Some European museums plan to return the looted works

As a sign of political correctness, the British museum began the analysis of the origin of objects such as the famous Rosetta Stone or the Parthenon marbles, which arrived in this country as a result of colonial practices and slavery, and which in recent years have led to several spaces cultural organizations to return to their countries of origin the pieces resulting from these looting policies.

The British have assembled in its 267 years of existence a heritage of more than eight million pieces, many of which are not in public view but remain in underground galleries.

To begin the analysis of the objects, the museum authorities appointed the curator Isabel MacDonald who, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, will begin to virtually analyze the origins of the claimed objects.

The Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon marbles – which Greece has claimed since the 19th century – and works of art acquired during military interventions in Africa (Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Maqdala, Asante kingdom) are among the claimed gems.

On the other hand, doubts hover over the fact that the institution owns the Chinese imperial treasures captured in Beijing in 1860, a large Moai sculpture from Easter Island, and others taken from the indigenous populations of North America. North, Australia and New Zealand, in times of colonial expansion.

For MacDonald “the main objective is to analyze history and put it in context” by pointing out that “the British are in fact a collection of collections, since few items were purchased directly, most are donations “, according to the Spanish newspaper The avant-garde.

In Europe, the kickoff to reveal the presence of objects produced by colonial looting was given by France through the Senate, which approved the return of 27 pieces to Benin and Senegal, on the basis of a commitment from the president Macron.

However, the museum of Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac It houses 70,000 artefacts from sub-Saharan Africa and some of these items have been claimed by Ethiopia, which is demanding the return of 3,081 artefacts, and Chad, which has submitted a list of 10,000.

Another of the countries that have agreed to return art from its former colonies is the Netherlands, which would have about 450,000 piecesThese include a 70-carat diamond that once belonged to the Sultan of Banjarmasin, a silver gourd from Curacao and the 18th-century banjo made by an African enslaved in Suriname, the Boekman Foundation recently announced.

In the case of Spain, since 2017, Colombia has requested the return of the Quimbaya treasure, made up of 122 pre-Columbian gold objects exhibited in America Museum in Madrid.

One of the most important collections of colonial art in Spain is the legacy of the Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures, which contains 72,000 coins, but no country has claimed these coins.

In his collections there are also more problematic pieces collected by prominent Catalan men in the former colonies, in Guinea, Ecuador and Peru, or from the General Exhibition of the Philippines, held in 1887 in Madrid, where there was even a human zoo.

“It is a complex question because although they are legally purchased and perfectly documented, they are not egalitarian transactions but take place under conditions of superiority: as if they were trinkets that we then put inside. of certain showcases and assign them the category of art ”, he admitted Oriol Pascual, responsible for public programs.

In Germany, the issue of looted or stolen African art is not on the agenda of the authorities who hide behind the fact that they will do everything possible to collaborate with the countries of origin so that the pieces be exhibited from a non-European perspective.

In December the Humboldt Forum, a large cultural center in the former royal palace in Berlin – rebuilt for this purpose – which will house more than 20,000 works of art and other pieces from Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania, many of them former German colonies.

One of the controversial cases is the bust of Nefertiti, whose return Egypt has been demanding for years, without success, since the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), owner of the bust, insists that the documentation guarantees the good.

Source: Telam

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