A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics by Yerkovich Sally;

Author:Yerkovich, Sally;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Chapter 9

Restitution, Repatriation, or Retention? The Ethics of Cultural Heritage

Museum collections hold a multitude of different kinds of objects, ranging from those that embody diverse cultures from the ancient past to artistic creations of more recent years. Recently, however, a museum’s ownership of items within its collections has been challenged. Other countries, sovereign nations such as Native American tribes, and individuals whose families lost art and/or cultural objects during World War II have made claims upon works in museum collections that cause museums to consider whether they should return the objects in question or retain them in their collections. In some cases, the claims that have been made are based upon rights established by law. In other cases, decisions about the return or the retention of an object involve ethical considerations. This chapter will consider a range of situations in which museums face ethical dilemmas regarding cultural heritage.

As we have seen, a significant part of a museum’s responsibility in the process of acquiring objects for its collections is to ensure that the museum has clear title. Thus, when a museum acquires an object it should know the history of its ownership. While some owners and art dealers acting on their own behalf or on behalf of owners can provide a complete history, others have more limited knowledge. In the latter situation a museum is obliged to conduct due diligence—to research the object’s ownership history to ensure that acquisition would give the museum a clear and unencumbered title. Due diligence can involve extensive research that reveals an object’s provenience and/or its provenance.

Provenience is a term used by archaeologists to refer to the place from which an artifact is excavated. But provenience, also referred to as the findspot, implies not just a location but also the artifact’s context, its relationship to the other things with which it is found or to the archaeological features in which it is found. Knowledge of an artifact’s provenience is critical to an archaeologist’s understanding of the piece and the reconstruction of its history. Patty Gerstenblith explains the complexity of the archaeological heritage and the critical nature of context in interpreting an artifact:

The archaeological heritage consists of the fragile and non-renewable physical evidence of humankind’s origins and behavior. Only carefully preserved, original contexts can furnish the data upon which the reconstruction of our past depends. Once this context is lost, the inherent value, that is the historic, cultural and scientific information that informs us about the object, is irreparably injured.1

Gerstenblith continues:

It is particularly crucial that artifacts be excavated together and in association with architectural features, such as houses, industrial areas, and burials. Careful excavation allows the archaeologist to place a found object in its proper chronological sequence and context, in turn allowing the reconstruction of each of a site’s time periods, the characteristics of society at those times, and the connections among objects found and sites located throughout the world. It also allows those studying past cultures to reconstruct the functions of such objects, to learn more

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