Should museums return antiquities to their countries of origin? Some say no
New fronts have opened up in the war of cultural restitution, raising complex ethical and legal questions as some argue against museums returning foreign artefacts
Among the drawn-out conflicts rarely out of the news is one in which entrenched, often nationalist campaigners from assorted countries, demanding the return of antiquities they claim as their own, lob shells of rhetoric at the equally dug-in Western museums that now house them.
Those institutions mostly keep their heads down and avoid returning fire, shying from both the big guns of books and newspaper editorials, and the strafing via social media that any retort, however well-reasoned, tends to attract.
For decades the front lines in this battle have mostly stayed where they are, as have the antiquities in question.
Some demands are for the particular return of items taken with violence, such as the Benin Bronzes – thousands of plaques and other objects of cast brass, looted from the shrines of West African kings by British forces in 1897.