Museums and Restitution

New Practices, New Approaches

Louise Tythacott, Kostas Arvanitis, Louise Tythacott, Kostas Arvanitis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409435631
• eBook ISBN: 9781317092858
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

This book examines contemporary approaches to restitution from the perspective of museums. It focuses on the ways in which these institutions have been addressing the subject at a regional, national and international level. In particular, it explores contemporary practices and recent claims, and investigates to what extent the question of restitution as an issue of ownership is still at large, or whether museums have found additional ways to conceptualise and practice restitution, by thinking beyond the issue of ownership. The challenges, benefits and drawbacks of recent and current museum practice are explored. At the same time, the book discusses how these museum practices are received , and informed, by source communities, institutional and governmental agendas and visitors' expectations in order to explore issues of authority, collaboration and shared or conflicting values between the different communities involved in the process. This important book will contribute to the developing body of literature that academics, professionals, policy makers and students can refer to in order to understand how restitution has been negotiated, 'materialised', practiced and evaluated within museums.

Chapter 1
Museums and Restitution: An Introduction

Louise Tythacott and Kostas Arvanitis

Restitution is one of the most important, yet emotive and contentious issues facing Western museums in the twenty-first century. Its current high profile reflects changing global power relations and the increasingly vocal criticisms of the historical concentration of the world’s heritage in the museums of the West. Indeed, the ‘Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums’, which was signed by the directors of eighteen of the world’s most renowned museums in 2003, propelled the subject to the forefront of debate as never before.¹

Over recent years the issue of restitution has taken on new complexions, with different processes emerging. There is an increasing emphasis on museums working with source communities, and on forms of repatriation other than the return of objects (Peers and Brown 2003). The language of discussion too has changed, with, for example, ‘reunification’ as well as ‘repatriation’ being applied in relation to the Parthenon Marbles (Fouseki, Chapter 11). The opening of a new Acropolis Museum in Athens in 2009 further added to the debates. Different issues are coming to the fore in the twenty-first century – for example, the response from the government of the People’s Republic of China to the Yves Saint Laurent auction of Chinese looted bronzes at Christie’s in Paris in 2009. The fact that a range of countries is teaming up to co-ordinate and strengthen their efforts towards repatriation,² demonstrates that this is a trend set to continue.

Despite the increasing importance of the subject for both policies and practices in museums, existing academic publications on the subject have focused largely on legal and political issues.³ Although such texts are useful in framing debates, they often ignore the challenges that claims and discussions of restitution present to museums. The manner – reactive or proactive – in which museum professionals address claims for restitution have not been adequately voiced. Indeed, the developing debates around restitution call for a clearer account of how museums confront the issue. It is vital, therefore, for museum perspectives and practices to be reflected upon. This book does precisely this: it examines contemporary approaches to the subject from the viewpoint of museums and professionals, focusing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject.

Restitution is a highly charged, political subject, entangled within shifting power relations between, and within, countries. Museums are, and have always been, political instruments. National museums, especially, operate as symbols of cultural identity, pride, history and wealth (Dubin 1999, Kaplan 1994, Karp and Lavine 1999, Knell et al. 2011, Macdonald 1998). Museums are part of the apparatus of power within society, reflecting and representing dominant ideologies (Bennett 1995, Tythacott 2010). Yet the museum landscape around the world is increasingly varied and developing as never before. Museums have become ever more complex sites of cultural production, whether they be nationals or smaller, private institutions. Each has its own particular agenda, collection history, form of governance, and each may respond to restitution claims and discussions differently (although this may be less true for countries where public museums are centrally administered by a Ministry of Culture or equivalent). The chapters in this volume demonstrate the diversity of approaches and institutions currently engaged with restitution practices. Although requests for restitution have largely affected museums with ethnographic and archaeological collections, other types of objects have been the subject of claims too.⁴

The public museum is a European creation. The earliest museums of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed out of scholarly and aristocratic collections of the Renaissance (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, Impey and MacGregor 1985, MacGregor 2007). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, increasingly unequal global power relations enabled European countries to accumulate huge numbers of ethnographic and archaeological objects which found their way into their burgeoning museums (Gosden and Knowles 2001, Henare 2005). The collections established during this period were formed under conditions and ideological regimes that bear little relationship to today’s. In the nineteenth century, in particular, colonialism shaped the profile of numerous collections (Barringer and Flynn 1997, Penny 2002, Thomas 1991). As a consequence of the growing dominance of social Darwinism in the late-nineteenth century, museum displays became ever stronger instruments of the dominant ideologies – such as evolutionism, with its clear racist overtones (Bennett 2004, Coombes 1994, Shelton 2000, Tythacott 2011a). Ethnographic museums, in particular, have been the keepers of other people’s cultures, imposing their own classifications and interpretations onto objects from different peoples around the world: indigenous groups almost never had a voice. Artefacts were even removed from communities in the late-nineteenth century–early-twentieth century on the basis that their cultures would become extinct, as a result of the ‘inevitable’ march of Westernization. But certain cultures are still thriving and want their objects back.

While in some cases museums were imposing their own interpretation onto objects collected from around the world, in others they were acquiring antiquities, whose interpretation has been severely limited due to poor documentation or complete lack of their archaeological context. The Grand Tour, antiquarianism and related systematic purchases in the antiquarian market and excavations in Greece, Italy, Turkey and elsewhere resulted in the formation of vast archaeological collections by scholars and collectors, which in turn contributed to the building of large museum collections, mainly in Europe and the USA (Dyson 2006). Such acquisitions were often of objects with no provenance or no or little archaeological context, which is often seen as a sign of possible looting. Authors, such as Renfrew, have explicitly argued that looting has both destroyed the archaeological record and served the ‘lucrative market in illicit artefacts’ (Renfrew 2000: 9).

Nevertheless, the idiosyncratic or systematic collection of Greco-Roman, Egyptian and Asian antiquities by large national museums contributed to the construction of different notions of value (cultural, aesthetic and economic) around the objects, the cultures represented by them and the hosting countries. This not only shaped the development of the Western cultural perspectives (Chippindale, Gill, Salter and Hamilton 2001, Whitehead 2009) but also, either directly or indirectly, fed the emergence or maturity of cultural and national consciousness in countries of origin. Indeed, the rise of the nation states and the process of the nationalization of cultural heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to an increasing awareness and attention to the role of archaeological sites and objects (including museum objects) in constructing or affirming notions of cultural and national identity (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, Diaz-Andreu and Campion 1996, Meskell 1998). This coincided with the ongoing acquisition of archaeological objects, on behalf of collectors and museums in other countries, and authors have argued that this collecting activity was seen, even at the time, as ‘plundering’ or ‘vandalism’ (Tolias 2008 stresses that in relation to Greece) or as undermining the status and pride of the hosting country (as in the case of the Ottoman Empire; Dyson 2006). The publication of the On the Elgin Marbles by Miliarakis in 1888 (Miliarakis, 1994) and Lord Elgin and Earlier Antiquarian Invaders in Greece, 1440-1837. A Historical and Archaeological Treatise, by Ioannis Gennadios in 1930, for example, indicate this cross-over between the acquisition of antiquities and an effort to introduce them into the contemporary political discourse in Greece.

The collecting and acquiring of objects via systematic excavations and the antiquarian market continued till the mid-twentieth century. The late-twentieth century ‘saw a withdrawal as the concerns of the market and of the museums were seen to diverge’; the prices of antiquities in the market were much higher than before and national policies against expatriation of antiquities were put in place (Chippindale, Gill, Salter and Hamilton 2001: 22). This was also the time that more systematic efforts were made to set up international agreements on the movement of cultural property, with the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property being the most notable. The UNESCO convention offered both governments and, subsequently, museums a framework for dealing with objects with undocumented provenance (although its ratification by countries in the receiving end of antiquities has taken a long period of time; the UK ratified it in 2002 and Germany in 2007). Also, the establishment and development in the nineteenth and twentieth century of (often national) museums in countries where antiquities originated, were further seen and used as a political and professional opportunity to articulate the value and relevance of both within and outside the country’s borders antiquities (Binns 1997, Allen 2010). Accordingly, both the willingness and ability of these countries to care for museum objects offered the backdrop of the intensifying repatriation claims.

From the 1980s on in particular, indigenous peoples and nation states have begun to demand a greater voice in how their material culture is presented in museums (Simpson 1996, Turnbull and Pickering 2010). They began to challenge the right of these institutions to tell the stories of their cultures, to display and store collections which belonged to their ancestors. Such demands for self-representation have been more pronounced in ‘White Settler’ societies – the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – as these countries confront the legacy of internal colonizations. But marginalized groups are to be found within many other nations, and they too have become increasingly vocal. Chapter 4 details the way in which the Sámi in Scandinavia have suffered from being characterized as ‘primitive’ and ‘inferior’ in the past, but are now demanding an active role in the representation of their material culture in museums. Van der Maas’s chapter discussed how in the nineteenth century, the people of Urk (in what is now the Netherlands), were absorbed into evolutionary debates and conceptualized as the original ‘Dutch’. In the twenty-first century, the return of their objects from museums is part of the process of reconciliation.

Recent debates have seen something of a change in the power relationships between museums and source communities – from museums representing indigenous communities to dialogue, listening and the incorporation of voices (Karp and Lavine 1991, Peers and Brown 2003, Simpson 1996, Sleeper-Smith 2009). Some museums have become what James Clifford called ‘contact zones’ (1997). The traditional aloofness and neutrality of museums has been challenged by previously ignored communities; questions of power and authority, and about who has the right to represent whom, have come to the fore (Kreps 2003: 2). Ethical questions are increasingly voiced – who are the rightful custodians of objects, and who has the right of ownership. The new museology, as Kreps notes, has been particularly concerned with issues of identity, communities and the politics of control over cultural heritage (Kreps 2003: 10). Museums increasingly embody, and not merely reflect, societal values and concerns (Sandell 2002). Many have become more inclusive, seeking out the views of communities in relation to display and storage. Museums and indigenous peoples may work together to redress past imbalances, using collections as a resource for promoting cross-cultural awareness. Besterman (Chapter 2) argues that museums, as the keepers of material cultural heritage, are in a unique position to heal wounds, ‘make it good’. He is clear that moral authority for interpreting collections should lie not with museums, but with the ‘inheritors of dispossession’. McCarthy too asserts that in New Zealand the needs of the tribal groups are more important than those of the museums (Chapter 5). Concepts of custodianship and community consultation, rather than possession, now tend to mark the language of many.

However, museums seem less able to initiate and sustain such consultations when it comes to cultural heritage that is attached to perceptions and constructions of national identity. In these cases, some museums’ rhetoric of a shared authority for interpreting collections and building bridges between cultures tends to be overruled by countries’ continuing efforts to push the repatriation agenda. Media have reported for example on an ‘aggressive’ (and in cases successful) campaign by Turkey to repatriate antiquities currently in museums in Europe and the United States (Bilefsky 2012). It is interesting that campaigns such as Turkey’s seem to be part of an organized and broader effort to nurture a national, regional and international interest in the cultural heritage of these countries. In many ways, it seems also an effort to ‘regenerate’ their cultural identities, primarily in the eyes and minds of national audiences. The intensity and ‘aggressiveness’ of these requests is also notable and clear by the ‘ultimata’ that museums are presented with, which are often bypassing or ignoring the UNESCO Convention – at least according to the museums ‘under siege’ (Bilefsky 2012). At the same time, the rhetoric utilized to support those claims seem not to have moved on from the ownership issue – if anything, it seems that it has gained new momentum: The ‘General Principles’ agreed by 22 countries at the first Conference on International Cooperation for the Protection and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage (Egypt 2010), state that ‘cultural heritage belongs to the country of origin, and is essential to its culture, development and identity’ and ‘ownership of cultural heritage by the country of origin does not expire, nor does it face prescription’ (http://www.sca-egypt.org/eng/pdfs/RST_ICHC_SA%20Communique_2010-08-20.pdf). Or as Turkey’s director-general of cultural heritage and museums, Murat Suslu put it, ‘We only want back what is rightfully ours’ (Bilefsky 2012).

As a result, museums find themselves often trying to develop alternative repatriation practices and simultaneously being under the pressure of material repatriation requests and campaigns. This increasingly points to the argument that museums need to reflect on the nature and the impact of the unequal relationship that their custodianship and ownership of objects have created. It also suggests that ‘one size fits all’ approach to the museum perceptions and practices of repatriation may not be the way forward in most cases.

Museums are the traditional keepers of material cultural, and restitution thus goes against their basic desire to keep objects in perpetuity. Over the past 30 years, however, we have seen substantial changes in the modus operandi of many museums. The major period of the expansion of North American and North European collections was in the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth century, which, as we have seen, coincided with European power relations and colonialism. Since the mid-twentieth century and decolonization, acquisitions in general, and ethnographic and archaeological acquisitions in particular, have greatly diminished. This is not merely due to fewer opportunities for collecting, and increased international regulation, but also reflects reduced museum budgets. Furthermore, many museums, especially in the UK, have shifted their priorities from being predominantly concerned to acquire collections and preserve objects, to engaging with wider agendas of access, inclusion and social responsibility (Hooper-Greenhill 1997, Sandell 2002). Museums are, also, increasingly asking if they need to keep everything (Merriman 2008), although it is interesting that the discussion and increasing practice of disposals has not been clearly linked to repatriation. For example, the UK Museums Association’s Disposal Toolkit. Guidelines for Museums states that ‘The guidelines do not cover in detail disposal through return or repatriation of items. Museums with collections that may be the subject of requests for repatriation or return are advised to create separate policies and procedures to address this’ (http://www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=15852). However, the discussion around disposal, given that it emphasizes the benefit for the museum, might offer museums an additional route, to justify to themselves and their communities, a more open approach to discussing repatriation claims that are traditionally seen as a ‘threat’ by museums.

In recent years we have also seen changes in the approaches of those traditional guardians of museum collections, the curators. A number of papers in this volume question the undisputed authority of these, and other, official experts. Curatorship was traditionally understood as an expert practice, often validated by academic credentials and by the status of the institution they worked in. The cur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Museums and Restitution: An Introduction
• Part I Overviews
• Part II Perspectives from Around the World
• Part III Reflections on Returns
• Index