The Conflict about the Restitution of Art Works: A Solomonic Proposal

Abstract

AbstractThe deep‐seated conflict and controversial debate about the restitution of art is in need of other approaches than the established ones. One side argues that these art works have been looted and belongs to the countries where they originated. Therefore, they must be restituted. The other side argues that some of these art works were bought on a market and were not stolen. Moreover, the art works were well conserved in the Western museums and would otherwise no longer exist. Despite many discussions, the conflict seems to be intractable and has also reached the political sphere. We propose an unorthodox way to mitigate the current conflict and to enable more people to consume culture. The new potential of identically replicating originals is combined with random choice. As the large majority of cultural works of arts are the object of observation, only replication is thought to be well suited to fulfill this requirement. However, we acknowledge the limitations of our proposal with respect to human remains and works of art that are put into use in a cultural context from which it was appropriated.