[ 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 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.)