The new museum will house the return of 26 cultural artifacts on long-term loan from France. The objects were originally seized by French troops from Benin in 1892.
Restitution
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Decolonize This Place Demands Repatriation of “Imperial Plunder” at the Brooklyn Museum
Parallel to today’s protest at the RISD Museum, organizers from Decolonize This Place gathered at the Brooklyn Museum to decry stolen objects in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection.
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Protesters Request RISD Museum Return Bronze Sculpture to Nigeria
Students and faculty from the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University held an action today to request a sculpture looted from the Kingdom of Benin be returned. The museum says they have begun conversations with the Nigerian government to return the bronze.
Posted inArt
Understanding the Migrant Caravan in the Context of Imperial Plunder and Dispossession
The publication of Felwine Sarr and Benedicte Savoy’s report recommending the restitution of stolen African objects and the approach of what is called a “migrant caravan” toward the US is not a coincidence.
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French President Wants to Return Benin’s Artifacts, But Will French Law Allow Him?
Emmanuel Macron’s decision is a gesture of goodwill, but these objects comprise just 0.5 percent of the objects requested for restitution by the West African country.
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President of France Will Recommend Full Restitution of Looted African Works
The proposed guidelines would bristle the French art world, but they could also endear the French president to the African countries he’s trying to build stronger economic partnerships with.
Posted inIn Brief
Guggenheim Museum Returns Looted Painting to a German Art Dealer’s Heirs
When Alfred Flechtheim fled Germany, an Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painting of his ended up in the hands of a Nazi, and eventually at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim.
Posted inIn Brief
Protesters and Police Clash as Artifacts Seized from Catalan Museum
Law enforcement officers arrived at the Museu de Lleida in western Catalonia around 4am this morning to execute an order to repatriate 44 artifacts to neighboring Aragon.
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The Met Museum Hands Over Another Antiquity Believed to Be Stolen
A foot-tall sculpture of a bull’s head was handed over to Manhattan’s district attorney last month at Lebanon’s request, but collectors from Colorado are claiming to be its rightful owners.
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Metropolitan Museum Surrenders Looted Greek Vase
The 4th-century BCE terracotta vase, attributed to the artist Python, had been on display in the museum’s Greco-Roman galleries for more than two decades.
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Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: an art analysis assignment gets a teacher suspended, new reality TV show allegedly glorifies ‘grave-robbing,’ and Justin Bieber climbs a Mayan ruin and pulls his pants down.
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Catalogue of Nazi Leader’s Looted Art Collection Published for the First Time
At the end of World War II, French soldiers confiscated a curious handwritten book from Nazi leader Hermann Göring. It listed every artwork Göring claimed to own.
