[ SECRET POST #6044 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6044 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 28 secrets from Secret Submission Post #864.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think it can be complicated; if something was unambiguously stolen, looted, or illegally smuggled in order to be placed in a museum it should certainly be sent back. But relatively few of the artifacts in question are that clear. If something was traded away in a transaction that both parties considered satisfactory at the time but sometime later someone else claiming authority for one of the parties involved from decides the transaction was invalid, it gets more complicated fast.

And that's not even touching on things like right of conquest. If an object was looted after a genocidal invasion, and they traded it to somebody else, and they had it extorted away from them by someone else in exchange for their life, and then when they died there was an inheritance dispute over who got it, and then the person who kept it after that was violently overthrown and the usurper gave it to another person in exchange for supporting the coup, and then his heir signed it over in a peace treaty after losing a war, and none of those people or the entities they represented exist anymore - who stole it and who needs to give it back?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Wouldn't it become down to original provenance in such cases? If the original provenance can be reasonably demonstrated, then whether the current owner obtained it in good faith or in a convoluted way doesn't matter.

[(Anonymous)]

DA but in history there is a lot of muddy bits, not everything can be reasonably demonstrated, or it can be 'reasonably demonstrated' by mulitple parties thus not helping at all. Theoretically yeah it should be easy, but reality is often more complicated.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Well yeah, but if it can't be reasonably demonstrated (like if there's multiple potentially valid claims), then it doesn't get returned.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I'm not sure what you mean by original provenance here. Sure, for something like Nazi loot, that's what you'd go by. But often the dispute for cultural treasures that crossed oceans a century ago is over things like how the concept of "ownership" even applies, and there may be half a dozen parties in the dispute who are all defining it differently.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I think I see where the disconnect is.

So, in the type of situation you're describing, I think the answer is simple: it doesn't get returned, because which party's claim is accurate can't be demonstrated to any reasonable degree. In a case where the evidence points toward one party's claim being accurate, then it gets returned.

To me, the story of a piece may be convoluted, but that doesn't complicate the question of whether it should be returned. You can either say, "yes, the evidence definitely points toward this piece having been looted from this location" or you can't.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, yeah, like I said, for the simple ones there's a simple answer, but I think also saying "this is complicated so the museum keeps it" isn't a great answer either, and most of the high-profile cases are at least somewhat complicated.

Like, the simplest complicated example I can come up with is: Museum has a thing that historically oppressed indigenous group says is important ritual object that belongs with indigenous group. Museum says we bought this fair and square a century ago from the son of the person who made it, we have receipts. Indigenous group says he had no right to sell it, our culture doesn't believe that type of object can be bought and sold. Museum says well the guy we brought it from sure believed he could, are you saying the son of your great artist is not from your culture? Indigenous group says it's more complicated than that and you know it.

In a case like that there's not really a dispute over what happened, just a dispute over who is morally in the right when both groups are operating under different moral frameworks and the weight of historical interactions other than just that one transaction. Like I would tend to say in a case like my hypothetical the museum should give it back not because it was "stolen" or "looted" but because the indigenous group will use it in more important ways and it would be a good thing to do, but it's very arguable, and building a case that it was 'stolen' tends to get more structural support than proposing that people in groups just be good to each other, and I don't think it has a simple answer, and most of the time it's even more complicated than my example.

(The example I used with all the coups and genocide was a capsule summary of the Koh-I-Noor diamond, which currently has four countries claiming it's an important and inalienable part of their cultural heritage, none of whom are clear successors of the people it was originally looted from.)

[(Anonymous)]

DA

On the other hand, I think you are ignoring that cultural institutions like the British Museum are refusing to even return the obviously looted stuff. Honestly I think trying to muddy the conversation by saying there are 'complicated' situations is in bad faith as it implies that 'complications' are what's keeping instititions from returning stuff, rather than greed.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I'm just not bringing it up in my response to the person who said it's not complicated. Claiming it's not ever complicated or it's all due to greed is ignoring a lot of the reasons it's not happening which makes it less likely to happen. (Did you notice how in my thread we ended at them saying "well, anything that's complicated should just be kept" and me saying "actually we should give it back even if it's not obviously stolen"?)

(complicated thing: most of the people at the British Museum would like to give the obviously stolen stuff back but except in really exceptional cases they need the approval of the British Parliament and the British Parliament is full of explicitly racist fuckers, yes, even the POC who's currently in charge. So they are doing a lot of end-running around the law and the racist fuckers when they have a chance - sometimes by making it extra complicated even when it isn't.)