RESTITUTION: THE RETURN OF CULTURAL ARTEFACTS.
| Author | Bilsky, Leora |
RESTITUTION: THE RETURN OF CULTURAL ARTEFACTS
BY ALEXANDER HERMAN
Lund Humphries, 2021, ISBN 9781848225367,104 pages
Herman's book seeks to identify a new paradigm of restitution and map its evolution in five different areas since the 1990s. This paradigm replaces a legalist approach to restitution with an ethical one.
The first chapter provides a 'negative example'--the long struggle for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to Greece that did not succeed. Herman argues that the roots to this failure lie in the fact that both sides cling to a legalist paradigm based on a private law conception of ownership, which dictates the return of cultural material taken unlawfully from an individual, group or nation, according to strict legal rules and procedures. This paradigm decides on the 'exclusive' ownership of such material ('all-or-nothing approach'). Against this 'negative' example, the book as a whole is dedicated to identifying an alternative ethical approach. Such approach rejects strict legalism and mandatory rules in favour of 'soft law', that is principles and guidelines that are voluntarily adopted by the parties. This approach is permissive rather than compulsory, based on principles, encourages transparency and proactive provenance research, and seeks to arrive at 'fair and just' solutions that often involve compromises. Herman shows how the ethical paradigm can overcome difficult legalist obstacles--such as a 'good faith' acquisition, limitation statutes, jurisdiction rules, prohibitions on museums to dispose of items in their collections, and so forth.
Restitution, writes Herman, is rarely simply a question of the physical return of a tangible object or a collection which had been wrongfully taken. The restitution struggles documented in the book, even when promoted by individuals, are the result of a collective/historical injustice. This is why they concern large issues of state sovereignty, cultural identity, history and memory of groups and nations. All this is not new. The difference in the current wave of restitution struggles according to Herman is that they arise not after a war or a revolution, but in times of peace and undertaken by stable, democratic regimes. Previous large-scale restitution efforts were undertaken post-war, after the Napoleonic wars or after the Second World War and the systematic cultural spoliation orchestrated by the Nazi regime throughout Europe. The willingness to promote a policy of large-scale restitution post-war comes from the realisation that ordinary laws of private property are ill suited to deal with the scale of spoliation, with the deep involvement of the State and its bureaucratic structures, and most important--because of the involvement of the law. The law, as Herman explains is doubly involved. First, by decreeing or permitting the original spoliation/loot. Second, by imposing barriers for restitution (such as the protection of 'cultural heritage' in museums).
In contrast, the current wave of restitution demands arise many decades after the original injustice (Holocaust, Colonialism). Usually they are addressed to museums and galleries and not to the original wrongdoer. And the claimants are often weak States or heirs of victims demanding return of artefacts from rich/strong States. In short, the difficulty is connected to the 'normalisation' of the historical demands for restitution. How can we give effect to claims rooted in historical injustice--in ordinary times and under normal laws? Put differently, how can we promote 'transitional justice' involving cultural restitutions without/outside a political transition?
The surprising answer that Herman offers is to turn our gaze away from what caught the public's imagination--for example, the struggle over Klimt's Woman in Gold, or Schiele's Portrait of Wally, legal struggles that involved millions of dollars. Instead, Herman finds his answers in unexpected places--in the decades' long struggle of Indigenous peoples against ex-colonial-settler States such as Canada, the USA or Australia, demanding the return of human remains, ritual objects and masks from anthropological museums and collections. Here, he detects a progressive change--a growing recognition of the injustice, translated into a willingness of museums to take upon themselves research into their collections, the State's enactment of statutes that impose pro-active duties of research and documentation on museums, and providing federal money to support restitution and the creation of new cultural centres for wronged Indigenous communities.
Herman's choice to discuss together restitution struggles that originate from very different historical injustices--settler-colonialism, Holocaust, illegal trade in antiquities--goes against the current. Many books are published today that are dedicated to identifying and explaining the differences: of the historical injustice (Holocaust vs. Colonialism) of the injured community (State, local community, ancient cultures) of the object of restitution (human remains, books or works of art) etc. Herman does not ignore the unique historical and political context of each struggle and devotes a separate chapter to each one. But his book as a whole is dedicated to identifying a new paradigm of ethical restitution, and to exploring its common features. Each chapter ends with lessons for 'successful restitution' that underline these commonalities. These include a piecemeal approach, settlement and compromise, gradual change, preference of scientific/ professional level over the political level, collaborative work and pragmatic instead of symbolic struggles. Most important, for...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
