The British Museum assesses the return of looted works …

Several European museums are evaluating the possibility of returning works belonging to their collections obtained through looting and colonialism. The most notable case is that of the British Museum, which has begun a conservation task to examine the collection and cases of material claimed by other countries.

Isabel MacDonald will be in charge of reviewing the material accumulated at the British Museum since its inauguration in 1759. There are eight million pieces, and most of them are not in sight of visitors, but in the underground galleries, of a museum closed by the Coronavirus pandemic.

The claims include figures such as Hans Sloane, the man whose huge collection of 71,000 objects formed the basis of the Museum’s collection. Sloane, whose donation allowed the institution to exist, traveled the Caribbean and was linked to slavery practices. The trials also reach the explorer James Cook, the principal navigator of the Pacific Ocean in the 18th century.

The museum’s collection is immense. The Parthenon marbles are claimed by Greece. The Rosetta Stone is also part of a dispute with Egypt, which claims the stele on which a decree was carved 200 BC.

To these objects are added the material obtained during military incursions in Africa and the pieces looted in China, on Easter Island and in Oceania.

“The main objective is to analyze history and put it into context,” said MacDonald, for whom “the British are actually a collection of collections, since few items were purchased directly, most are donations.

What is happening in France and Holland

The British case is joined by France. The French Senate returned 27 pieces to Senagal and Benin at the end of 2020, as part of a restitution program of this “temporary or permanent” collection in their countries of origin.

Ethiopia, for its part, asks France to return more than 3,000 objects, and Chad is demanding 10,000 more. In the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum alone, 70,000 objects are imported from Africa.

The Netherlands announced a similar policy. In his case, it’s 450 thousand coins. One of the most significant is a 70-carat diamond that belonged to the Sultan of Banjarmasin, a silver gourd from Curacao and an 18th-century banjo that belonged to a slave from Suriname.

Germany denies the debate

However, there is one big exception: Germany. There, the authorities hide behind the idea of ​​presenting the material from a non-European perspective.

At the end of 2020, a large cultural center, the Humboldt Forum, was inaugurated in Berlin, which brings together elements of the Ethnological Museum and Asian Art Museum. This is more than 20 thousand works of Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania.

Among some special cases of the Teutonic territory, it is worth mentioning one of the Beninese bronzes, which were taken away by English colonizers and ended up in Germany. Nigeria demands his return. Germany refuses and the Minister of Culture, Monika Grütters, asserts that the Humboldt Forum will be “a model and a benchmark” for reflection on colonialism: a way of elegantly denying the debate on restitution.

The other case concerning Germany is that of the bust of Nefertiti, which is exhibited in Berlin. German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt took it in 1913 and it is claimed by Egypt. The coin is in the hands of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which claims the papers guarantee its possession.