Cultural Reparations: The Drive to Deaccession in Museums

In November, the Horniman Museum returned Benin Bronzes to Nigeria (as announced in August) and Cambridge University pledged to return human skulls to Zimbabwe. Last week, Egypt requested the return of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum and there have been reports of a discussion between the British Museum and Greek authorities regarding the Elgin Marbles. 

Barely a week goes by without news of repatriation of artefacts. So, why is this happening now?

Deaccessioning: Route to Repatriation

Repatriation of items from one country to its supposed country of origin has been a hot topic for five years, since President Macron sent items from the French national collection to Burkina Faso. This is a form of deaccessioning, which is when a museum removes an item from its permanent collection. This can be by sale, exchange or destruction. The latter only usually for an object so deteriorated it is now worthless or dangerous. 

Although public museums in the UK rarely deaccession – it is effectively prohibited by legislation except in very limited circumstances – the practice is common in American museums. The rarity of deaccessioning may be coming to an end as governments overrule custom, with the willing assistance of lobby groups, high-profile advocates and politically progressive museum staff. In the future, the pace will only accelerate. 

David Olusoga ,of Manchester University, history professor and author, has pushed for repatriation of artefacts, which he claims came to British museums “often as a result of unfair purchases or historic acts of violence, invasion and colonisation”. Dr Dan Hicks, archaeology lecturer at Oxford University, goes further. His book, The Brutish Museums (2020), asserts that museum objects from Africa “ are all stolen” – an extravagant ahistorical claim that indicates Hicks’s polemical intention.

Stealing or saving?

Pro-repatriation activists elide looting, war booty, gifts and purchases; in their worldview, disparities of power due to geo-politics and colonisation render any exchange of cultural material between European nations and non-Western nations unfavourable to the latter. In effect, all these exchanges are coercive. They should be considered non-binding and therefore reversible. 

Activists overlook the fact that diplomatic gifts were freely given by peoples who considered gift-giving the highest expression of social honour. Never mind that sometimes items were retrieved by Westerners who preserved artefacts that the then-current local inhabitants viewed as worthless – or were even hostile towards. When the Rosetta Stone was found, it had been placed in a wall foundation and was treated no differently to any other rubble. The Parthenon was an ammunition dump for the Ottomans occupying Greece, when Lord Elgin bought the frieze statues.; neither Muslim Ottomans nor Christian Greeks had much affection or respect for the pagan idols. Elgin did at least get official permission from the Ottoman governor; at the time, other tourists were carrying away broken fragments covertly.  

The complexity of historical reality – where two sides could be compromised, where non-Westerners could be imperialists and slavers, where colonial relationships prove mutually beneficial – is not examined even-handedly. History is used as a cudgel wielded by the politically-enlightened elite with which to beat indigenous British people. As Douglas Murray puts it in a recent Spectator column, “In today’s Britain it is to be expected that our cultural institutions are run by people who hate the collection in their care as well as our culture and our history more broadly.”

Both Olusoga and Hicks have appeared many times on the BBC and have been published by The Guardian, two media outlets that set the agenda by normalising and popularising ideas which civil servants, journalists and politicians then implement.  

Pushing at an open door

Supporters of repatriation are pushing at an open door.  

For years, staff entering museums have been trained in universities on courses underpinned by Critical Theory, Subaltern theory, decolonialism and feminism – all of which are off-shoots of New Left and Frankfurt School thought. They are hostile colonialism, though only Western colonialism. For example, while many know that the Benin Bronzes were looted by British soldiers, few know that the Benin Empire was itself founded upon colonialism and slavery. Slaves were likely used for the mining of the ore and hewing of wood that contributed to the making of the Benin Bronzes.   

Decolonisation does not just consist of returning objects to their countries of origin. The Museums Association dominates curatorial practice in the UK; it has set out its mission to “decolonise” museums as a campaign. Its website states, “Decolonisation requires a reappraisal of our institutions and their history and an effort to address colonial structures and approaches to all areas of museum work.” (There is a Lotus Eaters article on the Museums Association here.)

Decolonisation is about reorienting museums so that they show how they have normalised power imbalances and perpetuate injustice. This, purely coincidentally, allows today’s curators to negatively depict the British, white people, Christians and colonists – and, by inference, their descendants. So, repatriation is only one small step towards making museums centres promoting social justice. Colonialism and its legacy require remedial action in every museum, be that a history museum, stately house or art gallery.

Politicians and patrimony 

When the current drive for deaccessioning hit high gear, I wrote an article for The Jackdaw outlining problems with repatriation as a form of cultural-emotional reparations. (Republished in expanded form in the book Culture War.) In that, I noted that, were deaccessioning rules loosened, repatriation would increase: 

“The pressure of anti-colonialist activists will increase against administrators and politicians who do not seem confident in the value of the Western civilisation. Presidents such as Macron will give away artefacts for a favourable headline. Politicians could hardly be bought more cheaply.” 

Some presidents have powers to overrule deaccessioning regulations. Politicians, who no longer see themselves as custodians but as stakeholders in an ongoing process of redistributive justice, can give away cultural patrimony knowing they will not be held responsible. Likewise, populists running for political office in former colonies can make speculative claims upon European museums. No matter how an artefact was acquired, injustice (in the form of power imbalance) will be cited and assertions made about the emotional suffering the absence of a named artefact causes, with no need for the politician to present a legal basis.  

Now that politicians see museum artefacts as tokens to be exchanged for good publicity, the mass-media normalises deaccessioning and museum staff openly loathe their collections, there is no barrier to the state stripping museums of artefacts. It will not stop there. Next will come art donated by slave-owners, nudes “that perpetuate rape culture” and hunting pictures “that glorify animal cruelty”.

Deaccessioning is sure to spread to other subjects. Our culture, used to at the very least, have a unique respect for history. It would be a great tragedy if our civilisation abandoned this reverent attitude to our forebears. We must do our utmost to prevent this. 

Alexander Adams is a British artist, critic and art historian. His book Iconoclasm, Identity Politics and the Erasure of History is published by Imprint Academic.