These One-of-a-Kind Objects Are in the Wrong Museums

Recent years have seen increased public interest in provenance—where and how museum treasures came from—as the German Lost Art Foundation’s Gilbert Lupfer explained in The New York Times back in 2023. And the institutions under the most fire for fudging the details of provenance are generally those considered the world’s top museums. It’s sometimes claimed that the more well-established institutions are better equipped to take care of fragile, valuable artifacts, leading to debates over whether it’s proper for a single institution or museum to “own” valuable items from the past. That’s a tough pill to swallow given recent events; Egypt and Nigeria have implemented major institutional upgrades, while the Louvre and British Museum have reported various thefts and security breaches. Even if an institution decides to send something back, the idea of sending a high-maintenance item thousands of miles away is a logistical nightmare. Then there’s this self-serving joint statement from the world’s “top” institutions: “Museums serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every nation.” At the same time, the idea of repatriation hasn’t been lost on officials, policymakers, mus