Repatriation, Repositioning, Reengagement

Karen Kramer

Stewardship of objects entrusted to a museum’s care requires careful, sound, and responsible management. Collection management requires legal compliance in the United States through the federal 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, as well as concomitant social and ethical obligations for objects that fall outside of legal bounds, within the United States and across the globe. Some museums are contending with the legacies of colonialism through careful and considered self-reflection, recognizing that the repatriation of objects isn’t solely about returning culturally sensitive and/or illegally obtained objects. It’s also about knowledge repatriation, building relationships and the opportunities for collaborative projects, and how to maintain these ongoing relationships.

 

The 2018 Overview of Repatriation Report by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, commissioned by the French President Emmanuel Macron, centered on restitution of looted Benin Kingdom objects and has reopened thinking and conversation about issues of cultural patrimony and heritage in light of Africa's colonial history. They ask, “Can we thus think of restitutions as being something more than a mere strategic maneuver—neither merely an economic or political strategy—but rather something truly cultural in the sense of the Latin verb colere to “inhabit”, “cultivate”, and “honor”?” (Sarr and Savoy 22).

 

In September 2019, Claudine Gay, Harvard’s Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences, created the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology’s Faculty Executive Committee to critically (re)evaluate the ethics of its collection – how it was collected, and how its stewardship may change going forward. For many objects collected internationally, there isn’t a clear path forward. For example, for the looted “bronzes” (which is a broad category that includes objects that are not only bronze sculptures) from the Benin Kingdom, the national government and the Palace of the Kingdom of Benin are separate – how can a museum be guaranteed that repatriating an object is to the “right” entity / person? Or, does getting the object home fulfill enough of the ethical obligations?

 

In response to research revealed on Harvard’s institutional ties to slavery, a multilayered and complex history, Harvard students involved in the project raised the issue that deciding on what acts of memorialization, remembrance, and restitution is not straightforward, and that the broader community needs to be brought into the conversation (Bleckert and Stevens 3). Their research revealed hitherto unknown (or unspoken?) institutional ties to the “vaguely triangular Atlantic trade,” students whose families were active slaveholders, lending money to alumni merchants involved in slavery directly or indirectly, and scientists starting with Louis Agassiz who taught and perpetuated racist theories, turned personality traits, aptitude, and morality into biological characteristics of “race.”

 

Often, conversations with the stakeholders and community members whose cultural heritage is held in museum collections across the globe force an institution to reckon with it’s own difficult histories, rooted in ideologies and practices of its time. It requires institutions to really listen, and to step outside of its usual ways of doing business – letting go of directing the conversation, and a willingness to consider that perhaps the benefits of having the material culture and/or ancestral remains home with the source communities far outweigh the teaching and learning potential the objects represent in the museum. Sarr and Savoy estimated that 90% of the material cultural legacy of sub-Saharan African is preserved and housed outside of the African continent (Sarr and Savoy 3). That number is staggering. And, lending, returning, having 3-D reproductions made for the teaching museum, commissioning contemporary artists to replace repatriated museum objects are all options for museums to consider when the dialogue opens.

 

Indeed, repatriation and restitution ask museums to reconsider cultural heritage – who owns it and can it / should it be owned, how can we learn from the past and interpret that in the present, and how can we engage in new relations and new power dynamics between people, institutions, and nations.  Repatriation and restitution asks institutions and their directors, boards of trustees and overseers, curators, donors, and others who have held seats of power over the objects (as legal property) to engage in new ways with source communities. It asks these institutional representatives to consider relinquishing traditional control over cultural heritage and engage in new frameworks that emphasize supporting communities who are revitalizing aspects of their ceremonies with returned objects. These returns can affirm cultural identity, contribute to improved well-being, and aid in recover from colonial traumas.

 

The following objects are hypothetical examples for potential repositioning, reengagement, repatriation, and/or restitution. They cover four continents (Africa, North America, South America, and Oceania,* three Harvard Museums (Harvard Art Museums, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and the Harvard Museum of the Ancient New East), and range in time from 945-712 BC, 800-1150 AD, 1300-1438 AD, to the mid-nineteenth century. I’ve included object tombstones and some ideas for possible (re)engagement, repositioning, and repatriation.

 

*New Zealand is part of Oceania, which is not a continent but belongs in the discussion.

 

Head of an Oba [King], 1525-1575

Benin City, Nigeria, Africa

Bronze

8 15/16 x 8 1/4 x 9 1/16 inches

1937.38 [HAM]

 

In November 2018, French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron released a special report he commissioned by Senegalese writer and scholar Felwine Sarr and French historian Benedicte Savoy (November 2018). The report centered on restitution of looted Benin Kingdom objects and

has reopened thinking and conversations about issues of cultural patrimony and heritage in light of Africa's colonial history. More broadly, cultural groups, scholars, institutions, and national governments are engaging in these conversations regarding archives, cultural objects, and human remains, particularly from former colonial nations. The Sarr-Savoy report poses many challenges to institutions housing African art in Europe and the United States.

 

This is a bronze from the Benin Kingdom in Nigeria, which was likely looted during a raid by British colonials in 1897. The British Museum has agreed to lend Benin artifacts back to a new museum for these looted objects. It is possible for the Harvard Art Museums to join in these discussions regarding this Head of an Oba [King].  Another option is to amend the existing label (in-gallery and online) that currently focuses on figural representation and also (or instead) explore the colonial legacies connected to Benin bronzes and museum collecting practices.

 

The Rhode Island School of Design [RISD] museum have one Benin sculpture, and though they have started conversations about possible repatriation, in the meantime they decided to raise the issue in museum interpretation. Their label reads, “…RISD recognizes the looted status of this sculpture and has initiated communication with the current Benin Oba, Oba Ewuare II, and with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria. The Museum acknowledges the histories of colonial looting that are inherent in geographically comprehensive museum collections and embraces the opportunity to identify and confront those injustices.”

 

 

Wampum belt, 1850 or earlier

Iroquois artist

Brantford, Ontario, Canada

Quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria) shell, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) hide?, milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) or basswood (Tilia glabra) cordage, red ochre

42 1/8 × 1 7/8 in.

13-17-10/84626 [PMAE]

 

The object description for this Wampum belt in the PMAE collections database reads, “Wampum belt. Composed of purple wampum beads with a design of 4 groups of 3 diamonds sewn in white beads…Traces of red paint can be seen on the beads indicating that the belt was probably used to declare war at some point in its history. Wampum was used as money in the past but now is used only for ceremonial purposes.” The database’s provenance tells us that this belt was purchased in 1913 through the Huntington Frothingham Wolcott Fund, 1913. It was purchased from Dr. Allen M. Cleghorn, M.D. (01/01/1913), collected by Allen Cleghorn (01/01/1850, and was owned by Chief Smoke Johnson (unknown – 01/01/1850).

 

Many in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy have requested consultation with museums housing wampum belts. The Onondaga Nation in particular has shared that they are Keepers of the Wampum, and work with other nations in the Confederacy in the United States and Canada, seeking the repatriation of wampum. For the Onondaga Nation, wampum belts were the responsibility of an individual Wampum Keeper, but these objects were communally owned, and as such, seek their repatriation as objects of cultural patrimony. That means that no one individual held the right to release it from the community, by gift, for sale, or other.

 

For the Onondaga, the return of wampum belts should be a straightforward issue, but for museums housing such objects, it is not always clear-cut under the letter of NAGPRA. Firstly, if provenance records demonstrate that this particular belt was acquired in what is now Canada, there are no international laws for repatriation. As well, wampum belts served as treaties, markers of war, gifts, and mnemonic storytelling devices between and within communities. Whereas this belt may have originally been a declaration of war (as indicated by the red ochre encrusted in the beads), following war, it may have been gifted outside of the community. These stories are not always evident in the archival record nor are they often recounted by present-day descendants.

 

 

Bowl with red and black geometric designs on white interior, 800-1150 AD

Ceramic and paint

Mimbres Valley, New Mexico

5 11/16 x 12 5/8 in.

26-7-10/95958

 

This ceramic bowl was excavated during a 1926 Peabody Museum Expedition to the Swarts Ranch in Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Museum records indicate it was found in “Room 86; Skeleton 800, over left shoulder.” This basic information available online implies that this object has direct ties to a burial context, in that it was found over the left shoulder of Skeleton #800.  This ceramic bowl is stylistically connected to other “Mimbres” pots that have painted stylized designs of animals and humans on the interior and/or geometric patterns as in this example. As well, a “kill hole” is often present at the bottom center interior of the bowl. Though very little is known about Mimbres culture, these kill holes are said to have been perforated, perhaps ceremonially, in preparation for funerary use (a common belief is that kill holes served as a conduit to a spiritual world).

 

Funerary objects, either found with ancestral (human skeletal) remains or in a burial context but unassociated with a human, fall directly into categories set forth in the federal NAGPRA. Museums require proof of ownership and the right to claim these materials, generally based on direct lineage as descendant families, communities, etc. In the case of Mimbres cultures, it is not clear where the Mimbres went when they left the Mimbres Valley in a drought around 1200AD. They likely were subsumed into another community nearby. Today there are 19 Pueblo communities in the Southwest who may claim descendancy to the Mimbres. Since the law requires “proof of ownership” from Native claimants as well, there is not always a straight path to who may claim these vessels under NAGPRA. Related to this, there is not consensus amongst the Pueblos if Mimbres ceramics should be exhibited given sensitivities surrounding their burial contexts, repatriated at all (and to whom), etc.

 

 

 

Coffin of Pa-di-mut, Dynasty 22, 945–712 BC

Deir el-Bahari, Thebes, Egypt

Painted cartonnage (linen and plaster)

1901.9.1 [HMANE]

From the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East website: Pa-di-mut was a priest and metal engraver in the Temple of Amun-Re at Karnak, Thebes (modern Luxor). The cartonnage case that enclosed his mummy was unusually carved in relief in the plaster before painting. The images are related to Pa-di-mut’s successful entry into the afterlife. On his chest, the jackal-headed god Anubis attends to Pa-di-mut’s mummy. Above it is seated the hawk-headed sun god Re-Horakhty, crowned with a solar disk. The figure of the deified Eighteenth Dynasty king Amenhotep I (1525–1504 BC), patron of the necropolis/burial ground, replaces the usual image of the god Osiris on the back.

In January 2020, the former Egyptian antiquities minister Zahi Hawass put together a team of experts to pressure museums in Europe and America (including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston) to return five Ancient Egyptian treasures that were illegally exported. While this coffin for Pa-di-mut was not illegally exported, and there is nothing online or in the database to suggest otherwise, Egyptian tomb artifacts, particularly those so clearly and directly tied to burial contexts intended to accompany the departed into the afterlife, beg the question of who can and should “own” this piece of cultural heritage?

The British Museum houses over 5,000 Egyptian artifacts from tomb contexts. Several of these are on view, drawing an astonishing six million visitors per year. Egyptian novelist and British Museum trustee Ahdaf Soueif resigned as trustee in 2019, citing the museum’s “immovability” for dealing with the residual heritage of colonialism, including looted artifacts. Though tomb objects may have been acquired with proper permits, I would argue that disturbing and essentially looting graves of the dead is of questionable moral order at best, however fascinating the history and stories of empire and exchange, and no matter how stunning the artistry.

 

 

Pare (lintel), 19th century

Maori artist

Tolaga Bay, Aotearoa (New Zealand)

12 5/8 x 29 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches

20-46-70/D1343 [PMAE]

 

Maori whare runanga (community gathering spaces / meeting houses) in the nineteenth century were elaborately carved wooden structures. The house itself symbolically represented the body of a renowned ancestor of the iwi (tribe).  Over the door was a carved lintel, or pare, which usually had the design of three principal figures, including at least one female who would remove any tapu (taboo) for those males who passed under and through.

 

The Museum of New Zealand | Te Papa Museum of Tongarewa has been working for the past two decades to return Maori ancestral remains from museums around the globe. These repatriations are international, and therefore, not mandated by law. They’ve had over 400 returns to date, according to their website. The repatriation of cultural objects, such as rejoining pieces comprising meeting houses (such as this pare would have been a part of), has not yet been the focus of Te Papa’s activity to date but I raise the possibility of considering this pare as a potential candidate, if not for a physical return, than as a candidate for knowledge repatriation via digital files, or an engagement that could take the shape of an artist fellowship and museum collaboration.  Since Maori carving is often an intergenerational endeavor, it would be amazing if at least two Maori carvers could visit this pare, an apprentice and a master carver. Together they could spend time with this object, and understand how it was carved (from one piece of wood), examine design iconography in great detail, and talk about the meaning and significance of the piece in the context of Maori culture. Museum staff would greatly benefit from learning this. Detailed photography could be sent back to Aotearoa with the artists, along with any museum documentation. 

 

 

Ear Plug with Relief Decorations, 1300-1438

Possibly Incan, Peru, South America

Gold, silver, and copper alloy

5 1/8 x 5 5/8 inches (each)

1943.1072.B

 

Millions upon millions of spectacular gold objects were buried in Peruvian tombs prior to Spanish conquest in 1516, to express leaders’ divine might. Starting in 1531, the Spanish started raiding these tombs and sent gold back home. Later in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, archaeologists excavated vast numbers of graves, and recovered ancient burial goods such as these ear plugs and other intricately rendered gold and silver jewelry inlaid with spiny oyster shell, woven and embroidered textiles, looms, spindles, ceramics, ceremonial axes, precious gems, and human remains (wrapped in cloth). 

 

A similar pair of golden ear plugs in a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition was described thusly,, “They were meant to be worn in enlarged earlobe piercings. Evoking the coronas of blazing suns, the earflares would flank faces further graced with towering gold diadems and, most unfamiliarly, substantial nose ornaments. These fire-breathing curtains of figured gold hung from the septum, generally covering not only the upper lip but also, conspicuously, the mouth. The various Andean civilizations, ultimately consolidated into the sprawling Incan empire, had no written language; it seems their rulers were people of few spoken words, as well.”

 

I am thinking of these objects in a similar way as I am in considering how Egyptian mummies were removed from their intended burial context.