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Last month, the Smithsonian set aside 29 exquisite bronze sculptures from the Kingdom of Benin that were looted by the British military in 1897. The attack remains one of the most painful in the long history of colonialism, and the return of the priceless objects has become a symbol of global efforts to make museums to face their ugly past.
The move was hailed by Smithsonian leaders as the start of a new and more ethical era for the world’s largest complex of museums and research institutions, and it could have a huge impact on colleagues in the United States and around the world.
“The Smithsonian must lead both morally and legally,” Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III said June 13, at a public meeting after the Board of Regents voted to voluntarily return the artifacts. “Benin’s bronze medals are really the first example of that.”
Bunch was referring to a new collection policy that requires Smithsonian museums to cooperate with the communities represented by their holdings and return or share ownership of objects that may have been stolen or acquired under duress. It directs them to make their collections publicly available and to thoroughly vet future acquisitions to prevent items of dubious provenance from entering the collection. It also focuses on the treatment of human remains, some of which are subject to federal law, and which account for most of the institution’s previous repatriation work. The policy requires that human remains “be treated with dignity and respect as those who once lived, and not be objectified as a scientific resource.”
“Ethical return and restitution is not just about transferring property. It’s about reassessing authority and our role as a museum,” said National Museum of African Art director Ngaire Blankenberg, who advocated the withdrawal. “It’s very important because it’s about really challenging museological practices that in the past really justified a whole bunch of, like, crappy behavior.”
Why the Smithsonian is changing its approach to collecting, starting with Benin’s looted treasures
But the 176-year-old institution’s 19th-century roots, its collection of 155 million objects and its unwieldy structure — isolated and bunkered with multiple leaders free to interpret politics as they see fit — leave some in the museum world skeptical and pessimistic. Many hope the Smithsonian will forge a new path — one that fulfills the district’s 2020 commitments to increase diversity and eradicate racist practices — and worry that reality will fall short.
Benin’s bronze medals illustrate the challenges. While Smithsonian officials celebrated the decommissioning of works held by the museum of African art, they overlooked 21 other Benin sculptures in the National Museum of Natural History’s collection, including four – a commemorative king’s head, a thigh mask and two wall plaques – that are in storage from the Smithsonian since 1960 – on view in his exhibition “African Voices” in mid-May.
One floor above the African exhibit, which opened in 1999, are the bones of Robert Kennicott, the famed Smithsonian explorer who once lived in the castle. Nearby is an ancient copper plate of a birdman, displayed as an example of creativity. The exhibit label notes that the slab is from the Etowah mounds in Georgia, but does not say that Smithsonian scholar John P. Rogan discovered it in 1883 among “stone graves containing the skeletal remains of several adults and children,” as is detailed in the institution’s 2013 book, Smithsonian American History in 101 Sites.
Across the mall, two 6th-century stone reliefs from the cave temples of Xiangtangshan, China, are embedded in the walls of the Freer Gallery of Art, opened in 1923. Gallery text identifies them as the first works of art purchased by museum after the death of its founder Charles Lang Freer, but it is not said that they were probably stolen from the remote cave.
And these are only some of the objects that are visible. The Smithsonian has thousands more items in storage, including medical collections from people who may not have consented to their bodies being used for research, items dug up by U.S. soldiers or seized by government officials, and more than 12,000 human remains.
“I had to giggle … that the Smithsonian thinks they’re a leader in this. They’re not,” said Tina Marie Osceola, an enrolled member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida and director of the Historic Preservation Office, which has been trying for 11 years to get the Natural History Museum to return the remains of 1,400 ancestors. “They are the best bad example we have in the country.
Ethical considerations have been part of the American Alliance of Museums’ guidelines for collection management since 2008, and museums including the Museum of Us in San Diego and the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, are among the leaders in this area. While not the first, the Smithsonian’s actions still resonate.
“It sends a bat signal because it’s one of the biggest power structures in this area,” said Cinnamon Katlin-Legutko, the former director of the Abe Museum who now runs the Illinois State Museum.
The policy reflects the evolution of the museum field. Members of the International Council of Museums spent three years fiercely debating a definition of museums that would include language that reflected the field’s focus on human rights and knowledge sharing. The social and racial justice movement that has swept the country since the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has accelerated efforts to address alleged racism and helped fuel public pressure to return colonial-era artworks stolen from colonized countries . UNESCO announced in May that Greek and British officials had agreed to formal negotiations over the Parthenon marbles, perhaps the most famous example of the ethical return issue. The pieces that were part of the Parthenon in Athens were acquired by British diplomat Lord Elgin and have been in London for over 200 years. The Greeks have long been demanding their return.
The momentum produced a steady stream of repatriations and returns. Just last week, the Smithsonian held a ceremony with Australian officials to repatriate the remains of indigenous peoples, while dozens of looted antiquities found in a US criminal investigation were sent from New York to Rome to be displayed at the newly opened Museum of Salvaged Art.
“Maybe museums want to get off their high horses. We are a perspective. Giving people a voice is important,” said Suzanne Hale, registrar/collections manager at the Colorado State University Museum, who chaired the AAM Collections Management Committee from 2015 to 2017.
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The first update to the Smithsonian’s collections policy in 20 years was adopted in April after a year of discussion. It outlines the principles of ethical returns and shared governance and gives each museum six months to create plans to implement them. The Museum of African Art and the National Museum of the American Indian are among the favorites in this practice. Chase Robinson, director of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sacker Gallery, which house collections from Tibet, Cambodia, the Middle East and other areas that have benefited from recent repatriations, suggested a reporter check back “in a year or so better, 18 months. Kirk Johnson, director of the Natural History Museum, said simply, “You’ll never finish it.”
Newer units, such as the Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, are based on these prescriptions; the older ones will have to catch up, said Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History. “What’s new is that the entire Smithsonian is now held to these same standards,” she said.
Museum leaders welcome this approach, saying that ethical action is determined by specific details.
“We shouldn’t expect uniformity because what is right in one situation may be different in another,” said Tracy Ireland, a professor of cultural heritage at the University of Canberra in Australia and co-editor of the 2015 book The Ethics of Cultural heritage.” “There is uniformity of process, but certainly not uniformity of action.”
The updated policy does not require museums to systematically review their collections, said Undersecretary for Museums and Culture Kevin Gower. Instead, employees will respond to requests and consider the ethical implications of the works they encounter as part of their daily tasks. There have been no claims since the policy was announced in April, and Gower predicted it would affect only a small percentage of its holdings.
“Our entire business will not be based on ethical returns. There is a limit to our capacity,” he said.
“We’re not going to be able to provide a lot of new money to museums to do that,” Gower added. “We have two new museums to build and that will require a lot of attention.”
The lack of a mandate, funded or not, is a problem, critics say.
“You don’t know what you got, but you’re going to say you don’t have much to give back?” It’s strange,” said Erin L. Thompson, an author and professor at John Jay College in New York who serves on the advisory committee for the Nepal Heritage Restoration Campaign. “Not having a budget means it’s not going to happen.”
A full review would be a powerful gesture, Ireland said, although he acknowledged the strain on staff and budgets it would cause. Without it, the Smithsonian remains in control.
“That means they’re still in charge of the narrative,” Ireland said. “[A review] is important to the source communities who just don’t know…
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