Tuesday 17 November, 5.30pm until 7.00pm, London School of Economics
Venue: Thai Theatre, London School of Economics, New Academic Building, 54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3LJ
Tickets: £7.50 (£5 concessions) per person. Tickets are available from the Academy of Ideas website.
For the past two centuries, the West has acquired treasures of the ancient world to fill its museums, so that visitors to the British Museum in London for example can see historic artefacts from all over the world. In recent years, though, various countries and even ethnic communities within countries have begun to demand the return of artefacts. Several North American museums were recently rocked by claims from countries including Italy that objects in their collections had been acquired illicitly. In response they returned over a hundred objects. Meanwhile a former curator of antiquities from the prestigious Getty Museum is currently on trial for conspiracy to traffic in illicit antiquities. In response to this controversy, UNESCO has encouraged the development of policies and laws which state that artefacts excavated after 1970 belong to the nation states in which they were found.
Where do treasures from the past rightly belong, and why? Should they be housed in the country of origin where locals as well as visitors can see them in their historic context, or in an institution with objects from everywhere? Often it is not clear what it means to say something belongs to a particular country. The Parthenon Marbles pre-date by millennia the formation of the Greek state, for example, while terracotta Nok sculptures found in Nigeria have little to do with that country’s culture today. Some argue the policy of repatriating such objects, along with ‘nationalist retentionist’ policies, promote divisive identity politics over a universalist appreciation of objects of art as part of world history. But is this just a self-serving argument on the part of Western institutions who already have much of the best ‘stuff’ from world history? Some argue museums should return objects or at least consult with the relevant communities as a form of reparations for colonialism. But does this unhelpfully politicise museums in the here and now? Others argue contentious artefacts should be entrusted to an international nongovernmental agency. But who might sit on this suggested nongovernmental agency and what power should they have? So are things best left where they are, or returned whence they came in the interests of fairness?
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Other formats are available here
Dr James Cuno president and Eloise W. Martin director, Art Institute; author, Whose Culture? The promise of museums and the debate over antiquity | |
Dr Maurice Davies partner, the Museum Consultancy; senior research fellow, Department of Management, King's College London | |
Dr Tatiana Flessas lecturer, cultural property and heritage law, LSE | |
Chair: | |
Dr Tiffany Jenkins
writer and broadcaster; author, Keeping Their Marbles: how treasures of the past ended up in museums and why they should stay there |
I am a restitutionist – but the new museum fails to clinch the case. It is not so much an argument as a punch in the face.
Simon Jenkins, Guardian Comment is free, 22 October 2009Was art in ancient times always plundered art?
Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement, 30 September 2009Whose Culture? - a collection of essays defending the vital importance of museums - is a welcome challenge to repatriation policies underpinned by identity politics.
Tiffany Jenkins, spiked, 29 May 2009Prosecutions of art dealers in U.S. and foreign courts for trading in antiquities are on the rise, but only one criminal case so far involves an American museum official.
Kate Fitz Gibbon, The Magazine Antiques, 26 March 2009The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found.
James Cuno (ed.), Princeton University Press, 19 March 2009
Tiffany Jenkins talks to James Cuno about looting, exporting and owning antiquities
Tiffany Jenkins, The Spectator, 17 July 2008For the first time two prominent staff members of the British Museum have participated in a major cultural event in Greece
Helena Smith, Guardian Art & Design blog, 21 March 2008The cooling of national passions reveals the real reason why the Elgin Marbles belong in Bloomsbury.
Josie Appleton, spiked, 13 January 2004