Repatriation

Harvard's Peabody Museum received the collection of 700 Native American hair samples as a donation in 1935.

Harvard Museum Pledges to Return Hair Samples of 700 Native American Children

The samples come from students who were forced to attend government-run boarding schools

Leola One Feather, of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, observes as Native American artifacts are photographed in Barre, Massachusetts. 

Massachusetts Museum Returns Wounded Knee Artifacts to Sioux Tribes

A ceremony on Saturday marked the conclusion of a long repatriation process

Woman Hiding Her Face (1912) by Egon Schiele

Nazis Stole Two Paintings From a Jewish Cabaret Star. Now, His Heirs Are Selling Them

Proceeds from the auction will go toward supporting underrepresented artists

Untitled artwork by Moses Johuma, a student at the Cyrene Mission School

Rare Collection of 1940s Art Returns to Zimbabwe After 70 Years

Students at the Cyrene Mission School created the works at a time when the African country was under colonial rule

Earlier this week, American investigators returned a looted rare quarter shekel silver coin to Israel.

Ancient Coin Made in Defiance of Roman Rule Returns to Israel

U.S. officials found the stolen coin at a Denver auction in 2017

Some of the returned artifacts

The Netherlands Repatriates 343 Ceramics to Panama

The pre-Hispanic pottery pieces range from bowls to plates to burial vessels

Investigators have seized 27 antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the last six months, including this marble head of a Greek youth, dated to around 300 to 100 B.C.

Investigators Seize 27 Greek and Egyptian Antiquities From the Met

The seizures come at a time of increased scrutiny from the Manhattan district attorney’s office over international art crime

The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

Museum of the Bible Returns Centuries-Old Gospel Manuscript to Greece

The artifact had been stolen from a monastery during World War I

Shiva in Himalayan Abode with Ascetics, a 10th-century statue returned to Nepal

The Met Returns Two Stolen Artifacts to Nepal

The 10th-century stone statue and 13th-century wooden strut will go on display at the National Museum of Nepal

The ceremony arrives amid a worldwide push to repatriate objects removed from their countries of origin under troubling circumstances.

Albuquerque Museum Returns Long-Forgotten Cache of Sculptures to Mexico

The objects, which date to between 300 and 600 B.C.E., sat in a storage box for 15 years

Members of the Ponca delegation pose with the repatriated pipe tomahawk.

Harvard Returns Chief Standing Bear's Pipe Tomahawk to the Ponca Tribe

The Native American leader gifted the artifact to his lawyer in a landmark 1879 civil rights case

This painting by Richard Caton Woodville Jr. depicts the Battle of Omdurman.

Sudanese Museums Call for Return of Stolen Artifacts

Colonizers took the items after a deadly battle in the late 19th century

This commemorative sculpture by an Edo artist is one of 29 objects the Smithsonian is proposing to repatriate to Nigeria. 

Why the Smithsonian Adopted a New Policy on Ethical Collecting

For more than a century, museum artifacts were acquired in ways we no longer find acceptable. How can we repair the damage?

The Parthenon sculptures are also known as the Elgin Marbles. 

Can Greece and the U.K. Finally Broker a Deal to Return the Elgin Marbles to Athens?

New talks raise old questions about the ancient Parthenon sculptures

This statue was looted from the Koh Ker temple complex in Cambodia in the 1970s.

Cambodia Asks U.K. Cultural Institutions to Return Looted Statues

British museums contain hundreds of allegedly stolen temple treasures

The Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin houses some 5,500 skulls collected by Austrian anthropologist Felix von Luschan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On Friday, February 11, the German museum returned 32 skulls from the collection to a Hawaiian delegation.

Germany, Austria Repatriate Dozens of Human Skulls to Hawaii

Earlier this month, a Hawaiian delegation retrieved 58 sets of ancestral remains from five European museums

Earlier this month, U.S. officials agreed to return two seized cuneiform artifacts to the Iraqi consulate in Los Angeles.

U.S. Returns 4,000-Year-Old Cuneiform Tablet and Prism to Iraq

An investigator says the artifacts were "almost certainly" looted from the Middle Eastern country

French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot stands next to Gustav Klimt's oil painting Rosebushes under the Trees (1905), as she announces the return of 15 Nazi-looted artworks to Jewish families at an event at Musee d'Orsa in Paris.

France to Return 15 Works of Nazi-Looted Art to Jewish Families

The works include pieces held in the collections of the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay in Paris

This 14th-century religious carving of a water spirit was part of a window decoration in a Kathmandu monastery.

Rubin Museum Agrees to Return Stolen Religious Artifacts to Nepal

An investigation launched by the New York cultural institution concluded that the 14th- and 17th-century carvings were "unlawfully obtained"

Bruce Clark, author of the new book Athens: City of Wisdom, outlines the events that culminated in the Elgin Marbles’ extraction from Greece.

How the Much-Debated Elgin Marbles Ended Up in England

For two centuries, diplomat Thomas Bruce has been held up as a shameless plunderer. The real history is more complicated, argues the author of a new book

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