Art Restitution

Abstract

Art restitution is the return of stolen or improperly traded cultural property to its rightful owner. Critical to determining whether a work of art should be restituted is if it was subject to a transfer that was unlawful or invalid, such as a theft, expropriation, illicit trafficking, or a sale made under duress. The process of restitution therefore hinges on the provenance (history of possession and physical movement) of the object in question, along with a consideration of applicable laws that may govern ownership, import and export, and other ethical and policy frameworks. While there have been disputes over the ownership of works of art for years, the topic grew increasingly important during the 20th century, when many nations passed legislation seeking to prevent the removal of culturally significant artifacts from their borders. Artwork was restituted on a large scale following the widespread displacement of cultural property under the National Socialist regime and during World War II. The rightful ownership of archaeological material became the focus of particular scrutiny after the signing of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. In 1990, the United States passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to facilitate claims for Native American human remains, burial goods, sacred objects, and items of cultural patrimony. It was not, however, until the turn of the 21st century that these issues came fully to the fore in the art world. In the 1990s and early 2000s, high-profile restitution claims for art stolen during the Holocaust and World War II and for antiquities looted and smuggled from their countries of origin prompted participants in the art trade to become more aware of the importance of provenance and rightful ownership. Since then, there have been increasing calls to restitute works of art removed from previously colonized areas, especially in the Global South, to their current countries of origin. Ownership claims have been facilitated by the expansion of the internet, which has made the holdings of museums, commercial galleries, and auction houses publicly accessible. The increasing transparency of the art world and the development of online databases have expedited the resolution of claims. Thanks to such tools, it has become possible more easily to register and locate lost or stolen works of art. As the field of art restitution is relatively new, the body of literature on the topic is principally from the late 20th and early 21st centuries and continues to grow rapidly.