Visiting great museums is like stepping into a time machine. For the cost of admission, you admire priceless art and artifacts from every age of history and all corners of the globe.
But the art and antiquities market has always been tainted by theft, looting and colonial-era crimes. And for too long, museums (and museum-goers) failed to ask questions about how remarkable objects were acquired.
Until recently, even the most respected museums did little to verify objects’ provenance and took stances of “innocent until proven guilty,” says Elizabeth Marlowe, an art historian and museum studies professor at Colgate University.
“Unless you can prove that it was stolen, it’s fine for me to acquire it, right?” says Marlowe. “It was a kind of ethical and legal loophole that allowed European and American collectors and museums to continue acquiring objects whose legality was questionable.”
That’s starting to change. Here are stories about seven cultural treasures that were repatriated to their rightful owners or countries of origin.
