Restitution

‘Slap in the face’: Poland passes law effectively blocking Holocaust-era art restitutions

Lawyers and collectors weigh in on new rule that sets a 30-year limit on claims to property that was stolen by Nazis and Communist leaders

National Gallery of Australia to return 13 stolen objects to India that it bought from disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor

"The decision to return the works is the culmination of years of research and due diligence," the Canberra museum says

German Nazi loot panel rejects heirs' claim for Lovis Corinth portrait, keeping it in Berlin’s Stadtmuseum

The commission said the work's history touches four families who had been “oppressed, robbed, deported, driven to flee or murdered”

Italy passes restitution resolution amid renewed calls for return of the 'Victorious Youth' bronze from Getty Museum

Italian senate approved resolution that could pave the way to restitutions as politicians call for return of Ancient Greek bronze also known as Atleta di Fano

French museums face fresh legal action over refusal to restitute works to Jewish families

Collection of the lawyer and collector Armand Isaac Dorville was sold after his death in an estate sale that the state argues was not forced

Berlin museums board agrees to relinquish Benin bronzes 'regardless of how they were acquired'

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation aims for the first restitutions to Nigeria next year, requests “detailed timetable” for negotiations

Will the Queen return her Benin bronze? How the African treasure was looted not once, but twice

The 17th-century oba head was plucked from the Nigerian National Museum and given to Elizabeth II as a thank-you gift

The Met will return two Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

The Benin Court plaques donated in 1991 with more than 150 other works, have been deaccessioned, while a third object, an Ife Head offered for purchase, will instead be restituted

Belgian experts frustrated at 'lack of initiative from museums and government' call for restitution of colonial-era acquisitions

New report provides guidelines for the return of artefacts to Africa, where Belgium controlled territory that was 80 times its size

Don’t trash talk museums at this perilous time: we must adapt—not throw away—our cultural heritage

Cultural institutions—like religious buildings—can be spaces of good and harm, we cannot simply denounce their histories as one or the other, says museum director Nicholas Thomas

Germany launches African museum exchange programme to discuss returning looted objects

New government initiative MuseumsLab aims to foster more international co-operation and consider topics including decolonisation and restitution

Germany pledges to return Benin bronzes to Nigeria starting in 2022

“We are facing up to our historical and moral responsibility”, says culture minister Monika Grütters

Scottish university claims Benin bronze bought for £750 is worth £500,000—but is that now really the case?

Aberdeen University is returning its looted 18th-century oba head to the Nigerian federal government

Global survey: where in the world are the Benin bronzes?

Around 160 institutions hold looted Benin artefacts, but how many are prepared to give them back? We asked museums in five countries for their position on restitution

'We've had a lot of museums reaching out': how Nigeria is getting ready to receive the world’s Benin bronzes

With institutions across the globe rethinking their views on restitution, the African country’s focus is now on making a home for its heritage

Museum extension allows Indigenous Sámi people to welcome home more than 2,000 artefacts held in Finland

An exhibition at the National Museum of Finland will celebrate the objects' repatriation to the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida in northern Lapland

Dutch museum settles with Jewish businessman's heirs on painting sold in Nazi era, defying government panel

The agreement overturns the Restitution Committee's 2013 rejection of the claim, which argued the painting was worth more to the museum than the heirs

UCLA’s Fowler Museum to reach out to Nigeria about returning its Benin bronzes

As restitution momentum builds, director of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art says it could lead discussions for the return of looted Benin objects in US museum collections

After major Klimt restitution by France, another work still vexes Vienna

Apple Tree II, once confused for Roses Under the Trees, was returned to the wrong family 20 years ago, leaving the heirs of its original owner facing huge obstacles to get it back

London’s Horniman Museum—home to 15 Benin bronzes—announces new ‘transparent procedures’ for looted object requests

South London museum has released new policies on restitution but says it will need to seek legal advice about the right to return artefacts

Exhibitionsinterview

Humboldt Forum to show Britain’s 1897 violence and plunder in Benin exhibition next year

The exhibition will include around half of Berlin’s collection of Benin bronzes as Germany lays groundwork to return them to Nigeria

German Nazi-looted art panel recommends return of Franz Marc’s Foxes to heirs of Jewish banker

The decision on whether to return the painting, which hangs in Dusseldorf’s Kunstpalast, will be made by the city assembly in April

Restitutioninterview

Why African voices are crucial to the debate over the return of colonial loot

Senegalese art historian El Hadji Malick Ndiaye says discussions and decisions about the restitution of African artefacts cannot be dictated by the West

Podcastspodcast

Benin bronzes: looted treasures will return to Nigeria at last

Plus, the newly discovered Van Gogh is sold and artist Rana Begum on Tess Jaray

Hosted by Ben Luke and Aimee Dawson. with guest speakers Catherine Hickley and Martin Bailey. Produced by Julia Michalska, David Clack and Henrietta Bentall

German culture minister seeks 'national strategy' on Benin bronzes, including restitution

Monika Grütters says she will meet museum directors and trustees next month

University of Aberdeen to return Benin bronze looted by British troops to Nigeria

The sculpture of an oba’s head was “acquired in a way that we now consider to have been extremely immoral,” the university says

‘The movement is unstoppable’: African scholars and activists hail German plan to return Benin bronzes

“There is simply no moral ground for the confiscation of African artefacts in Western museums,” says the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe