Looted Artifacts, Returned to Yemen, Will Go to the Smithsonian, for Now
Published: 04:02 PM,Feb 25,2023 | EDITED : 08:02 PM,Feb 25,2023
As the pressure on museums and collectors to return looted artifacts to their countries of origin has grown in recent years, one issue has been whether some countries are equipped to accept them immediately.
On Tuesday, under an agreement designed to recognise such a difficulty, the Smithsonian Institution announced that the US is returning 77 looted artifacts to the government of the Republic of Yemen, but their physical return will be delayed during the current violent conflict there.
For the next two years at least, the objects will be housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, where some may be put on display.
The artifacts include 65 funerary stelae, or carved stones, from northwest Yemen, dated to the second half of the first millennium B.C., a bronze bowl, and 11 folios from early Qurans.
They were seized from a New York art dealer more than a decade ago. Since then, they have been held in storage, and the new partnership, the first return of cultural objects by the US government to Yemen in almost 20 years, means some could soon emerge from the darkness of storage and be exhibited.
“The current situation in Yemen is tragic,” Chase F. Robinson, director of the museum of Asian Art, said in an interview. “This is just a small moment in which we can celebrate some collaboration.”
Yemen is trying to emerge from an eight-year civil conflict between the government, backed by Saudi Arabia, and a well-armed rebel group called the Houthis. The United Nations estimates that the war has claimed more than 200,000 lives, mostly from indirect causes like hunger and disease.
As well as creating a refugee and humanitarian crisis, the war has left much of the nation’s infrastructure in ruins. According to the National Museum of Asian Art, the country “has experienced heavy looting and destruction of its tangible cultural heritage.”
The objects were turned over to the custody of the National Museum of Asian Art on Tuesday afternoon during a ceremony at the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen in Washington, with officials from the US departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice.
“With the current situation in Yemen, it is not the right time to bring the objects back into the country,” Mohammed Al-Hadhrami, Yemen’s ambassador to the United States, said in a statement.
According to the initial two-year custodial agreement, which Yemen can request to extend, the museum will store, document and care for the objects and will be able to “exhibit the collection to foster a greater understanding of ancient Yemeni art,” the museum said in its announcement.
As museums have increasingly embraced the repatriation of objects stolen from other countries or acquired under disputed circumstances, the Smithsonian has sought to be a prominent voice in the debate about how and when objects should be returned.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, has said he wants the institution’s museums to update their collections practices, and last year adopted an ethical returns policy that holds that issues of fairness could trump any legal title to objects it might possess. — NYT
On Tuesday, under an agreement designed to recognise such a difficulty, the Smithsonian Institution announced that the US is returning 77 looted artifacts to the government of the Republic of Yemen, but their physical return will be delayed during the current violent conflict there.
For the next two years at least, the objects will be housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, where some may be put on display.
The artifacts include 65 funerary stelae, or carved stones, from northwest Yemen, dated to the second half of the first millennium B.C., a bronze bowl, and 11 folios from early Qurans.
They were seized from a New York art dealer more than a decade ago. Since then, they have been held in storage, and the new partnership, the first return of cultural objects by the US government to Yemen in almost 20 years, means some could soon emerge from the darkness of storage and be exhibited.
“The current situation in Yemen is tragic,” Chase F. Robinson, director of the museum of Asian Art, said in an interview. “This is just a small moment in which we can celebrate some collaboration.”
Yemen is trying to emerge from an eight-year civil conflict between the government, backed by Saudi Arabia, and a well-armed rebel group called the Houthis. The United Nations estimates that the war has claimed more than 200,000 lives, mostly from indirect causes like hunger and disease.
As well as creating a refugee and humanitarian crisis, the war has left much of the nation’s infrastructure in ruins. According to the National Museum of Asian Art, the country “has experienced heavy looting and destruction of its tangible cultural heritage.”
The objects were turned over to the custody of the National Museum of Asian Art on Tuesday afternoon during a ceremony at the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen in Washington, with officials from the US departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice.
“With the current situation in Yemen, it is not the right time to bring the objects back into the country,” Mohammed Al-Hadhrami, Yemen’s ambassador to the United States, said in a statement.
According to the initial two-year custodial agreement, which Yemen can request to extend, the museum will store, document and care for the objects and will be able to “exhibit the collection to foster a greater understanding of ancient Yemeni art,” the museum said in its announcement.
As museums have increasingly embraced the repatriation of objects stolen from other countries or acquired under disputed circumstances, the Smithsonian has sought to be a prominent voice in the debate about how and when objects should be returned.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, has said he wants the institution’s museums to update their collections practices, and last year adopted an ethical returns policy that holds that issues of fairness could trump any legal title to objects it might possess. — NYT