On Nov. 24, the 37th annual Brandeis University Thanksgiving Tea was held in London. This event highlights the endurance of the Brandeis community and is the longest-running Alumni Association event held in the World. Current Brandeis students studying abroad are invited to attend, learn and meet alumni in Great Britain, forging the connections between their pasts and our futures. Sharon Rosenberg ’00, Senior Director of Alumni Relations, spearheaded this event with a passion felt by all students and alumni present.

The main event of the Tea was not the delicious food or the lively conversations reminiscing on times in the New York City Boroughs or Miami neighborhoods, but rather the inspiring speech delivered by Prof. Alexandra Ratzlaff (CLAS). 

Ratzlaff graduated in 2003 from George Washington University’s Archaeology, Classical Studies and Anthropology Program. She then went on to complete a Postbaccalaureate Ph.D. at Boston University’s Department of Archaeology in 2012. The Justice had the incredible opportunity to attend this talk and discuss it with her afterward one-on-one.

These conversations often can be tricky to follow, specifically for the general public who are often left out of the intricacies of a museum’s legal relations with foreign bodies. It is for this reason that restitution, or the return of cultural objects to their original community, creator, culture or descendants of such, is often a source of contention in the public sphere. Any of those groups connected to the cultural heritage of an object can submit a restitution claim against the entity that holds the object, known as a steward. Restitution claims can be denied, accepted, negotiated and ignored, essentially halting the process of restitution. This is a huge problem, as it completely freezes out the agreed upon international law from enacting its purpose. There are countless examples of museums, public and private, refusing, accepting or ignoring restitution claims, all of which cause a litany of arguments and problems ranging from foreign relations, economics, artistic restoration and overflowing storerooms which produce no scholarship. All of these are problems that exist hand in hand with restitution, oftentimes not seen by a public that desires to see repatriation through their screens without understanding the legal ramifications of the process. Ratzlaff tackled and explained these problems in her speech last month.

Ratzlaff’s presentation was entitled, “Antiquities, Museums, and Monuments: The Future of The Past,” which concerned the history and future of tangible items of cultural heritage, currently housed in museums. This talk took a scholarly lens to the controversy and challenge that collections face today — highlighting restitution as a major problem. As a case study in restitution Ratzlaff used the Parthenon Marbles, parts of which are currently conserved in the British Museum. Greece has submitted numerous restitution claims for these works and all have fallen on deaf ears.

To define cultural heritage, Ratzlaff took a global perspective, discussing the tangible, intangible, movable and immovable. She also discussed the history of museums and collections, from the Neo-Babylonian Museum of Ennigaldi-Nanna to the encyclopedic museums of today. 

Discussing the question of the Parthenon Marbles, Ratzlaff examined the past to determine the validity of the restitution claim, the restitution claim itself, the arguments posed by Greece and Britain and the ramifications of repatriation, setting a precedent for other works. Unfortunately, no set conclusion has been realized for the problems with restitution, instead Ratzlaff invites us to ponder the potential future of these artifacts. Finally, Ratzlaff left us with the resting global question. How will restitution exist in the future, and what will its consequences be?

Following her talk, The Justice interviewed Ratzlaff to discuss some of the problems concerning repatriation and her opinions on some of the pressing ethical issues facing museums today. 

It is important to clarify a certain time period we will be discussing. In 1954, the Hague Convention was the first international law convention that discussed how art was taken in World War II. Since then, repatriation has been an ongoing project. Ratzlaff shared, “Much of it the results of the Monuments Men and Jewish families especially, coming forward and asking for repatriation and putting the work in … And that I think inspired a lot of different groups, and it did set precedent, it set precedent around the world, especially legal precedent.” Now as repatriation has grown to encompass not just art taken during war, but art taken during colonialism, “then wartime in a lens sort of morphed into colonialism. People saw parallels.” It is important to note, however, that not all art exchanged during periods of conflict and struggle was necessarily through illegal transfer, some were bought, traded or taken through legal means. This form of ownership, and subsequent proprietorship, known as Good Faith Stewardship, refers to the supposed legal ownership and responsibility of an artifact, which typically expands to a moral responsibility.

On the subject of Good Faith Stewardship, Ratzlaff had much to say. “It [Good Faith Stewardship] exists in intent and practice. I do think many of the museums who are being challenged do have intent in mind and they do understand the brevity of the position they are put in; that they have a responsibility to the public, to their patrons, to the country they’re in.” She also stressed the importance of idealism and realism in certain circumstances as well, “At the same time, it is not always realistic to be the kind of steward that is expected of them, especially in some of these high-profile situations such as the Parthenon Marbles … there is also an immense amount of logistics behind some of these controversies, it is not a straightforward answer.” This idealist and realist compromise has been a frustrating part of restitution for the public who wish to see the Parthenon Marbles reunited in Athens. Yet the ramifications of restitution are still left private, not shown to the public. “The complete ramifications of either holding onto artifacts or repatriation isn’t always explained to the public, and I think that is something that needs to be brought more attention to.” As a result, the negative reactions to museums have been felt and a skewed perception of museums has formed in the public’s mind. “Museums who are being decent stewards of the majority of their artifacts, and they have one controversial piece that is under fire, [the public] abandons the fact they do have a good experience … Some of these controversies can overshadow the benefits of these museums and what they do bring to the public.” 

Controversy often follows difficult questions of culture, such as who owns culture, whether culture changed, and if culture has developed. Because of the mutability of culture over time, and the difficulty in its definition, The Justice hoped to discuss how heritage can impact the discussions of restitution with Ratzlaff. We explored the question of cultural heritage’s impact on a claim to an object given how culture has changed, and political borders have shifted over time. Ratzlaff had this to say: “Who do we repatriate to [when] certain groups don’t exist anymore? The issue of empire, we get angry about imperialism and decolonization but from a modern perspective you are making the assumption that everybody from a former empire is still this homogeneous group and it’s not.” This discussion opened up even more, as we shared our own preconceptions. “It’s an important question because it also brings into privy the idea of  unintended cultural biases. You cannot separate the knowledge you have now from the conversation. We understand modern borders have changed; we understand that some of the people involved are not the same group as in antiquity. There are more nuances involved in it.” These sorts of problems explain why repatriation isn’t always perfect because “Cultural Heritage and repatriation is something that has to be addressed on such an individual basis. We can’t ‘empty out all the museums and return [artifacts] all to their rightful owners.’ Statements like that are so loaded with misconceptions, and it is not possible because you have to consider things like the imperial past and colonization.”

One specific case of restitution that has been at least partially fulfilled is the Benin Bronzes. These sculptures are personal items, looted by the British occupying powers from the Palace of Benin in the late 19th century. These bronzes have a rich history depicting the Oba, or the kings of the Benin Kingdoms. A number of these bronzes are currently conserved at the British Museum. Recently a restitution of two of these bronzes occurred, not to the state of Nigeria, the previous receiving party of such restitutions, but to the court of Edo, the seat of power of the Benin Kingdom situated in Nigeria. 

This complication of who these artifacts belong to has been criticized and praised in the past. But it also raises the question of who is consuming the artifacts. Who is dictating the restitution? Ratzlaff adeptly explained,  “If you have cultural groups that can still be represented and that these objects can be directly traced back to, those are the groups that should be dictating the nuanced return. Not all artifacts are meant to be consumed by the public, although we can appreciate them for their beauty and their artistic contribution to society and culture, you have to consider their original intent and representation of that culture.” She went on to describe a hopeful future given the present for these artifacts, “I think that what has been happening with the Benin Bronzes and their repatriation has been, while fraught with problems, a good example of museums, private groups, collectors, and cultural representatives working together and at least having conversations, because there is a dialogue there. There is a complete lack of dialogue in other situations.”

From here, it is useful to turn to the future and examine our place in this tangled, complex conversation. Coming together at this presentation as members of the Brandeis community, across the Atlantic, a certain sentiment lingers. Highlighted by the message of Ratzlaff’s insightful work, I felt that the possibility for a future lies in the past. For the alumni present, it was a look back on their past, and for the students and recent graduates, Brandeis remains a part of our future. The inquisitive skills we learn as students at Brandeis clearly do not diminish as hands shot up for the Question and Answer section. That isn’t to say Brandeis students don’t change after graduation, but it is clear that our education is not something we experience, but something that resides within us long after the moment we cross the stage at graduation. There seemed to be a desire for the future within these alumni, a motivation for compromise, change and development, despite the slow, long, arduous process that lay ahead. For young people, however, this problem of repatriation still looks so long and complex, but they are motivated by their anger at injustice, hope for compromise or revolutionaries for restitution. So where does that leave us? Ratzlaff had some advice for the audience, “On a sort of sliding scale of what can be done I think repatriation is often at Z. A to Y there’s a lot that can be done and I think that changing the situation as it is now, and change should happen, I am in agreement, but we can work on education, we can work on having a multiplicity of voices represented, thinking about who is consuming this art and archaeology, who is consuming the past.” She continued to say that there are ways for the younger generation to get involved, “As we have a next generation of professionals coming into the field, thinking about how material is displayed who’s consuming it and making that obligation more a priority. Museums are supposed to be for everyone, even the most elite museums in the world can be appealing … That opening these things up, having digital archives, having virtual reality exhibits, having things that immerse yourself in more senses because that’s what people will come to expect.” 

As history moves forward, the next generation will naturally take up the mantle of archaeologists, art historians, classicists, writers, curators and conservators, and we are coming up to our crowning moments. It is now our responsibility to present the past with the criticisms of the past. This is already happening, as the newer generations’ demands are being listened to, Ratzlaff explains, “I think that some museums, and I will speak freely, the British Museum did an excellent job recently on the Roman Army exhibit because it had interactive parts to it, it was geared at families, at older people, at people in wheelchairs that might be disabled, you didn’t have to stand up and sort of see an exhibit showcase, and I think that’s important.” It is possible for us to continue this movement, to work within the system, while also making efforts to change it. We cannot throw out the encyclopedic museum as a concept or group, but we can hold them to a higher standard.

There are hundreds of artifacts still housed in encyclopedic museums that have been requested back by their countries, cultures, and peoples of origin. The work that these groups have done for restitution is a shining beacon to the future, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for their resilience and strength. Their works are still taken, cached away and oftentimes held hostage in economic negotiations. I want to remind us of our power in numbers, in demanding justice, but also in demanding equity, education, accessibility and research.

— The Justice overseas staff writer Mikey Terrenzi ’26 was a Classical Artifacts Research Collection Fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year and did contribute to this article.