Johannesburg — Much of Africa’s cultural property was looted during colonial times and has since been housed in museums and private collections in Europe and North America. But in recent decades, African countries have begun to Returning stolen treasure.
Last week, 39 artefacts were formally returned to the Ugandan government by Britain’s prestigious Cambridge University. The return is technically a three-year loan between museums, but it can be extended and there is a chance the artefacts may remain in their country of origin.
Tourism Minister Martin Mugala said the return of the cultural property was still significant, even though many important artefacts remain overseas. Social Media PostsHe said efforts to return the works began in 2016 as part of the “Rethinking Uganda Museums” project in collaboration with the University of Michigan.
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“These priceless items were taken from Uganda by British colonial administrators, anthropologists, missionaries and soldiers in the 1890s and early 1900s,” he said.
The items, which had been kept at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for over 100 years, include human bones from the Wamala tomb, a headdress made of human hair and a traditional Bunyoro drum.
Ugandan cultural heritage experts say the artefacts will be acclimatised to the Ugandan environment before being put on display in 2025 or 2026.
Reparations remain a common issue for many African governments and communities, as more and more call for accountability and the return of objects of cultural value looted before or during colonial rule.
In April, London’s popular Victoria and Albert Museum loaned 32 artifacts removed from what is now Ghana more than 150 years ago to the country’s current king. The items were stolen from the Ashanti king’s court during conflict between his people and British forces.
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The gold peace pipes, swords and other important items were returned to the King on long-term loan from the museum. In Ashanti culture, gold artefacts are believed to contain the souls of past kings, and the return of the treasure was described as the return of “the soul of the people”.
Why are artefacts loaned out rather than returned?
In February, the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles, permanently returned seven objects looted by the Ashanti people of Ghana. In a statement released at the time, museum directors said they considered themselves “temporary custodians of the items in our collection.”
“When works are taken from their original owners or communities through violence or coercion, it is our ethical responsibility to do all we can to return those items,” said Erica Jones, senior curator and curatorial manager of African art at the Fowler Museum.
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But many European museum collections tend to be state-owned, with laws regulating their management, and often prohibiting the removal of collections or “deaccessioning” them to their original owners. To permanently return disputed antiquities from their collections, these countries would need to change their laws.
a 1963 Act It banned the British Museum in London from removing artefacts from its collection unless they were copies, damaged or deemed “inappropriate” for the collection.
Under the National Heritage Act 1983, the V&A cannot legally return the objects in its collection.
Most museums in the US are privately owned, except for those run by the state-run Smithsonian Institution, which means museums like the Fowler can return artifacts to their original owners more easily and quickly.
“I agree that in order to maintain public trust in museums, disposing of collections should not be done lightly,” Ngaile Blankenberg, a museum expert at Creative Repair Studio and former director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, told CBS News.
But, she added, “if the will is there, the law can be changed.”
“Most of the laws banning reparations were enacted long after the works in question were stolen, or in some cases were enacted to justify criminal activity,” Blankenberg said. “If a law can only be enacted in 1983, for example, surely there’s a mechanism to repeal or amend it in 2024?”
Within weeks of arriving at NMAFA in Washington, D.C., Blankenburg Benin’s bronze medal returned It remained in the museum collection for a long time.
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“As an African, I personally find it unpleasant to see looted African artworks on display as trophies, even if there is written underneath about how they were removed from their original locations,” she said. “So, I immediately removed them from the exhibition and began discussions with the Nigerian Museums and Monuments Commission about what they wanted to do with the bronzes. They expressed a desire to return the bronzes, and so the process began.”
“It’s not just a question of ownership.”
How contested artefacts are displayed is a problem in itself.
Tens of thousands of African artifacts are scattered across the Western world, but the slow pace of liquidation so far means most of them are unlikely to be returned anytime soon.
Blankenberg said it’s important for museums and galleries to consider how such works are displayed, including whether they are accompanied by an explanation of why ownership is disputed and what words are used to describe the work and its significance.
“It’s not just a question of ownership, but also of spiritual significance,” she says. “In some cases, what we might call ‘inanimate’ objects, described only by their materials, are actually considered living beings – ‘having a soul’ – in the society of their origin. Using Eurocentric criteria loses the context and meaning of these objects, leading to misunderstandings, assumptions and stereotypes about the culture of their origin. So the question is not just who owns these things, but who gets to decide who sees them, how they are displayed, how they are documented, and what role they play in understanding the world.”
Plundered Relics It has been debated for decades, but without these collections many Western museums might not exist in their current form.
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While countless researchers, conservators, archivists, scholars, administrators and curators have built their careers on their expertise in managing these collections, African institutions and scholars suffer from a chronic lack of resources and often must travel to the West to access works from their own cultures.
“We need to recognize not only the harm of the theft itself but the ongoing harm that robbing cultures of their masterpieces, spiritual leaders and cultural icons does to people. What has undoubtedly added value to Western museums has been damaging to African societies and scholarship,” Blankenberg said.
Moving forward to make amends for the past
There is a growing belief among antiquities experts that reparations must go beyond mere handover and include recognition of the damage and economic compensation in the form of money and other resources.
They believe a fundamental apology is also needed, along with a pledge never to repeat past crimes.
As the Ugandan artworks returned last week are studied and prepared to be exhibited again in their home country next year, experts in the field agree this should be seen as the beginning, not the end.
Blankenburg and others hope there is an opportunity to create strong, sustainable, well-resourced institutions in Africa to rebalance African arts and knowledge on one hand, and the other on the other, with the continent’s former colonial powers on the other.
Molemo Moiloa is co-founder of Open Restoration Africa, which studies the restitution process and provides small grants to activists and other researchers working to return artifacts to their rightful owners across Africa.
The group compiled a report in 2022 that showed “a major shift in discourse and action, but it started from a zero base, total denial and indifference,” Moiloa told CBS News.
“Policy progress is finally happening and people acknowledge the need for restitution, but it’s not happening yet,” she said, noting that experts estimate 90 percent of Africa’s cultural and historical materials have been kept outside the continent for hundreds of years.
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The decision on whether to return artefacts now rests entirely on the leadership of Western museums and their owners.
“Africans need to be given the resources to deal with the return and ultimately be in charge of all aspects of decision-making,” Moiloa said.
“We found that many museums house a lot of African art, and opening a new wing or opening the works to the public creates a certain visibility and demands accountability,” she said. “This is just one step in the conversation. Many museums see the opening of a wing as the end, but this should be seen as the beginning of a conversation with the public – a hidden and transparent engagement with museum collections that can lead to Africans getting back what they want.”
Several recent visits to the continent by Max Hollein of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Emmanuel Cassarherou of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris were seen as a positive sign of a potentially new approach to Africa.
This could be a sign, for example, that France is fulfilling a promise made by President Emmanuel Macron in 2018 to repatriate all African artifacts held in French museums.
The return of the loaned art to its home country is ultimately just a diplomatic exercise — the real test is what happens next.
Will the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of contested works from Africa housed at the Quai Branly ever actually return home? The Met, which handles the disputed works What will be added to the collection when the new gallery of African art opens next year?
“We need concrete and immediate action, not just lip service,” Blankenberg said.