Should museums return antiquities to their countries of origin? Some say no
New fronts have opened up in the war of cultural restitution, raising complex ethical and legal questions as some argue against museums returning foreign artefacts
Among the drawn-out conflicts rarely out of the news is one in which entrenched, often nationalist campaigners from assorted countries, demanding the return of antiquities they claim as their own, lob shells of rhetoric at the equally dug-in Western museums that now house them.
Those institutions mostly keep their heads down and avoid returning fire, shying from both the big guns of books and newspaper editorials, and the strafing via social media that any retort, however well-reasoned, tends to attract.
For decades the front lines in this battle have mostly stayed where they are, as have the antiquities in question.
Some demands are for the particular return of items taken with violence, such as the Benin Bronzes – thousands of plaques and other objects of cast brass, looted from the shrines of West African kings by British forces in 1897.
Other demands are merely for items of particular significance, as with the long-standing Greek campaign for the return of friezes and statuary from Athens’ Parthenon, now in the British Museum. A meeting between the Greek and British prime ministers in December sent a frisson of speculation that there might be an end to the stalemate, if only in the form of a loan in exchange for other Greek antiquities.
In September, Egyptian ex-minister of state for antiquities affairs, long-time self-publicist and soi-disant Indiana Jones of Egypt, Zahi Hawass, relaunched a campaign for the return of three specific items to Cairo from museums in London, Berlin and Paris. This looks unlikely to be successful.
