The 1451 Review (Volume 1) 2021

This being said, the DIVUM does not only take the nature of objects as a
justification for their ownership, but also answers the concerns raised by their
provenance. Stating that they ‘were acquired under conditions that are not comparable
with current ones’, (ICOM et al. 2004) the signatories ignore the question of colonial
lootings and coerced sales. ‘The past is the past’, as declared by Montebello (2009: 69)
and under the colonial domination, these acquisitions, not matter how violent, were
legal (Savoy & Sarr 2018: 123). However, this seems profoundly unsatisfactory. ‘To
justify the plunder of the past based on a time period, and to claim that it differs from
the current or recent plunder, is seen … as an insult bordering on historical mischief’
(Abungu 2008: 37). We are not questioning the legal ownership of these objects, but
the ethical basis for their possession. Hence this argument is irrelevant to the
discussion and cannot legitimise European museums’ holding of, for example, Ataï’s
skull or the Benin Bronzes. Neither the DIVUM signatories’ claim of ownership based
on the objects’ universal nature nor on their legal provenance is satisfactory. This
questions the idea that we could really base ownership claims solely on either the
meaning of an object or its provenance. To answer this, I will explore two other
examples.
Firstly, we should wonder whether the nature and significance of an object alone
can challenge a museum’s ownership. Objects have a plurality of meanings and
identities - which one matters the most when it comes to deciding who is the righteous
owner? The University of Aberdeen museum came with a very interesting answer to
this issue. Confronted with multiple repatriation requests, they created a procedure to
help a panel decide whether or not an object should be repatriated (Curtis 2006: 46).
Its goal is to evaluate both ‘the signification of the item to the claimant and to the
University [and] the consequences of return to the claimant or retention by the
University’ (Curtis 2006: 46). Although this procedure does mention the provenance
of the object elsewhere, it is not the basis on which the panel will judge the request.
Instead, it is the significance of the object, its meaning, both in the past and in the
future that is most important. Repatriation of culturally-sensitive items often
stimulates a revival and renewal of cultural identities that were disappearing, as was
the case with the repatriation to the Haida of 466 of their ancestors remains. For the
Haida, this return led to the transfer and rebirth of carving skills, the creation of new
burial rituals, an increase in research around the items as well as new intergenerational
connexions (Simpson 2008: 71-74). As illustrated here, repatriation of
significant items can bring extraordinarily positive outcomes to communities. The
ownership change sometimes leads to such revival of identities and histories that had
been suppressed by colonisation and the systematic collecting of material culture.
Comparing the present and future meanings of an object to both the source community
and the museum then sometimes provides a great basis to judge who should own it and
whether or not we should operate a transfer of ownership.
Savoy and Sarr’s repatriation guidelines, on the opposite, focus on the history of
the object. This can be explained by the fact that their work is centred more around
questions of justice for historical wounds linked to lootings than on the pragmatic
outcomes of a repatriation. They conclude their research by declaring that any object
acquired during military or scientific missions, where there is no positive evidence of
‘free, equitable and documented consent’, (Savoy & Sarr: 105-106) needs to be
repatriated. This covers examples of lootings and coerced sales that I have explored
earlier in this paper and that would not always be covered by Aberdeen’s guidelines.
Indeed, the University’s guidance does not take into account the fact that, in certain
cases such as Ataï’s skull, repatriation is also a highly symbolic recognition of past
violence. In the same way, Savoy and Sarr do not really take into account the future
material positive results for source communities that can by themselves justify
repatriation.
This suggests that, to assess whether a museum is entitled to keep an object or
not, our judgement needs to include both its provenance, problematic or not, and the
possible outcomes for both the institution and the source community. I am convinced
that this is possible, and that it will open the way for museums to acknowledge and
teach the history of their collections, even when this is painful. It is time to change our
vision on museum’s categorisation of objects. This will also finally allow us to
understand how these objects can still help source communities to forge new
postcolonial identities. The museum, and more precisely the so-called ethnographic
museum, will have to evolve to accommodate the plurality of meanings and voices that
come with the objects they exhibit.
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