Museums and stolen objects

Museums have a long history of showcasing looted and stolen objects. Places such as the British Museum in England and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City are some of the biggest offenders. Often these stolen objects are items of cultural importance and were obtained through raiding archaeological sites, such as the Rosetta Stone — a fragment of a stone slab that has allowed researchers to translate portions of Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

The Rosetta Stone was taken by force from Egypt, first discovered by the French in 1799 and then later given to England in the 1801 Capitulation of Alexandria. While many have questioned the British Museum’s legal claim to the Rosetta Stone, in the early 2000s the British Museum confirmed its claim of the Rosetta Stone based on an agreement with the French in 1801. However, since then, there has been an increasing demand for the British Museum to return the Rosetta Stone to Egypt. 

Demands for repatriation of looted or stolen artifacts to their countries of origin are not specific to the Rosetta Stone. Many cite the need to repatriate artifacts on the grounds of returning stolen pieces of culture to their original countries. In a 2022 interview with PBS, Monica Hanna, dean at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, described the British Museum’s possession of the Rosetta Stone as “a symbol of Western cultural violence against Egypt.” Hanna’s view is in line with those who are also in favor of the repatriation of stolen artifacts from Western museums. Repatriating items returns not only cultural artifacts to cultures that have been historically exploited by Western countries but is also a way of recovering history that may have been destroyed elsewhere, often by the same countries that exploited them. 

In the 1970 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, UNESCO passed a treaty to provide “an international framework for the prevention of theft and looting and the return and restitution of stolen property.” This treaty drastically reduced the amount of looting on the account of Western museums, however in terms of repatriation of stolen artifacts there is still a long way to go. The British Museum for example is to this day notorious for the copious amounts of stolen artifacts still in their possession. In fact, the British Museum has so many items they are not even able to display the majority of them — to the point that many collections are shelved for solely research purposes. This year the British Museum fired several employees after several artifacts were found missing or damaged. This inability to safeguard items of foreign cultural patrimony only strengthens the argument of those who continue to fight for the repatriation of stolen artifacts. 

Why museums? 

With all of the ethical concerns surrounding museums that are ever increasing, the question becomes: Why museums? New technologies allow for digital copies of items of cultural patrimony through a variety of methods. In addition, with rapid technological advances near identical replicas can be made. This includes using the original materials as opposed to 3D printing when ethical. The ability to make replicas theoretically should allow for further repatriation of stolen artifacts. If almost exact replicas can be made, why do museums continue to hold onto the original items? For that matter, why even make physical replicas when digital replicas can be made? 

One answer to this question lies in how museum goers create connections to artifacts based on how they perceive them. Influenced by how museum’s showcase items, people build relationships with museum artifacts through relating them to their own lives, often by how important they deem artifacts to be and whether or not they have a connection to the artifacts culture of origin. Additionally, museum spectators get drawn in by the novelty of seeing the actual artifacts people several hundreds or even thousands of used. It is not so much that people connect to the artifacts but that they make a human connection to the people who originally used them. 

However, museums intentionally manipulate the perception of these objects. Just like living things, artifacts also have their own history, often extending far beyond  the living things and the people that created them. Logically as different people and often different cultures use objects, artifacts tend to outgrow their original purpose.

An example of a museum’s manipulation of how objects are perceived can be seen in the Worcester Art Museum. In their collections, the Worcester Art Museum has on display an artifact labeled as a sarcophagus. Interestingly enough, in the description of the object, the museum notes that at one point in its history the object was modified to be used as a water trough for livestock. Much of the information available about the object is only related  to when it was a sarcophagus. Objects have complex histories and to only view them through a specific historical context excludes part of its history and cultural significance. This also questions how objects are displayed and what information is excluded based on the way they are displayed. For example, the Parthenon in Greece has been  used for several purposes and by several different cultures. However, Greece chooses only to  present the classical history of the Parthenon. By choosing to only display the Parthenon’s  classical history Greece has erased cultural knowledge from when the Parthenon was used by other cultures and purposes. 

Who gets to decide what part of an object’s history is important enough to be displayed? Is one time period of  history more important than another? Is learning about the ancient world more valuable than learning about modern history? Will a culture be hurt by erasing an object’s history though displaying it through a specific lens? Is presenting this project’s object as a sarcophagus instead of a water trough more valuable? These are all questions that should be considered when evaluating an object or collection of objects. Further, by assigning different values to different uses of artifacts, museums actively participate in the erasure of culture and history. 

In total, while museums have made many strides in recent years to operate more ethically, through both the acquisition of artifacts and how those artifacts are displayed, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. New technologies and continued demands for further repatriation of artifacts are already making some reevaluate what exactly museums should be. These questions are already causing change in the museum world and sure to create more in the future.