Rethinking Cultural Artifacts

I grew up in America with distinct memories of walking through African or Asian museum exhibits as a child. Despite how many times I visited these institutions and stared up at the art before me, I never thought to wonder how global artifacts came to be in the hands of these American museums. A curator’s job was a mystery to me; I believed that all the pieces in museums were purchased through fair avenues, or even paid for at all.

Eventually, I realized how many museums in the western world are composed of or contain stolen art. African nations or kingdoms didn’t willingly hand over their most prized cultural possessions to their colonizers. These objects were often stolen once deemed worthy of display. Many of these art pieces hold significant cultural value—they weren’t simply meant to sit in a glass cage thousands of miles away from the people who created them. The profiting off of these stolen objects is just another example of exploitation of people of color in the name of “educating” white people. 

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement brought renewed criticism to museums holding looted artifacts from colonized countries. Last week, I had the privilege of speaking with and learning from Dr. Tufuku Ziberi, a sociologist, at the University of Pennsylvania. Something he said permanently changed the way I see museums: they were built to uphold white supremacy and colonialism.

Now, you may be thinking: how so? Museums display and celebrate cultural artifacts from around the world. Well, since many of these artifacts are stolen, museums also serve as a space where colonizing nations, such as the U.S. or the U.K., can display what they’ve plundered from other cultures. Even if museums’ purpose has changed in past years, that’s what they were created to do. 

This Museum Magazine article says it best:

“When American museums were first established, they followed models of European royalist traditions and were enabled by a systemically racist financial system founded with the colonial slave trade...The wealthy founded the encyclopedic museums of art and science to educate and enlighten their cities’ residents and workers.” 

It’s time that museums consider returning these objects to their proper owners. People have the right to tell their own stories in their own land, and in that sense, returning stolen artifacts is one step toward that right.

 Instead of financial reparations, this conversation about stolen artifacts centers around cultural reparations, sparking many questions. Is it morally okay for museums to justify displaying these artifacts while African and other nations fight for their rights to them? It can be argued that African, Asian, or Native American art is needed in museums around the world in order to educate other people about different cultures, but is it fair that people are losing aspects of their own culture for the benefit of someone else? Let’s break down these questions.

Is keeping stolen artifacts, even those that were taken centuries ago, morally or ethically allowable? What if it’s to bring those cultural artifacts to a wider audience for the purpose of education?

The short answer is no. Stolen artifacts, such as the 4,000 sculptures taken from the Kingdom of Benin  (now in modern-day Nigeria) by the UK, are displayed in Europe, but not available to the people living in Nigeria. And it’s not as if African nations are passively standing by while European museums hold on to their objects– Nigeria has been asking the UK to return the stolen artifacts for a long time. The UK’s response was to loan the objects back to their rightful owners, emphasizing that the UK is acting as if theft leads to fair ownership. Tess Davis, a lawyer with the Antiquities Coalition stated in 2015:

“So-called leaders in the field still justify retaining plunder in order to fill their ‘universal museums’ where patrons can view encyclopaedic collections from all over the world. A noble idea, in theory, but in practice, a western luxury. The citizens of New York, London, and Paris may benefit, but those of Phnom Penh? Never.”

In giving white people the privilege of seeing and learning about these cultural artifacts, someone else’s own history has been taken away.

What should be done beyond restitution of these objects?

It’s very important that museums are representative of the world, because for many people these exhibits are their only chance to witness cultures outside of their own. But museums such as the British Museum need to take accountability and ownership of the fact that a lot of what is in their collections was stolen, not traded or bought. Cultural exchange should be collaborative; African nations deserve the right to reclaim their artifacts. The prospect of having stolen artifacts actually returned is unlikely, and that shouldn’t be the case. Colonialist and imperialist sentiments are very much alive and well, and the ongoing debate about museums & restitution proves that. Until African countries (as well as any other country who’s had their artifacts stolen) are allowed to choose where and how they want their cultural artifacts to be displayed, the vestiges of colonization will stain the world of ancient art and artifacts.

There’s plenty more to talk about, plenty more dots to connect, plenty more context to give. We’ll continue doing so next week at 2 PM.