Publisher Description

Going beyond strictly legal and property-oriented aspects of the restitution debate, restitution is considered as part of a larger set of processes of return that affect museums and collections, as well as notions of heritage and object status. Covering a range of case studies and a global geography, the authors aim to historicize and bring depth to contemporary debates in relation to both the return of material culture and human remains. Defined as contested holdings, differing museum collections ranging from fine arts to physical anthropology provide connections between the treatment and conceptualization of collections that generally occupy separate realms in the museum world.

Author Biography

Felicity Bodenstein is a lecturer in the history of museums and heritage studies at Sorbonne University, Paris. She is also a principal investigator of the digital humanities project, financed by the Ernest von Siemens foundation, "Digital Benin" (https://digital-benin.org/) that will bring together data from close to 200 museums holding pieces from the 1897 British colonial expedition to Benin in their collections.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
AbbreviationsIntroduction
Felicity Bodenstein, Damiana Ooiu, and Eva-Maria TroelenbergPart I: From Objects Back to People: Ways of Life and LossChapter 1. The Value of Art – a Human Life? Works of Art in the Crosshairs of the Persecution of Jews under National Socialism
Ulrike SaßChapter 2. Return as Reconstruction: The Gwodziec Synagogue Replica in the Museum of Polish Jews
Ewa ManikowskaChapter 3. The Other Nefertiti: Symbolic Restitutions
Ruth E. IskinPart II: The Subject of Return: Between Artefacts and BodiesChapter 4. Blurring Objects: Life-Casts, Human Remains and Art History
Noémie EtienneChapter 5. Of Phrenology, Reconciliation and Veneration: Exhibiting the Repatriated Life Cast of Mori Chief Takatahara at the Akaroa Museum
Christopher SommerChapter 6. Ancestors or Artefacts: Contention in the Definition, Retention and Retun of Ngarrinderji Old People
Cressida Fforde, Major Sumner, Loretta Sumner, Tristram Besterman and Steve HemmingPart III: 'The Making of Law': Politics and Museum EthicsChapter 7. A Long Term Perspective on the Issue of the Return of Congolese Cultural Objects : Entangled Relations between Kinshasa and Tervuren (1930–1980)
Placide Mumbembele SangerChapter 8. 'How Would You Like to See Your Great-Grandfather in a Museum?': The Issue of 'Human Dignity' in Repatriation Processes (Cases Involving French Museums)
Cristina GolomozChapter 9. (De)Museifying Racial Taxonomies: The Display and/ or the Restitution of Human Remains of Indigenous Peoples from Southern Africa
Damiana OoiuPart IV: Partial and Paused ReturnsChapter 10. Baroque Returns: The Donations and Reuses of Francesco Gualdi
Fabrizio FedericiChapter 11. Getting the Benin Bronzes back to Nigeria: The Art Market and the Formation of National Collections and Concepts of Heritage in Benin City and Lagos
Felicity BodensteinChapter 12. What Future for Looted Syrian Antiquities?: The Clash Between the Law and Practice for the Repatriation of Cultural Property to Countries in Crisis
Erin ThompsonConclusion: Unfinished Projects of 'Decentering' Western Museum Practices
Felicity Bodenstein, Damiana Ooiu and Eva-Maria TroelenbergIndex

Review

"This is a timely book that tackles controversial, pressing issues from a range of angles in an innovatove way. The editors and authors indeed manage to reach beyond the currently predominant focus on provenance research, restitution and repatriation by foregrounding actors and challenges as well as political and epistemic aspects of appropriation and return." • Annette Loeseke, Bard College, Berlin

Review Quote

"This is a timely book that tackles controversial, pressing issues from a range of angles in an innovatove way. The editors and authors indeed manage to reach beyond the currently predominant focus on provenance research, restitution and repatriation by foregrounding actors and challenges as well as political and epistemic aspects of appropriation and return." * Annette Loeseke, Bard College, Berlin

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