Introduction to Repatriation: Principles, Policy and Practice - ANU course

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Keeping Connected – Repatriation

By Johann Zetterstrom-Sharp (Chair)   

 On March 16^th we hosted the first of MEG’s Keeping Connected events, focusing on repatriation.

These events emerged through conversations about what MEG is and what we have to offer, and the recognition that MEG is a community. It has been a place where colleagues have felt supported, able to ask questions they struggle asking within their organisations, talk things through and get advice in a friendly, supportive environment. We have been thinking this past year about what we can do to support our members to do important work, particularly around opening up access (including through repatriation) and decentring knowledge about collections.

At the moment this support feels important. The urgency of acknowledging and working through the colonial nature of our institutions and collections is crucial, but many are working in isolation with little, or unstable, institutional support. Colleagues are often expected to provide quick and complete answers to requests for action within organisations whom publicly promised change in the summer of 2020 without necessarily being ready for it. In other contexts there is the institutional will, coupled with anxiety over risks to funding. We feel sharing best practice and making changes collectively can help.

Repatriation, restitution and return have been flagged repeatedly as something our members feel passionately about, want to support, and see as important to their roles. In many cases, however, our institutions, processes and policies are not ready: there is no clear road map. This is a barrier for all concerned. Institutional inexperience and unreadiness (at CEO, Director or Trustee level) can get redirected towards people whose job it is to care for collections, but have very limited direct power about what happens to collections beyond their status as museum objects. Likewise for individuals and organisations who would like to make a request for the return of their belongings or material heritage, the lack of a clear road map means they do not know how their request will be received, what supporting evidence will be required, or what emotional labour will be expected of them. This is harmful and disrespectful.

The Keeping Connected workshop included short introductions by JC Niala and Juma Ondeng, Emma Martin, and Stephen Welsh, about building trust, writing repatriation policies, and processing requests. Members were then able to indicate who they wanted to speak to and seek advice from in break-out rooms. Some of the conversations had are explored below.

Building Trust

JC Niala and Juma Ondeng reflected on their experience as part of the Rethinking Relationships and Building Trust around African Collections project based at the Horniman Museum in South London, MAA in Cambridge, Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and World Museum, Liverpool. This project was focused on developing new ways of working in order to build the trust needed to have equitable conversations about the futures of collections, including repatriation. As a result of Covid-19, the project became increasingly focused on understanding and working through barriers to digital access, in recognition that for the majority of community members who would like to access their material heritage in European collections, this access will happen digitally.

Both Juma and JC highlighted how trust is not a given, it takes time and is based primarily not on models of working or templates, but on individuals and their relationships with each other. Relationships are not between museums and communities, they are between people.

A question was raised about how to work through conflicting needs and opinions within communities where the future of collections are concerned. We were reminded that community dynamics are not ours; that includes making decisions about whose opinion is most valid, but also playing the role of arbitrator. By focusing on access and transparency (about collections and provenance, but also crucially museum processes and terminologies) we can provide a community with the information they need to reach decisions that work for them.

For me this is a reminder that we are often impatient to see clear and neat conclusions that fit within the structures of ownership and entitlement that our professions already work within. What is needed is patience and openness. It also highlights that trust goes both ways: we also need to trust that communities know themselves how to manage and work through differences in opinion.

As part of demonstrating that trust, Juma noted the importance of taking the time to identify cultural gatekeepers, leaders and elders within a community, and showing them due respect. This includes ensuring they are kept informed from the beginning so that everyone is on the same page and has all the relevant information.

Repatriation Policy Development

Emma Martin spoke about the process of developing a new repatriation policy at World Museum, Liverpool. The last few years have seen the development of individual repatriation policies for museums across the UK, rather than relying on Arts Council templates. This is significant because it has in many cases forced a reflection on what these policies need to do in anticipation of a rise in formal requests made directly to the museum. For Liverpool, the formal policy will be accompanied by a document written for individuals and organisations who want to approach the museum to make a request or claim. This aims at clarity around process, with step-by-step guidance to build a clear road map. This is as much about supporting the claims process as it is being honest and open in order to manage expectations. That includes the time that it takes to process claims, the potential costs involved, and how claims will be assessed.

This honesty is crucial. Whilst it is understandable that museum leaders want their institutions to be perceived as ethical and committed to social justice, raising expectations that requests for restitution will be always granted, or that the process will be straightforward - when this is not the case - is both disrespectful and harmful. It serves no useful purpose.

Emma reflected on the importance of taking time over the writing of policy, thinking carefully about who will read and use it. At Liverpool this meant speaking with colleagues in the organisation as a first step, ensuring that the whole organisation was on board. This included senior management who would need to defend and understand the policy to advocate for it, and get it signed off. It also included an external public conversation focusing on how this policy might affect visitors to the museum. It is important to recognise that people feel strongly about the museums they love, and may be afraid of change. There is rarely space to discuss what repatriation or restitution actually means in practice, why it is important, and what changes visitors might see, through examples and case studies. The result was that the museum was able to bring people on board who were initially resistant to a transparent and clear policy that might encourage claims.

Processing Claims

Something that comes up repeatedly is the lack of experience colleagues have in working on requests for restitution. This also means that there is a lack of transparency about process for individuals or organisations making a claim. This can be a source of mistrust and misunderstanding for all those involved. It is difficult to provide reassurance that claims will be dealt with respectfully when there are no other examples to point to, likewise inexperience can mean that the integrity of a request is not taken seriously.

Stephen Welsh was invited to talk about his experience working with AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) during the unconditional repatriation of secret, sacred and ceremonial objects to Aboriginal communities in Australia. AIATSIS is a collecting, publishing and research institute dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and peoples, and led the Return of Cultural Heritage project. Stephen highlighted how once the formal claim was made by AIATSIS, the processing of the claim by the museum took 10 months. This accelerated timeframe was enabled by existing research and experience of repatriation at Manchester Museum, and the experience of AIATSIS working with external repatriation processes and policies, as well as the fact that they had been able to resource their own research process into the collections.

This is of course vital when museums are themselves under resourced to do this work themselves. Agreements had further already been made on the costs and logistics of the return, including clarity about where the belongings would be returned to. There are a total of 3039 Aboriginal and Torres Strait objects in the collection at Manchester, and 43 of these were subject to the request. It is worth adding that although AIATSIS has been incredibly successful acting as an intermediary between communities and museums in supporting the return of objects, some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities approach relationships with museums, cultural rejuvenation and repatriation in other ways.

This case study highlights the importance of building strong relationships prior to the claim, but also how the processing of the AIATSIS claim was relatively uncomplicated because the senior management at the Manchester Museum trusted the organisation and its research methodology. It is important to consider the power of governmental legitimacy, and how this is difficult to translate in contexts where communities do not have that platform nor its resource to make their case, or where the case for return sits in tension with a national position. It is also worth considering the fact that there are strong claims for the return of objects that were clearly taken under duress and have significant spiritual value in other contexts, that have not been answered. This highlights how although policies often state that claims will be answered on a case by case basis, it is not only the details of the case that determine the outcome, but also the way in which a case is articulated and by whom, and how it is resourced. This brings us back to the importance of trust, and access. Without trust and the conversations it enables, we are scrambling around trying to pull pieces together into a mold that was not built to accommodate them.

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At MEG we feel as a collective that enabling the possibility of restitution to become a normal part of museum work is the way to building a better and more humane future for museums with colonial era collections. Crucially, it will help build the trust that is so vital to enabling good work, to understanding our collections better, being more representative, creative and useful to community members and visitors alike. If you have ideas or suggestions as to how we can support you, please get in touch.

MEG visit to the Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA/Africa Museum) Tervuren, Belgium. 6-9 Feb 2020

By Sally Ayres, curator, RAMM, Exeter.

When Rachel Heminway Hurst’s email arrived in December last year, proposing a MEG trip to Tervuren to visit the Royal Museum of Central Africa and be guided around the re-displays of this controversial museum, I think I was one of the first to sign up. I had been to the museum many years ago while researching the representation of African artefacts in Western museums and RMCA had been an important museum to see. The museum was built for King Leopold II to celebrate and parade the rich resources of the Congo colony that he had claimed, with considerable violence, in the 1880’s. When I had last visited, a distinct pride in Belgium’s colonial history was evident: what would the museum look like now, after a multi-million decolonising redevelopment?

Six MEG members headed out of the EU Quarter of Brussels to the leafy suburbs of Tervuren by tram on a sunny morning in February. Sarah Morton, Kathleen Lawther, Malika Kraamer, Rachel and I met up with Axelle Van Wynsberghe on the way. The first thing that struck me as we arrived at Tervuren was the indirect route you now take from the tram stop to the new museum entrance: a deliberate ploy to avoid one being  over-impressed by the  grandiose display of power that was experienced in the former approach to the palatial ‘Museum of the Congo’.  These days you enter the grounds by a back road through the grounds leading to a modernistic sharp-edged large box of glass. This building acts as a welcome centre and as a window onto the ornate, domed and decorated turn of the century museum, so that the colonial building becomes ‘the first museum object’ you see. 

Bruno Verbergt, Operational Director of the RMCA, explained the rationale of the renovation over a cup of coffee. He spoke candidly about the challenges and compromises involved in the redevelopment and it became clear that indeed, many compromises had been necessary over significant conflicts concerning representation. Bruno said wryly ‘we are Belgians and we are used to compromise’ but the key intention, he insisted, was that ‘new constructs replace colonial ones, rooted in paradigms that give a central role to superdiversity, globalisation and multipolarity’. This meant that the museum has to take a ‘critical and apt’ attitude to its own history, to King Leopold, to the colony and to the victims of colonial violence. While he argued that ‘we cannot unify people on the basis of the past’, Bruno proposed that we can unify on the basis of the future.  To do this the museum had to act as a platform for power-sharing. 

We soon had a chance to see the ways the museum displays worked towards these ideals as we were escorted by curator Sophie Bouillon and conservator Siska Genbrugge down the long white corridor that takes the visitor underground, to the original museum building. Again your expectations are disrupted- when you finally emerge up a modest staircase into the old museum you find yourself in one of the building’s wings, with a view onto an open empty courtyard space. Ghostly names of Congolese appear on the nearby memorial wall when the sun casts shadows from the names written on the windows. These shadows identify the Congolese people who died in the ‘human zoo’ that was made for the World Expo in Antwerp in 1894. The children who died in the Belgian city of Gijzegem’s residential school between 1890 and 1906 are also remembered alongside the names on the traditional memorial to the Belgians who died in the early colonial period in the Congo.

But before entering this staircase the visitor has the all-important opportunity to read and watch multi-media interpretations of the RMCA’s new approach to its colonial past and its aspirations for the future. The area assigned for this introduction is a white-walled, but crypt-like basement, simply called ‘Introduction with Sculpture Depot’. The communication is multimedia:  maps, film, models, photographs and objects. Every label and interpretation panel has to be written in three languages (French, English and Dutch) posing a challenge to text writers and designers alike. The turn-around for one label in the RMCA is estimated as six weeks. These introductory displays explain all the enterprises of the Tervuren research centre, which include natural and life sciences (using extensive ongoing field work in several African countries) as well as housing the Henry Morton Stanley Archive. An open ‘depot’ or ‘storage room’ houses the no-longer-appropriate statues of Africans such as the infamous ‘leopard man’ which had once been on central display in the old museum. But, we asked ourselves, does this theatre effectively communicate the statues’ redundancy? And are they needed on show at all? 

It is in this introductory area that RMCA makes its position on colonialism clear. A touchscreen panel, answering the question ‘What is the museum’s position on colonisation today?’ states: 

Colonialism is a form of government based on military occupation, authoritarian and sometimes racist administration and exploitation. The museum therefore explicitly distances itself from it. It takes responsibility for the impact that its previous propaganda for colonialism has had on the multicultural society of today and for the message of Western moral and intellectual superiority it has conveyed in the past.  

This introductory area may easily be by-passed by many visitors eager to get into the museum ‘proper’ but it sets the tone for almost all that follows. African and African diaspora voices have a greater presence than ever before, whether in film (interviews, musical performances, dancing) or photographs, critical texts or artworks, throughout the galleries.  This was maybe most successful in the galleries based around the anthropological themes of Languages and Music , and Rituals and Ceremonies but it was also seen, for example, in videos inviting contemporary critique of old propaganda  films made in the colonial period promoting the ‘civilising mission’ of Belgians in the Congo. Younger faces and voices are also seen, via the digital project, Africa Tube. This online platform invites young black communities to select material from African and diaspora sources on the internet and to add it to a live virtual library, connecting the museum with ‘afrocyberspace’. 

Not all galleries involve living voices or post-independence African contributions however:  the ‘temporary exhibition’ Unrivalled Art is unapologetic in its representation of the collections as fine art, structured around a Western art historical methodology with little reference to living source communities. This was a lively talking point for our group, and was still being discussed as we relaxed over beer and frites at the end of the long day. One of the great strengths of a trip like this is the conversation between colleagues and our subject matter over the three days ranged from restitution, repatriation, source communities, budget cuts and Brexit, to practical ideas on email overload, unrealistic expectations and productive use of long commutes, amongst other things. Our talks were heartfelt, supportive and useful in true MEG spirit and I think we all came away stimulated and encouraged by sharing the time together. Thank you Rachel for organising it all.