The Rijksmuseum and the Museum of World Cultures of the Netherlands Intend to Part with Exhibits Acquired During Colonial Conquests: at the Prompting of the Council for Culture, the Museums Have Declared Their Readiness to Return Illegally Exported Works

The Rijksmuseum and the Museum of World Cultures of the Netherlands intend to part with exhibits acquired during colonial conquests: at the prompting of the Council for Culture, the museums have declared their readiness to return to their homelands works of art, jewels and antiquities that were illegally removed. To give you an idea of the scale of the holdings liable to be sent back whence they came, we are speaking of some one hundred thousand objects. A special commission will probably be formed to consider the requests of various countries concerning cultural and historical objects that found their way into Dutch museums, at various times, by illicit means. Well, provenance is an important part of the history and biography of museum treasures, and it cannot fail to affect how they are perceived and, in the end, to whom they belong. It is hard at present to imagine how far this revisionism may go; so far the talk is, for instance, of returning the 70-carat diamond of the Indonesian Sultan of Banjarmasin. But I am sure that many former colonial states will remember the cultural heritage usurped by the European powers. Picture, off the cuff, the quantity of Egyptian treasures, the riches of Eastern tombs, the countless gravestones, libraries, palace valuables, furniture and pictures that came from conquered cities and states, from the Indian Ocean to Africa and from Afghanistan to the Black Sea. If the experiment proves successful, I should not be surprised if, in the near future, lawyers and auditors came "knocking" at other world cultural centres too, and so the Victoria and Albert, the Louvre and the Prado, the Metropolitan Museum and dozens of national archaeological museums had better make ready. I say nothing of the many private museum institutions, to take the Getty alone, which do not disdain objects of dubious provenance. Will matters in the end reach Russia? Hard to say, but it is obvious that objects of national heritage from the holdings of the Gokhran and the Ministry of Culture might well be claimed, at the very least, by the former Union republics, from which many priceless finds and trophies were in their day so generously removed.