Museums and Restitution
Dr Kostas Arvanitis and Louise Tythacott organised in collaboration with the Manchester Museum an international conference on 'Museums and Restitution', on 8th-9th July 2010.
The conference brought together 107 museum professionals, policy makers, consultants, academics and postgraduate students from around the world (Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Nigeria, Norway, UK and USA) to examine the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject.
The 30 presented papers were structured around 8 themes: Power, Politics Authority; Reflections on returns; Digital, visual and knowledge repatriation; Local and national power relations; Second World War spoliation; The Parthenon Marbles; Africa and India; and North America.
Speakers included:
- Kokie Agbontaen-Eghafona (University of Benin)
- Tristram Besterman (writer, adviser and mediator on museums and cultural issues)
- Neil Curtis (Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen)
- Maurice Davies (Museums Association)
- Eava-Kristiina Harlin and Anne May Olli (Norwegian Sámi museum RiddoDuottarMuseat)
- Jonathan King (British Museum)
- Eleni Korka (Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism)
- Conal McCarthy (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
- Laura Peers (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
- Helen Robbins (The Field Museum, Chicago)
- Sophia Sambono (National Film and Sound Archive, Australia)
The conference included a reception with films relating to restitution and a Q+A session with Andrew Dismore, former MP for Hendon, who introduced and steered recent legislation on the return of cultural objects (The Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Bill), Charles Goldstein, Counsel for the Commission for Art Recovery, and Freda Matassa, an Expert Adviser to the Minister of Culture on Immunity from Seizure applications. The closing session of the conference was chaired by the Deputy Director of the UK Museums Association.
The conference was twittered and blogged at the Institute for Cultural Practices blog and was reported in the September issue of the Museums Journal: Maurice Davies, 2010. 'Opening up the debate. Museums are being urged to adopt a more open attitude to restitution', Museums Journal, Vol. 110, No. 9, 22-27. Kostas also presented the discussion and outcomes of the conference in the latest Museums Association conference (4-6 October 2010) in a panel titled 'Who owns collections?'.
Louise and Kostas are editing a book with a selection of papers from the conference - Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New Approaches - which will be published by Ashgate in 2013.