What is it about?
This article sketches the impetus for US art museums’ new stance on restitution and the mechanisms that govern the federal policy for heritage protection, highlighting challenges as well as encouraging signs. It notes the contrast between the new transparency mandated for indigenous objects and the attention to aesthetics that still governs most displays of classical (Greco-Roman) art. It proposes a different approach, one that showcases the biography of the object, its various lives or contexts, and the way different stakeholders have valued it over time.
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Why is it important?
By drawing attention to restitution and the world-wide looting of heritage sites, the approach advocated for in this article if more widely adopted would help to both better explain the history of the work of art to the wider public and also make clear the continued importance of antiquity today.
Perspectives
This article developed out of a paper given at a wonderful conference in the UK on looted art and restitution in a global and transnational context and was a great deal of fun to write.
Laetitia La Follette
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Looted Antiquities, Art Museums and Restitution in the United States since 1970, Journal of Contemporary History, July 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0022009416641198.
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