It is safe to say that most university-aged students can appreciate a free museum. For many students who are lucky enough to attend college in a major city from Washington, DC to Paris, museums often offer free or discounted entry. Museums are wonderful monuments to the arts, antiquity, and culture, of that there is no doubt. However, in recent years, it’s become increasingly apparent that many museums function also as sites of display for a bounty of goods from former colonies. Western museums and the countries in which they reside have been beset for decades by requests from foreign governments to return these relics to their “rightful owners”. However, the arguments that these museums make for keeping them is often tinged with imperialist perspectives. For museums to keep their cultural relevance and reflect the true liberal internationalist, humanitarian ideals they supposedly champion, their governments must return these stolen items to do their part, however minor, in helping to restore the cultural heritage they worked so hard to destroy.
The Elgin Marbles Story
The British Museum is one of the primary culprits in this debate and its Elgin Marbles are often touted as the prime example of a looted good that they are refusing to return. For context, between 1801 and 1812, Thomas Bruce--7th Earl of Elgin and ambassador to the Ottoman Empire--removed a considerable amount of original marble sculptures that had decorated the then-dilapidated Parthenon for centuries. They were taken first to Malta, and then to Britain, where he wanted them to decorate his private home in Scotland, but then due to a costly divorce, was forced to sell them to the British government for around £35,000 pounds, or around £1 million in today’s pound sterling. Elgin argued that his authority for this endeavor came from a mandate given to him by the Sultan of the Ottoman empire, which at the time controlled the territory in Greece, but the original document was never procured, and its authenticity is highly disputed.
Unsurprisingly, the Greek government has requested the marbles back several times. After the restoration of the Hellenic Parliament in 1974, the country first submitted a request through the United Nations. The issue was brought to UNESCO, which went unresolved, and then an official diplomatic request was submitted to the Government of the UK in 1983, which also fell on deaf ears. The Greek government has made this ask in various forms over the subsequent decades, only to be rejected by the British every time on different grounds. Most recently, in November of 2021, the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with Boris Johnson, who insisted that the matter is not the responsibility of the British government, but the trustees of the British Museum. Taken together, the general picture is that the government is unwilling to return them, and blatantly do not wish to give them back.
Legal Grounds
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 27 that “everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and share … its benefits.” This human right has been widely applied to a range of issues, and has also been interpreted as applying to an individual’s right to their own cultural history without infringement by other sovereign nations. Following the end of the Second World War the Constitution of UNESCO was adopted, and with it the idea that cultural property warrants international protection. In 1970, the very succinctly titled Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was drafted by UNESCO, which as the name suggests, encourages cooperation among nations to prevent the illicit movement of cultural property. More recently, the International Committee of the Red Cross established that the prohibition of looting of cultural heritage and obligation to return artifacts illegally exported from an occupied territory falls under international law and should apply to all states, regardless of whether they have ratified the UDHR or the UNESCO treaties.
The limits of such treaties and declarations are evident. They are non-enforceable and are non-retroactive, meaning that countries are unable to cite them as the legal grounds to return objects stolen before they were ratified. With the absence of international binding legal obligations, their return often rests on ethical grounds and increasing public pressure. Additionally, the US, the UK, and France have carefully cultivated their image as the proponents and leaders of the so-called liberal international order, upon which international treaties the United Nations, and the values of UNESCO are supposedly upheld. The hypocrisy of the British, as well as the rest of the Western world to continually ignore the claims of foreign governments is almost comically apparent.
The Imperialism of It All
In addition to their role as valuable cultural institutions, museums also serve as sites of former imperial glory and as monuments to state glory and power. There are many explanations thrown around by Western institutions that attempt to explain away their seeming inability to return the items, but an oft-cited reason is that returning the artifacts to their countries of origin would put them at risk of damage, that they are safe in Western institutions then they would be in their home countries. Art dealer Andre Emmerich summed up the crux of this argument when discussing pre-Columbian Peruvian artifacts, stating that “if Peru cannot properly take care of its national treasures, the rest of world will take care of them for the Peruvians, as it should be.” This argument is more than obviously tinged with imperialist era attitudes, that these countries whose art was stolen from them are somehow lesser than the western institutions who would be able to take care of them “properly.”
Putting aside the reason many of these countries are so unstable is due to centuries of imperial exploitation, the British Museum itself does not have a perfect record when it comes to caring for its collection. In the 1930’s there was an attempt to “clean” the marbles, and significant damage was done to them due to improper and heavy-handed methods. This example is just one of many that undercuts the argument that Western countries must take care of these objects because we can’t possibly trust the countries from which they came. Additionally, the collections that are often on display are just a fraction of the museum’s collection. The British Museum’s collection totals around 8 million objects, and only 80,000 are on display at any given time, around 1% of the total collection. This means that the remaining 99% are kept in storage, oftentimes underneath the museums or in offsite locations. So even when these museums might be keeping them “safe” by keeping them out of sight and out of the public mind, they are still contributing to the continuation of a destruction of cultural heritage.
The argument that countries are unable to care for their own objects also does not hold much merit when almost every country can claim at least one national museum that showcases their history and art that are perfectly capable of showcasing it to their own population. Oftentimes, their collections are so small simply because it’s all held elsewhere. Turning back to Peru, the Museo de Arte Precolombiano in Cusco houses an impressive exhibit of objects created by ancient Andean civilizations. It is the sister institution of the larger Larco Museum in Lima, which was established in 1925, and has an extensive collection of Pre-Columbian art. And in the case of the Elgin Marbles, Greece is more than capable of caring for their own artefacts. The Acropolis Museum is one of the largest and most storied museums in Greece today, housing over 4,250 objects exhibited over 14,000 square meters.
The Met Opportunity
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a wonderful place. It’s a beautiful building on the border of Central Park, and houses thousands of pieces of art, both ancient and modern, and hosts an excellent party once a year. Recently however, it has been at the center of several legal issues relating to their purchasing and displaying of stolen goods. In September of 2022, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seized twenty-seven artefacts, as part of a larger investigation that has led to the repatriation of nearly 2,000 artefacts to their home countries. There has always been a thriving illegal art trade, and much of it can be connected to more illicit organized crime operating outside of official government actions, but this presents an opportunity for countries to work together under the liberal international order they have created to deal with such cross-border issues.
While the Met might be cooperating fully with investigators and has returned said items to Greece, Italy, and Egypt, this should be the norm. In some instances, the Met has even returned objects voluntarily, as in the case of the Benin bronzes, which it has returned to Nigeria. It should be the responsibility of the museums, as well as the governments to take it upon themselves to do the due diligence, the provenance, on all the items in their collections.
These incidents present an opportunity for museums to rethink their role in housing ancient artefacts from former colonies or countries in the global south and their role in attributing rightful ownership where it is due, as part of a larger project of decolonizing the social and cultural sphere. The nature of art, culture, and antiquities might not be as pressing to the international community as other more hot-button topics, but this specific issue is directly tied to the legacy of colonialism. It highlights the responsibility that western countries have to level the playing field which they have dominated unjustly for decades and restore these relics to their rightful owners as well as treating other countries as equals in the global system.
Looking to the Future
While this issue could seem minor in the grand scheme of international global relations, these
cultural artifacts in question are the visible and tangible manifestations of a country’s history, memory, and culture. For them to exist outside of their place of origin works to further perpetuate the cultural genocide of which western countries are guilty. There are simply so many stolen artifacts around the world it is hard to fathom. Some estimates state that between 80-90% of all Africa’s cultural heritage is held outside of Africa by major museums. This article does not even cover a fraction of the larger issue surrounding reparations and the return of cultural artifacts in the post-colonial era. But every country has the right to their history, and if it means, as PM David Cameron once put it, “if you say yes to one, you suddenly find the British museum… empty” then so be it.