All posts tagged: Looted

Denver Art Museum Returns Looted Marble Head to Turkey

Denver Art Museum Returns Looted Marble Head to Turkey

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Denver Art Museum has returned a marble head of a bearded man stolen from the ancient city of Smyrna to Turkey. This marks the latest in a growing list of successful restitutions tied to the country’s renewed campaign to reclaim its cultural heritage from museums worldwide.  The sculpture’s provenance indicates it was likely carved in the fifth century BCE in Smyrna—the ancient Greek name for present-day Izmir. Situated on Turkey’s Aegean coast, the city is among the world’s oldest continuously inhabited seaports and trade centers, a distinction that has also made it a frequent site for archeological excavations and, inevitably, a target for illicit antiquities trafficking. According to Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, the marble head was unearthed in the city’s agora, or public gathering place. Related Articles “Through cooperation and constructive dialogue with the Denver Art Museum, we have brought this artifact back home,” Ersoy told the Turkish news outlet Yeni Şafak. The sculpture is now on view at the İzmir Archaeology Museum. In recent years, Turkey has notched a …

Holocaust survivors in France came home to stolen apartments, looted furniture and bureaucratic hurdles

Holocaust survivors in France came home to stolen apartments, looted furniture and bureaucratic hurdles

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — In 1945, an angry mob confronted Aba Mizreh and four of his sons outside their former home in Paris. The Jewish family had hidden in Lyon during World War II, only to learn that their apartment had been looted and rented in their absence. Despite an eviction notice, the new tenants refused to leave, leading to a street fight. Following the violent confrontation, Mizreh wrote to the French government. “Don’t I have the right, after having suffered so much, to get my property back?” he asked. “Haven’t I really paid enough for this war?” Mizreh, then 68, was just one of the 160,000 Holocaust survivors from Paris who struggled to rebuild their lives after the devastation of the Nazi occupation. Of his 11 children, five sons had fought for France and six of his children had been deported; at least two were murdered at Auschwitz. Now he simply wanted to return to the two-bedroom apartment that served as his home and furrier workshop in order to support his wife and orphaned grandchildren. …

Germany Creates New Council to Oversee Returns of Looted Art

Germany Creates New Council to Oversee Returns of Looted Art

Published by Jenni Sidey

The German government is creating a new council to oversee the restitution of artifacts acquired in a colonial context, the Art Newspaper reported Tuesday. The new panel, known as the Coordination Council for Returns of Cultural Property and Human Remains from Colonial Contexts, will be made up of representatives from German government, state, and municipal authorities, according to a statement released yesterday. The council is “an important step in responsibly handling cultural property and human remains from colonial contexts,” explained German culture minister Wolfram Weimer.  Related Articles The news follows the creation of other European committees tasked with establishing frameworks for the return of looted objects. (America lacks a centralized law enforcing the return of international trafficked items, though many major American museums such as the Smithsonian have formed their own policies regarding stolen artifacts in recent years):  In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to return works of art looted in Africa during the colonial era; a 2026 proposal passed unanimously by the French Senate in January aims to formalize the process of restitution of …

Zurich Transfers Ownership of Looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

Zurich Transfers Ownership of Looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

Published by José Betancourt

Switzerland’s Museum Rietberg has transferred ownership of 11 looted artifacts to Nigeria, according to the city of Zurich, which oversees the museum. They are just a few of the estimated thousands of works of art taken when British forces raided Edo, the capital of the Kingdom of Benin (now Edo state in modern-day Nigeria), in 1897. Dispersed among collections in the West, these objects have been the focus of a long—and in recent years, highly publicized—effort to retrieve them on the part of the Nigerian government. Though known as collectively as the Benin Bronzes, the artifacts, which date from the 16th to the 19th centuries, were fashioned in a variety of materials, including wood, ivory, brass, and bronze. All were looted from Edo’s royal palace, which was ransacked during the British raid. Related Articles The objects returned by the Rietberg include a commemorative bronze head from around 1850 depicting the ancestor of a chief, and an ivory tusk that tells the story of a king, or oba, of the 17th or 18th century. Both would …

60 Percent of Sudan National Museum’s Holdings Have Been Looted

60 Percent of Sudan National Museum’s Holdings Have Been Looted

Published by José Betancourt

In September 2024, officials reported that the National Museum of Sudan in the country’s capital city, Khartoum, had been subjected to looting by members of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) during Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Now, museum officials have made public the extent of that looting. “More than 60% of the museum’s holdings were looted,” said Ghalia Jar Al-Nabi, the Sudanese director of the General Authority for Antiquities and Museums, according to a report by NBC News. “For months of the war, no one could know what became of these museums.” Several of the museum’s display cases are currently empty, Al-Nabi added, confirming that gold and jewelry from Sudan’s ancient kingdoms had been stolen. Related Articles The RSF occupied the museum from April 2023 to early 2024. Prior to the conflict, the museum contained more than 150,000 artifacts in its holdings. The National Museum said that some 8,000 pieces were taken from the exhibition halls alone. So far only 570 pieces have been recovered, Graham Abdel Qader, a culture undersecretary, told NBC News. Sudan’s …

An intense debate over the fate of looted artworks displayed in Paris

An intense debate over the fate of looted artworks displayed in Paris

Published by Sam Flores

At the Louvre, July 1815. Occupying troops (British, Russian, Prussian and Austrian) reclaim works seized under the empire (engraving from 1875). JEAN-PAUL DUMONTIER/LA COLLECTION Wherever the revolutionary armies – and later Napoleon’s forces – advanced, artworks of conquered territories were transported to the Louvre. Its collections, unparalleled in size and richness, won admiration throughout Europe. One particular argument was used to justify this concentration of masterpieces: the idea that the arts, as the fruits of freedom and genius, could only be liberated from tyrants by the very country of liberty – France, seen as the home of universal values. The notion of the universal, still invoked today by some who oppose the restitution of artworks acquired or seized in former colonies, is central to Bénédicte Savoy’s 1815, le temps du retour (“1815, The Time of Return”). Strangely, after Napoleon’s first abdication in April 1814, the Allied powers reclaimed relatively few works; only Spain and Prussia took back some major pieces. Whether due to the fierce resistance of the Louvre’s curators or the Allies’ reluctance to …

France Returns Looted “Talking Drum” to the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire

France Returns Looted “Talking Drum” to the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire

Published by Jenni Sidey

In a ceremony held on Friday at the Musée Quai Branly in Paris, France officially returned a drum known as the “talking drum” or Djidji Ayôkwé, to the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. The news was reported by French newspaper Le Monde. The ten-foot-long, 940-pound drum has a single-piece soundbox slit in half longitudinally. Extending out from the slit are two planks, one of which supports a carving of a jumping leopard. The box itself is decorated with carved faces and geometric patterns. Related Articles The drum was once used by Côte d’Ivoire’s Atchan/Ebrié people to transmit messages between villages many miles apart, including warnings of impending recruitment operations by French colonial troops. It was seized by French authorities in 1916 as a way of suppressing local resistance. Between 1916 and 1930, the drum was kept outside the French governor’s Ivorian home. It was transferred to France in 1929 and housed most recently at the Musée Quai Branly, where it recently underwent restoration. The drum topped a list of 148 objects that Côte d’Ivoire requested from …

In a First, Portugal Returns Looted Antiquities to Mexico

In a First, Portugal Returns Looted Antiquities to Mexico

Published by José Betancourt

In a sign of growing international cooperation in the restitution of looted artifacts, Portugal has returned three pre-Columbian objects to Mexico. This will be the first time Portugal has repatriated unlawfully acquired antiquities to that country. The three pieces represent distinct pre-Hispanic periods and cultures. They include a Shaft Tomb Culture female figure, a Maya painted vessel, and a Zapotec urn. According to a press release from Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the handover took place at the Mexican embassy in Lisbon on February 12. The objects will be returned to Mexico in the coming weeks. Related Articles “This return confirms that international cooperation protects who we are,” said Claudia Curiel de Icaza, Mexico’s Secretary of Culture. “Each restitution restores memory and identity to Mexico and reaffirms the shared commitment to combating the trafficking of cultural property.” The objects were originally flagged by the embassy in Portugal, which notified Portuguese authorities of their existence. Specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), an agency of the Ministry of Culture, subsequently reviewed photographs provided …