Case study
A national museum returning part of its collection
Advising a museum’s trustees on the return of 187 objects to a claimant community after eleven years of correspondence and a court application.
The situation
A national museum had held 187 objects from a single community for more than a century. The community had asked for their return for eleven years, the correspondence had grown to several thousand pages, and in 2021 the community’s representatives applied to court.
In early 2022 the trustees decided to return the objects. They had to announce a decision that some of their donors, some of their staff and much of the commentary on the case would regard as either long overdue or a dangerous precedent, while the court application was still technically live.
What we did
We worked with the museum’s lawyers and the community’s representatives on a joint announcement, agreed word by word with both. Its first sentence was the community’s; its second was the museum’s. Staff were told in person the afternoon before, donors by letter on the morning of the announcement, and the press at noon.
Our advice was that the museum should explain its decision once, fully, and then stop explaining it. The trustees published their reasons in a single document and declined every invitation to debate them, including several from people who had criticised the museum for years for holding the objects at all.
From the work
The museum
has agreed to transferis returning the objects to theclaimantscommunity from which they were taken.
Outcome
The objects were returned in November 2022 at a ceremony held by the community, which the museum’s chair attended as a guest. The court application was withdrawn. The museum has since been asked for advice by four other institutions considering similar claims.
We had spent eleven years explaining ourselves. They helped us stop.
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