects ahead of trial.

A Geto-Dacian helmet dating from the first half of the 4th century BC, uncovered by chance. View from the front. — By © Radu Oltean / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14615152

On the other end, just days earlier, thieves entered the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma and, in about three minutes, made off with works by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse. Reports describe a fast, organized raid by four men who forced entry and targeted highly recognizable names.

“Odalisque on the Terrace” by Henri Matisse.

And then, in Zurich, Switzerland quietly transferred ownership of 28 Benin Bronzes from three museums, with 18 expected to travel physically to Nigeria in June. That return followed provenance research and was framed, quite rightly, as another step toward reuniting Nigeria with material taken in the 1897 British plunder of Benin.

Three stories, one week, and each says something slightly different about how the cultural heritage world performs security, legitimacy, and justice.

The Dutch press conference was the most visually obvious example. The object had been recovered. Great! That part matters most. But the staging mattered too. Armed guards. Masks. Cloth lift. The careful unveiling of a rescued national treasure. It was a display of regained control. One could almost hear the subtext: yes, it was stolen, but look how seriously we take it now.

That is what struck Donna Yates so clearly in her reaction to the event: the oddity of the whole performance. The recovery of a cultural object becomes not just an announcement, but a kind of theatrical rebuttal to the earlier embarrassment. The state is not merely returning the object; it is staging authority. And perhaps staging reassurance too.

The Italian theft, by contrast, stripped away the theatre. There is no ceremonial dignity in a three-minute smash-and-grab. Only a broken entry point, a short timeline, and the uncomfortable reminder that museums remain vulnerable to ordinary criminals with planning, nerve, and a few minutes to spare. Anthony Amore’s point is useful here: three minutes is not some cinematic anomaly. It sits squarely within the normal range for many museum thefts. That should worry people more than the headline itself.

The most important lesson from Parma may be the least glamorous one. Famous art is easier to steal than to monetize as Anja Shortland details. Freshly stolen museum objects are extraordinarily difficult to sell on the legitimate market because dealers, auction houses, and registries check title, provenance, and stolen-art databases. That does not mean theft makes no economic sense; it means the economic logic is usually murkier than the movies suggest. These works may be held, moved through criminal networks, used as bargaining chips, or dangled in hopes of some later leverage. The hard part is not the theft. The hard part is cashing out.

And that, in turn, makes the Dutch recovery more interesting. If a stolen object can later become useful in plea bargaining or sentence reduction, then it acquires a kind of underworld value quite apart from its cultural value. That is not a comforting thought. The helmet is priceless to Romania; it may also have become useful to suspects once prosecutors made clear that recovery would matter.

Then there is the Swiss Benin return, which points in a different direction entirely. No broken door, no emergency unveiling. Instead, a transfer of ownership after provenance work, a public ceremony, and a clear acknowledgment that access to cultural heritage means more than a paper change in title.

But even here, where the moral and historical case is much clearer, ceremony still does important work. Returns like this are also public performances—just of a more attractive kind. They signal fairness, accountability, and institutional maturity. They tell a story not about how we have secured this object, but about we are finally doing the right thing. Switzerland’s transfer of 28 objects, and the expectation that 18 will physically move to Nigeria in June, is meaningful precisely because it joins symbolism to substance.

Still, the Swiss story also comes with a caution. Returns create expectations. Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments has had notable success in securing repatriations, but it now faces the harder question of display, stewardship, resources, and internal politics. Justice is not finished when the ceremony ends. Sometimes that is where the real work starts.

Taken together, these stories reveal a familiar pattern in cultural heritage disputes. We are very good at paying attention to dramatic moments: the theft, the raid, the recovery, the unveiling, the handover. We are less good at attending to the quieter work in between: preventive security, provenance research, institutional due diligence, funding, and conservation. Yet that unglamorous middle is where most of the work actually happens.

In Assen, security was performed after failure. In Parma, failure arrived in three minutes. In Zurich, legitimacy was sought through return. None of those performances are trivial. But none should distract from the underlying question either: are institutions actually getting better at protecting and returning cultural objects, or are they just getting better at staging the moment?

Anthony Amore, The Italian Job – A Profile, Big Security, https://anthonyamore.substack.com/p/the-italian-job-a-profile (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Eileen Kinsella, Experts Break Down the Brazen $10 Million Museum Theft in Italy, Artnet News, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/magnani-rocca-foundation-heist-experts-2761113, archived at https://perma.cc/9M2G-CZJY (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Senay Boztas, ‘A Wow Moment’: Ancient Romanian Gold Helmet Returned in Plea Deal with Theft Suspects, the Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/apr/02/stolen-romanian-gold-helmet-recovered-netherlands , archived at https://perma.cc/74V4-PWVR (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Claire Moses, Ancient Artifacts Stolen in Dutch Museum Heist Are Recovered, The New York Times (Apr. 2, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/world/europe/museum-heist-netherlands-helmet-romania.html.

Barnaby Phillips, Switzerland Returns Benin Bronzes, Institute of Art and Law (Apr. 2, 2026), https://ial.uk.com/switzerland-returns-benin-bronzes/, archived at https://perma.cc/2F52-DU6R.

Anja Shortland, Selling Stolen Art is Tricky, so Why Even Bother Heisting It? An Expert Explains, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/selling-stolen-art-is-tricky-so-why-even-bother-heisting-it-an-expert-explains-279700 , archived at https://perma.cc/D9EX-5R2M (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Ali Watkins & Josephine de La Bruyère, Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse Artworks Are Stolen in 3-Minute Museum Heist, Police Say, The New York Times (Mar. 30, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/world/europe/parma-art-heist-renoir-matisse-cezanne-italy.html.

Donna Yates, Performance of Security at the Drents Museum Helmet Return Press Conference, Anonymous Swiss Collector (Apr. 2, 2026), https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2026/04/performance-of-security-at-the-drents-museum-helmet-return-press-conference.html , archived at https://perma.cc/6X68-JZ6J.

Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse Works Stolen in ‘Three-Minute’ Italian Museum Heist, The Art Newspaper – International art news and events, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/30/renoir-cezanne-matisse-works-stolen-in-three-minute-italian-museum-heist , archived at https://perma.cc/563Y-H7LT (last visited Apr. 3, 2026).

Elizabeth Marlowe’s Review of ‘The Brutish Museum’

Elizibeth Marlowe reviews The Brutish Museum for the International Journal of Cultural Property:

Dan Hicks’s new book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, has made a splash. Designated by the New York Times as one of the best art books of 2020, featured on blogs, podcasts, webinars, and in mainstream newspapers, the book and its author, the professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and curator at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, are suddenly everywhere. This Zoom-enabled ubiquity can be understood in the context of the larger historical reckonings of 2020 and 2021 – a global pandemic fueled by global capitalism, climate change, and incompetent governance; a breaking point in the long saga of police brutality against racial minorities and white indifference to it; a toppling of statues to colonialist and Confederate leaders around the world; and, as I was finishing the book, a final attempt to impeach a hate-mongering US president for fomenting rebellion against the very democratic institutions he swore to serve. In its passionately argued call for the restitution of cultural artifacts looted in one of the most notoriously brutal episodes of colonial violence, The Brutish Museums encapsulates the zeitgeist.
Continue reading, no paywall…

Bookshop.org link for Dan Hicks’, The Brutish Museum’.
Elizabeth Marlowe, Review of Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. 345 Pp. Pluto Press, 2020., International Journal of Cultural Property 1 (Cambridge University Press).

University of Aberdeen will repatriate a Benin bronze to Nigeria

The University of Aberdeen has joined other forward-thinking institutions such as the Humboldt Forum museum in Berlin and announced that it will return a Benin bronze to the Nigerian government. In a statement the University announced the return because of its “extremely immoral” acquisition, and called on other Museums in the United Kingdom to conduct their own inquiry and follow their lead. I could not be more proud of my former University and I hope this move will continue to push other institutions holding on to their colonial treasures to pursue justice for these objects and the creator cultures which desire their return.

Benin’s cultural patrimony was looted by British forces in 1897 during a violent dispute in which a British delegation was attacked, and then a large Punitive Expedition was assembled and exiled the leader of benin Oba Ovonramwen. The British destroyed Benin City and took back to Britain bronze sculptures, brass plaques, and sculptures created with the lost wax process. The Kingdom of Benin as I understand had been a capable and vibrant trading partner with Europe for hundreds of years, but in the 19th Century drive to colonize Africa, the culture and independence of the Kingdom of Benin was an inconvenience for the British empire and so was eradicated and impoverished.

This return continues a rich history of repatriation by the University. Neil Curtis, who head’s Aberdeen University’s museums and special collections said in a statement:

The University of Aberdeen has previously agreed to repatriate sacred items and ancestral remains to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has a procedure that considers requests in consultation with claimants. An ongoing review of the collections identified the Head of an Oba as having been acquired in a way that we now consider to have been extremely immoral, so we took a proactive approach to identify the appropriate people to discuss what to do.

The University museum has a small but lovely collection, and its location, the former Marischal College in central Aberdeen is being renovated, so there were not large numbers of visitors that will be disappointed in not being able to see this object on display. But that should not diminish the just result here. This head will be returned and viewed in context at a new cultural complex in Benin City which will be designed by David Adjaye.

University to Return Benin Bronze | News | The University of Aberdeen, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/14790/ (last visited Mar. 26, 2021);

University of Aberdeen to Return Pillaged Benin Bronze to Nigeria, the Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/university-of-aberdeen-to-return-pillaged-benin-bronze-to-nigeria [https://perma.cc/R4GD-QNQX] (last visited Mar. 26, 2021);

Catherine Hickley, University of Aberdeen to Return Benin Bronze Looted by British Troops to Nigeria, The Art Newspaper, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/university-of-aberdeen-to-return-benin-bronze-looted-by-british-troops-to-nigeria (last visited Mar. 26, 2021);

Alex Greenberger & Alex Greenberger, Scottish University Becomes First to Repatriate Benin Bronze to Nigeria, ARTnews.com (Mar. 25, 2021), https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/university-of-aberdeen-returns-benin-bronze-1234587803/;

University of Aberdeen to Repatriate “looted” Nigerian Bronze Sculpture, BBC News (Mar. 25, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-56513346 [https://perma.cc/M9NE-SXQ9].

Lord Elgin and the Parthenon featured on Stuff You Missed in History Class

Parthenon Frieze at the Acropolis Museum in Athens — The Parthenon frieze depicting the Great Panathenaia at the Acropolis Museum in Athens

The excellent podcast, Stuff You Missed in History Class, (hosted by Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey) has a useful overview of the chronology of the taking of the Parthenon Sculptures by Lord Elgin and his agents. It’s a useful overview, and will likely be of particular use for students or newcomers to the long-running dispute. Useful details include Elgin’s bitter divorce, and the reminder that it was never a good thing to draw the ire of Lord Byron.

European museums to hold Benin Bronze meeting

Benin Bronzes at the V&A Museum in London, via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benin_Bronzes.JPG

Ben Quinn’s piece in the Guardian sheds light on an interesting forthcoming conference which hopes to “establish a permanent display” of Benin material in Nigeria. The Benin bronzes are in many museums in the West, and viewing them gives me to very different reactions. On the one hand, they are terrific to look at, with wonderful detail. But on the other, many of these objects were seized by the British Empire during an 1897 Punitive Campaign. That campaign was as bad as it sounds. To give a brief overview, a British official and his advisors were sent to uncover whether there was ritual human sacrifice taking place in the Kingdom of Benin. When the official and his advisors were killed by the King of Benin, the British responded by destroying the city, and looting as many as 900 of the Benin bronzes to compensate for the costs of the exhibition. Many of these objects were purchased by museums.

Nigeria has requested the return of much of this material, but the museums and collectors who currently possess them have often refused to enter into a dialogue. These negotiations for the return of material can be difficult and contentious, but they do not have to be. Here is hoping the meeting, which will take place in the Netherlands’ National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden will lead to a productive dialogue in the same way that Yale’s return of material to Peru or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act operates.

Quinn’s story highlights the ethical case driving the dialogue, but also some of the challenges:

“I think that among this generation of curators there is an eagerness to find ways towards reconciliation,” said Dr Michael Barrett, senior curator at Stockholm’s Världskulturmuseet. “We are one of the smaller participants in this and it is very early but we are eager to continue with discussions.”

Among the issues still to be resolved are insurance costs and security arrangements. European curators and their west African counterparts are also keen to establish a legal framework that would guarantee the artefacts immunity from seizure in Nigeria.

John Picton, a professor at Soas University of London (formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies) and a former curator of the National Museum in Lagos, said: “The moral case is indisputable. Those antiquities were lifted from Benin City and you can argue that they ought to go back. On the other hand, the rival story is that it is part of world art history and you do not want to take away African antiquity from somewhere like the museums in Paris or London, because that leaves Africa without its proper record of antiquity.”

Ben Quinn, Western Museums Try to Forge Deal with West Africa to Return the Benin Bronzes, The Guardian, Aug. 0, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/cambridge-benin-bronzes-loan-deal [https://perma.cc/8YTH-FC4G].

Folarin Shyllon, One Hundred Years of Looting of Nigerian Art Treasures 1897-1966, 3 Art antiquity and law 253 (1998).

Greek pot set for return thanks to photo archive

“Attic Red-Figure Nolan Amphora, ” a dual-handled vessel dating from 470 B.C.E.

Tom Mashberg reported last week for the New York Times that this red figure amphora will be sent to Italy because of a connection with Gianfranco Becchina.

The match was made thanks to the work of researcher Christos Tsirogiannis, who linked the object with some of the thousands of photographs he has been given access to by Italian authorities. The object was voluntarily relinquished by the gallery, the Royal-Athena Galleries, which have a showroom in Manhattan.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., in a press release stated: Continue reading “Greek pot set for return thanks to photo archive”

“loot” at Texas A&M Law on September 9

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Next Friday Texas A&M Law school is sponsoring a symposium on looted art, cultural property and repatriation. They’ve announced an impressive lineup of speakers:

Don Burris, Senior Founding Partner, Burris & Schoenberg, LLP
Megan Carpenter, Co-Director, Texas A&M Center for Law and Intellectual Law (CLIP)
Monica Dugot, Senior Vice President, International Director of Restitution, Christie’s
Simon Frankel, Chair of Intellectual Property, Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
Deborah Gerhardt, Associate Professor of Law, University of North Carolina
Jennifer Kreder, Professor of Law, Northern Kentucky University
Marilyn Phelan, Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Law Emeritus and former Professor of Museum Science, Texas Tech University
Lucille Roussin, Board of Directors, The Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, and Director, Holocaust Restitution Claims Externship at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

For the details, visit the event page here.

25 Objects Returned to Italy, 0 Arrests

A 6th-century BC Kalpis depicting Dionysos transforming pirates into dolphins

In a ceremony this week officials from the United States and Italy announced the return of 25 looted objects to Italy. The various press releases from the U.S. and Italian authorities have details on all the returns. But I want to highlight one object which fascinates:this 6th-century BC Kalpis, likely looted from near Vulci, which depicts how Dionysus dispatched some Tyrrhenian pirates. It was acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art in 1982, but was later connected by Italian authorities to Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina. The vase was sold in 1982 for a mere $90,000. The history of the object given to the Toledo Museum was that it had been in the collection of a Swiss collector named Karl Haug, and had been in his family since 1935—predating Italy’s 1939 national ownership declaration. In June of 2012 Immigrations and Customes Enforcement agents “consctuctively seized” the vase, allowing it to remain in the possession of the Museum. This week’s ceremony marks the formal return of this and other objects with similar stories.

Elisabetta Povoledo reported for the NYT:

Inquiries were begun in the last decade or so in nine Homeland Security field offices, including New York City, Buffalo, Baltimore, Boston, Miami and San Diego, leading to the returns.

Gen. Mariano Mossa, commander of the T.C.P., said at the news conference that the value of the objects was difficult to gauge. But the quality and rarity of many of the artifacts made them irreplaceable, officials said.

Each artifact returned to Italy had its own story.

The three first-century B.C. fresco fragments depicting human figures, for example, were stolen on June 26, 1957, from the Culture Ministry offices at Pompeii. Tracked to a San Diego warehouse, they were taken by agents in September 2012 from the private collection of an unnamed “American magnate” before they could be sold at auction, Italian officials said.

The authorities later identified the frescoes as belonging to the Allen E. Paulson Trust, which forfeited them to the United States government, which then returned them to Italy.

This is very much in keeping with how these ancient works of art are dealt with. It’s almost exclusively an object-centered approach. These objects are returned while officials in both the United States and Italy are able to announce the hard work they are doing, but there are no new prosecutions.

Elisabetta Povoledo, 25 Looted Artifacts Return to Italy, The N.Y. Times, May 26, 2015.