Cultural Vandalism: Return Items?
No Consensus on Whether to Give Back, Keep Looted Cultural Treasures
Oct 2, 2008
For centuries, explorers, invaders, and opportunists have helped themselves to the cultural treasures of other countries. Many of those items ended up in private collections or museums far from where they were created. Some examples of these are: the Parthenon Marbles (Greece), the Axum obelisk (Ethiopia), the Codex Gigas (Czechoslovakia), and the Euphronios Krater (Italy). Although it may seem a simple matter when a country demands the return of its cultural treasures, the arguments for and against the return of the items reveal vastly different points of view.
Cultural Property and Self-Determination: Benin Bronzes
Demands for the return of artwork and artifacts are often infused with painful memories of subjugation and colonialism. In their formative years, European countries were constantly fighting off invading marauders. Later, European countries themselves conquered and colonized African, Asian, and Latin American countries, exploiting the abundant natural and cultural resources of those areas.
Some critics have characterized the refusal to return cultural property as a deprivation of the right of self-determination; in other words, the people of the countries where the items originated are denied the right to determine how to develop their cultures. For example, in 1897, British soldiers seized thousands of bronze plaques and masks from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, located in what is now Nigeria. The bronzes became part of the collections of art institutions throughout the Western world. Nigeria managed to buy back some of the bronzes, but its attempts to get back the rest have been ignored.
In the meantime, almost no pre-1900 African artwork – which was usually made of wood – survives, and modern Nigerians no longer know the techniques used to craft the Benin Bronzes. While the bronzes sit in museums far away, the Nigerians cannot see, evaluate, and relate to items created by their predecessors.
James Cuno: Borderless Culture
Museums and countries that house cultural treasures taken from other places rely on a variety of arguments for refusing or delaying the return of the items. Sometimes an institution will claim that it had permission to take items from another country. This is the stance taken by Yale University in the face of demands by Peru for the surrender of artifacts from Machu Picchu. According to Yale, it had the permission of the Peruvian government of the early 20th century to remove the items from the sacred site.
A common argument by Western museums is that they are in a better position to protect art and artifacts in their collections from destruction or damage than are the countries where the items were created.
Other experts, such as James Cuno, who is president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, argue that culture belongs to everyone and cannot be confined by political boundaries. In their view, modern countries have no greater right than anyone else to claim ownership of objects of antiquity, which is defined as having been made more than 150 years ago.
Pointing out that the looting of archaeological sites continues to this day, Cuno has questioned the usefulness of laws enacted to prevent this type of cultural vandalism. He has written that such laws promote nationalism and “identity politics,” which he defines as the exploitation by modern governments of their superficial link with cultural antiquities for ideological purposes.
Debate on Return of Antiquities Rages on
Some countries, such as Italy and Egypt, have stepped up efforts to get back their antiquities by using laws that are on their books and the court system. Other countries lack the means to take such aggressive and costly measures against institutions that steadfastly refuse to surrender antiquities in their collections.
Clearly, the debate on whether to return cultural treasures to their places of origin is far from over.
