 Ladies and gentlemen, friends, colleagues, welcome to the March edition of the director's lecture series. Today we want to look at the repatriation of artifacts, the debates and issues that take place there. In February of this year, a priceless collection of Cambodian gold jewelry was returned to Cambodia. It had been in possession of a London based family of the late Douglas Latchford, who at his death in August 2020 was facing federal charges in the US for the key role he played in the looting and trafficking of Southeast Asian antiquities. prestigious US institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the Norton Simon Museum to name just three have returned artifacts to South and Southeast Asia in recent decades. And in last year, the Horniman Museum in London returned six Benin bronzes taken by British troops from Benin City 125 years ago. It was the first time a UK government funded institution agreed to return cultural treasures that had been looted around the world. The calls for the repatriation and restitution of art and artifacts have been growing stronger of the last decade or two, and they becoming more heated and more complex. They're challenging questions around the morality of keeping looted items that have significant cultural value to the nations from which they have been stolen. And these debates about established global museums serves at places to showcase global art and artifacts will returning these artifacts be lost to the global community, and how do we prevent that. Those are the issues that we're going to be looking at today. And in a sense, we've asked to very esteemed colleagues to help us in this regard. The art historian and curator Professor Naman Ahuja from JNU in Delhi, and Dr Stephen Murphy, the Pratapatitya Paul senior lecturer in curating and museology of Asian art in so as at the University of London. Let me say a little about my two colleagues. Naman Ahuja is a professor of art history at JNU as I've said, but he's also the Dean of the School of Art and aesthetics. He's the general editor of Mark India's oldest publishing house, dedicated to art and culture. As a writer and curator, Naman's work has deepened our understanding of Indian art from the perspectives of visual culture, aesthetics, iconography and trans culturalism. His books have been translated in French, Spanish and Dutch. He has curated some of the most important exhibitions of Indian art in the past 10 years, including the body in Indian art and thought, which was shown in Brussels and the National Museum in Delhi in 2013. And India and the world in which 120 objects from the British Museum were straged in strategic dialogue with Indian objects in the CSMVS in Mumbai and the National Museum in Delhi. The exhibitions have received critical acclaim for generating narratives of Indian history within a globalized world cognizant of issues of caste, gender, comparative religion, and of course decolonization. Let's go to Stephen Murphy. As I said, was the Pratapaditya Paul senior lecturer in curating and museology at so as Stephen specializes in art and archaeology of Buddhism and Hinduism in the first millennium in CES Southeast Asia with a particular focus on Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. He also concentrates on maritime trade and connections between Southeast Asian cultures, Tang China and the Indian Ocean world in general. His museological focus engages with methods of curating Asian art in the context of colonialism and post-colonial studies and debates surrounding the decolonizing of museums. What I'm going to do, colleagues, is allow both Naman and Stephen about 10 minutes each for making introductory comments and thereafter we'll start the conversation that needs to happen. So Naman, once again to both of you, thank you for making yourselves available. Naman, I know it's very, very late in Delhi. Thank you for staying up and for being party to this conversation. Naman, applause yours. Thank you, Adam. It's very nice of you to have sent me this invitation and I'm happy to be a part of this discussion because it's a subject I've been thinking about for some years from different perspectives. And my starting point this evening is not whether repatriation should or should not happen, or if it is a good thing or not. The demand for the repatriation of objects to source countries is only increasing. This year it's on the G20s discussions and India has introduced culture and repatriation as a part of the agenda. So repatriation is only going to increase in pace that is a given. Now, what I'm interested in is that, along with that come lots of other expectations which should take us back to the drawing board to discuss why we are repatriating things in the first place. What are the expectations of the repatriated object? Who selects which object should be repatriated or be prioritized for repatriation? What are the duties of the repatriating agency or country? And what are the new responsibilities of the home of the repatriated object? Who will hold these different parties to account if they are found to be derelict in their duties towards these objects? Before we go into a discussion on brainstorming on what would be the most ethical way forward, I think we also need to outline why we are asking for the repatriation and why has this demand intensified now. Repatriation of objects, relics, museum artifacts is seen by many as a way to write either the problem of looting of objects in source countries, or as a way to write a historical injustice such as Nazi looting or colonization. But I'm afraid one shoe does not fit all those needs. The place from which the object was taken is no longer the same place to which it has been returned. The political map has radically altered over the decades and even centuries since the object has been dislodged. Are those people or even the descendants of those people still the ones asking for the return? Each case for repatriation will have to be assessed differently. Who buy? Who is the assessing authority? The media? The reasons why we are seeing a rise in the demand for the return of cultural patrimony is because of growing globalization and because of the threat communities face of losing their culture. Racism and economic inequalities have precipitated this. However, the question we need to ask is whether the return of the object in question is in a museum is going to fix this problem. What is being repatriated is therefore being done as a symbolic gesture. It cannot write the wrongs of history. Repatriation of an object is just too little to ask for and expect those generations of poverty and deep civilizational scars to be wiped off by that symbolic gesture. So if repatriation isn't enough, what is? And I'll return to this question shortly because I think that's the more important question. First, and equally importantly, we also have to look at the limits of the buzzword these days decolonization from another perspective. Not all the ills that our world faces, not all, many, but not all the ills that our world faces can be laid at the door of colonization. So don't imagine that decolonization is going to fix all those ills. The inequities of caste and gender in India are not a gift of colonialism alone. So why do we imagine that the word decolonization of which repatriation is a part is going to fix this. I believe this narrative of repatriation is being used as a gesture or as a ruse to allow the media to have some hot public stories, rather than make a difference to the substantive issues at hand which at least from an art historian's point of view are far more urgent. And as art historians, I think, come from a position where we believe in the protection and safety of objects. And for that we house them in museums, if they can no longer be housed or preserved in the site from which they come. Now, many seem to have made up their mind that objects are being looted from sites for the sake of the art market. This I'm afraid is only partially true. The desire for the possession of art objects is no longer the main driving force for the desecration or the pillaging of ancient sites. The reasons in fact are two fold and they are uncomfortable. First, it is because of utter negligence. Few monuments are protected well in the countries from which these artifacts come. The ancient ruins lie unprotected and now the Chokhidars or the security personnel at these sites, what to speak of art historians and archaeologists don't even get their monthly wage on time. The sites are being looted as a result, and this will not stop if you repatriate a few objects from the West to India. The second threat to archaeological sites is the advance of map urbanization, the cutting down the forests, the construction of metros, dams, smart cities and expanding agriculture. South Asia is encountering a piece of development never seen before in its history. More parts of India are being urbanized, more power projects are being constructed, industrialization, ever expanding suburbs. As the population increases and more rural areas and hinterlands are converted into urban spaces, archaeological contexts are going to be disturbed forever. And most often no developer, even if it is the government which is supposed to be the caretaker of heritage ever reports the discovery of artifacts for fear that archaeologists may slow down or even stop the development work. The absence of any reported antiquities during the construction of the Delhi metro, where I'm sitting, is a prime example of such silence and apathy. Whereas all other major historic cities like Paris, Rome and London use the opportunity of their metro development or their underground development to create museums, filled with pottery points and artifacts found during those excavations. And to believe in Delhi that nothing was found while digging in the shadow of the Putuk Minar or in Tughlaqabad or in Chandi Chowk in Shahjahanabad, nothing was found apparently. Opportunities are being lost, objects are being lost. Should we therefore be living in the hope and prayer that some intrepid private art dealer should rescue them for us if the government isn't rescuing them. Because who is it that we want to blame. If the reason for the repatriation is to seek public accountability for the removal of artifacts from a place without the consent of its people. Then we need to assess if repatriating it will now address those requirements, the real requirements why we are repatriating, we shouldn't lose sight of that. So repatriation of objects is not possible without detailed studies on provenance. So who is training these provenance historians, and where are our universities building up their capacity to be able to start training people in these fields, which are the courses, who's developed. Similarly, the place to which the object is being repatriated must demonstrate the capacity to look after its cultural assets and mobilize them in lively public displays. This is a matter that is dependent on the caliber and training of the personnel that work in heritage and museums. In countries like India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, if I look only at my own surroundings, investing adequately in the education of art historians, curators, archaeologists, and the institutions that they are meant to run in order to be able to look after this rich cultural patrimony. The quantum rise in heritage and archives needs much larger investment and deployment of resources and this flip side is not being discussed currently adequately. One major aspect of the problem is that perhaps we are expecting far too much of our museums and archaeology departments in India and the rest of the South Asian region. There is not too much cultural patrimony for them to control. Like most countries cultures that were vulnerable and subjected to massive looting stringent laws were enacted to stem the export of antiquities by recent. The illness therefore now lies on the state in these countries to protect all heritage. However, the pace at which our heritage is being affected by development, its protection seems well beyond the coping capacity of the state. So there's little choice but to widen the support base by increasing the stakeholders of the preservation of heritage and who better to do it than the people themselves whose heritage it is, but how is that to be done. Again, we come back to the university to perform an ennobling role of getting the people invested in the field. Repatriating countries need to send back. This is my other thing. It's not enough to send back the object. But also help the source countries in developing the infrastructure they need. Another question then is that if the government has to take recourse to creating frameworks for guiding international collaborations in capacity building knowledge sharing. And even nowadays in a post liberalized world, the privatizing aspects of museum and heritage management, which is what we are seeing all around us. What does this privatization mean for the long term security of heritage. These are two principles by which public private ownership of heritage will be regulated. I feel these are the more urgent questions that we need to address which come with the as a concomitant responsibility alongside repatriation. And I think those people who work in policy really need to be able to start thinking about these matters alongside and not just leave it at the return of the object. And I think that is a mediatized photo op for both parties. So I'll end my initial comments here. I have a whole bunch of other things to talk about, but perhaps later during the conversation. Thank you. And I think that those are important points. I'll come back to that and summarize some of it in a minute. But I am going to switch immediately to Stephen. And I'll Stephen to make his introductory remarks and then perhaps we can open up the conversation Stephen. Thank you. And yeah, I just have a few slides to go with this. So yeah, firstly. Thank you to to Professor Adam, of course, and for inviting me to participate in this. And also, so I'm just going to time myself. And also to, yeah, Dr. Naiman, as well. It's a it's a real honor and privilege to be presenting alongside him. And like to start with a teaching anecdote last week during a first year undergraduate module that I convene my colleague Malcolm McNeil carried out a brainstorming exercise with the students. I'll come up with words they associate with the museum. Perhaps you are thinking that the students responded with terms such as art, culture, history, preservation collections, or even education. Instead, the first word often offered by a student was stolen. This was a sobering illustration of how the public perception and discourse surrounding museums have shifted significantly over the past decade in particular. See, for instance, the article that just came out today in the Guardian involving the Metropolitan Museum and Nepalese material. Next slide by Project Brazen, who incidentally described himself as a global journalism studio and production company. This is a screenshot from one of their podcast Dynamite Doug about the lake Douglas Latchberg who had his death in August 2020 was facing federal charges in the US for his key role that he played in the looting and trafficking of Southeast Asian antiquities. And it's allotted to me. I'd like to explore this issue in more depth. Whether it be due to social media forms of activism, the media itself, or prevailing post-colonial decolonial paradigms within academia. Museums can no longer ignore the sea change. So it leads me to ask, what can and should museums be doing to address this. I will focus on Southeast Asia, the area that I specialize in. For the past decade or so, Southeast Asia has been the site of many repatriation claims, some successful, some not, some still ongoing. I will attempt to tease out some of the key issues from these that are, and I argued that need deeper consideration and critical reflection. To give you just a few examples of the returns that have been taking place within, we're not going into specifics. These are the Colt Care Statues from 2014 ongoing from Cambodia, from major US museums such as the Met, the Northern Simon Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, so on and so forth. These are two lentils that were returned recently to Thailand from Asian Art Museum San Francisco. This is a return of Deepin Agaro's Chris, that's a ceremonial sword or dagger from the Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, the Netherlands, through Indonesia in March 2020. And as Adam said in his introduction, this is the return of the Khmer Gold of Douglas Latchford, and this collection was based in London. I'd like to start by pointing out that repatriation or restitution debates and processes take place at a variety of spaces and on a variety of registers. Many take place within various bounded spaces, national frameworks, ministries of cultures. Now I'm just referred to the G20, that's interesting, I wasn't aware of that. The institutional frameworks, of course, such as museums, legal bodies, there's law enforcement are involved, there would be Department of Homeland Security in the States, for example, NGOs such as the Antiquities Coalition, academia, the space that the three of us are situated within, heritage movements and grassroots activism, by blog sites, such as Chasing Art for the Idea or Dynamite Talk, and of course established broadsheets such as The Guardian, The Times and so forth in the UK or the New York Times in the United States. This is the first issue I'd like to identify. Restitution processes and discourses contain many moving parts, not all of them pulling in the same direction. In fact, many can often be in opposition to each other. I would like to ask us to think about how we can start to move towards a critical reflection and analysis of these various spaces and movements. Obviously collaboration, which was mentioned earlier, interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary are key. In doing so can be a nuance to the many binaries that are projected onto these processes, what tensions and points of contestation can arise. And perhaps more importantly, in the context that I am discussing, what role can Southeast Asian epistemologies or forms of knowledge play? Can we shift the lens to one that privileges local forms of Southeast Asian knowledge? In my part, I am attempting to tackle this through a research project I'm currently involved with called Circumambulating Objects on Paradigms of Restitution of Southeast Asian Art or Co-op for short. It's a Getty Foundation Connecting Art History's grant. I'm currently the co-investigator on this with my colleague, Professor Ashley Thompson, who is the principal investigator. One of the aims of co-op is to provide a space for these interactions to happen through a series of in-region workshops. It will provide an opportunity for participants, many of whom are Southeast Asian to step outside our silos, and to a certain extent our comfort zones so that we can, as we state on our website, approach restitution processes in the region today in a manner that is at once locally meaningful and globally aware. As I said previously, interdisciplinarity is key. The second issue I'd like to identify, and Namin has touched on it already, is what happens after restitution. Once the politicians have capitalised on their carefully choreographed photo shoots and the media spotlight has been switched off, what happens next? This slide shows you one such event that happened just last Friday. It is the return of the aforementioned gold and a number of other key sculptures to Cambodia. But I think as Namin has well illustrated, restitution is not an end in itself. Oftentimes the objects do not go back to their original context, be they the temple, palace or archaeological site, or local community from which they were originally plundered. Instead new homes need to be made for them, more often than not a national museum in the capital, often far from the original find spots and local communities. Or they can be brought to well managed archaeological sites or site museums in the vicinity of original find spots, but still not placed back in situ. What challenges does this process bring to the surface? And don't get me wrong here, I'm not using this issue as an argument against repatriation and restitution, which is a common tactic deployed by the opponents of it. Quite the opposite, restitution brings unique possibilities and opportunities. But in order to capitalise on them, we need to think beyond the traditional responses. And instead of placing them within museums where more often than not, they are slutted back into neat art historical chronologies, oftentimes the products of colonial knowledge, and that's a little to nothing about the restitution histories of the object. Can we not instead use these objects to begin to explore more human narratives and local epistemologies. And for instance, say that the statues represent the soul of the nation. Yesterday, the penampin post in its reporting of the aforementioned sermon on Friday the 17th finishes its piece with a quote from the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts as follows quote, May the souls of the Cambodian ancestors who returned to their homeland help to bring the kingdom of Cambodia peace, prosperity, and harmony forever end quote. This emotive connection transcends any dry historical narratives represented in museum labels. How then do we start to integrate these stories into museum displays, as well as the more painful histories of violence wrought by colonial and neoclonial entanglement. What type of new narratives could be created from these returns within the museum gallery, our budget site, temple, local village space, etc. This is the challenge but also the opportunity that restitution of objects affords. And just to finish one answer may may lie in an event that took place just over two weeks ago. The 28 renowned Cambodian dancer so probably in Chem Shapiro performed an unsanctioned dance in the Southeast Asian galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to honor Cambodia stolen heritage. She said quote for us the statues are spiritual and belong back in Cambodia and quote, this simple graceful but powerful act immediately collapse the artificial boundaries museums create between secular and sacred space. It stands us that there are multiple ways to interact with objects, many of which grounded in local epistemologies and practice transcend the obsessive Western cult of ocular centricism, the privileging of vision over all other senses. This intervention was eventually brought to a halt by a museum security guard, who in a disapproving tone tone tell telling the instruct super lean to put her shoes back on saying you can't walk around barefoot. And circling back to my opening anecdote, what have museums in the West and the popular perception today, justified or otherwise that they are objects of still are the locations of stolen objects. If they wish to counter this narrative, then instead of spending their money and lowering up and stonewalling researchers and government officials. They could alternatively put it into more positive use by genuinely engaging with sort of countries and communities. In fact, those that have done so, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, have been able to build meaningful relationships with Cambodia over the past five years, working on a number of collaborative projects and exhibitions. Others have chosen to be opaque and to obstinate and then doing so are reinforcing reinforcing prevailing public perceptions that they are they are locations of stolen art or loot. The course of action for me seems clear museums can be a very meaningful and welcome welcome part of the solution or as the saying goes they can remain very much part of the problem, the choice really is theirs. Thank you. Thank you, Steven. So colleagues, I think we've got two very very useful introductory statements that I want to start off with question. One in many ways the substance of this debate. In many ways what strikes me about the debate sitting in London now but having come from South Africa is how polarized and unnuanced this conversation is. What you see is some people on the right of the political spectrum, saying these things should not be returned, because they can't be cared for, or you taking away what is the collective history of of the unit of the world community. And then you have a whole series of others activists in the left, liberal intellectuals who saying return this in an often in very unqualified formulations. Now let me give you the dilemma that happens in a place like South Africa. Most of South Africa's public universe, public museums are not appropriately supported. Much of what Neiman said actually exists in South Africa. In fact, I think the situation in South Africa is even worse. They actually disintegrating before our eyes. Go to the Johannesburg Art Museum or go to many other places in many of the smaller towns in South Africa. And so if you return, the object will either be destroyed or lost or hand up in private hands. Now the answer is not to take the position to say don't return. If you understood South Africa well enough, you could say that South Africa's universities run very good museums. And they have a real appreciation. So it's not not returning. But who do you return to. Right. And the second question that Neiman posed was, with what qualifications? What do you enable capacity? With what resource space, etc. There's a second debate that took place earlier on in the earlier part of the century. We're in, we were discussing the Timbuktu manuscripts in South Africa. And one of the big debates that Tavo Imbaki, then president of South Africa Incisted, was he got the big mobile technology company MTN on the African continent to underwrite the costs of an infrastructure to house some of the Timbuktu manuscripts. The point of making is we can have a more complex debate and a more nuanced conversation. And I just don't think that that is happening in large parts of the West. It's become a polarized conversation because what they're interested in is the debate internally to their nations, as opposed to the broader global debate that needs to be understood. And I just wanted to get your thoughts, Neiman. I know you touched on this, but I want to get your thoughts. And then I want to get Steven's thoughts. It's one of the hardest aspects of this entire question. And I've been reading some of the questions that have been coming up in our Q&A box. And they are touching on the same thing that somewhere the legality of the current ownership needs to also be held to account. That is the current place where they are kept, really the rightful place. Let's go with the argument for a moment that it is not. And then comes your case. Then what is, which I always say, what is the return to an equally illegal owner does not right wrong. Who do we regard as the rightful owner? This was such a complex debate and it's so tricky. Laws to protect antiquities are imposed by nation states. But what happens when the government suddenly changes to a different political persuasion and the nation as previously defined ceases to exist. Come on, we work at SOAS and JNU. I mean, we debate these issues in our classes all the time. We're not raising an academic matter here. If the museum is subjected to shifting ideological wins, it stands to ignore the culture of those who are now in the minority. These matters get magnified in times of war and conflict. In the case of Tibet in 1959, the exodus that accompanied the Dalai Lama to India was followed by a shift in their movable cultural heritage. So icons, thangkas, cultures that went with the performance of rituals which were necessary for their cultural identity and functioning were relocated to wherever the community went. Terrible atrocities we know were perpetrated on what was left behind in Tibet and untoward quantities of artifacts made their way to the international art market via China, Hong Kong, Kathmandu, Bangkok. And the precarious conditions in source countries have led to the redeployments of their artifacts for reasons other than looting alone. So don't imagine that looting for the sake of filling the museums in the West was the only reason why the objects left those places in the first instance. Or development as I've said is an equally pernicious thing. Afghanistan currently I don't need to even go into the matter. Would you feel comfortable repatriating to China. The objects that come from Tibet, which the Tibetans fled with. Would you feel that it is morally right for us to be able to repatriate to the Taliban, currently, which does not wish to or, you know, in so many other countries. So that is a reality that we have to actually deal with but there are fantastic done by an object. Are we going to be doing right by the objects by sending them back to those places. So, I think a much bigger question hangs in the balance. Does heritage belong to the land from which it comes or to the people who loved. That's the ultimate question that we are going to come. You know, I mean, the precise fate of what's happening in around India may not be our position in India. I mean, there's another aspect to all of this. There are many Indians who live in diaspora who similarly have a claim to their heritage in the US, Singapore, UK, Canada, wherever they now reside. And in turn their governments have to be seen as being inclusive and showcase the heritage of those communities in their public museums also. In the past few decades, redefining a national project has become necessary in a world where families and identities of people are diasporic and hyphenated, and you are Indian while you are simultaneously something else. So will the something else, those parts of the world be respectful of your Indian identity and showcase it as their national identity in their museums or not. Or are you always going to sequester yourself and become excluded from the community or the land in which you now live. These are very serious questions and therefore I'm not I'm not this is in no way trying to. This should not be misunderstood in any way as supporting the mass looting or egregious theft or decontextualization of artifacts far from it. But I'm just saying that there has to be a very calibrated is by a spaces, and then you've got a very shifting benchmark. At some point the law got so complex that UNESCO decided we'll take 1972 as the cutoff point. And we will say that anything that came after 1972 is going to be regarded as illegal and subjected to different checks that doesn't make the objects that came before 1972 perfectly kosher. And the ICJ has said that Nazi material that was not see loot from the Second World War is fair to be returned so you've taken the benchmark for the back. Now, how far back are you planning to take these historical rounds. Because if you keep going back there will always be an agreed or an injured historical party, which can be an 18th century community that was agreed on, which was deprived of their artifacts or it might be a 20th century community, or it might even go back to the 11th or 12th century. What you're going to do is it okay to keep. You know, expecting repatriation on the basis of historical rock. And effectively what you're saying is the world evolves societies evolve nations exist and sometimes they exist and sometimes they don't I like to say don't. And so I think it's the people who can demonstrate that they are going to look after the objects, because the objects are what we are interested in preserving so that they can tell their narrative and their rich stories for every generation. Let the object not be in peril, so that it goes to a condition where the object cannot tell its story of its looting, even on the story of its looting for the next generation. But can I ask you a question. If you say it goes to a people who are prepared to care for it to look up to preserve it in a world of inequality. There are people who are advantaged and have the resources to do so, and other people who don't. And so what are you saying, are you saying, is it okay for these, for these objects to remain in the West, or are you saying that elites in the south have to put some skin in the game. They got to, if you like, ensure that they make commitments to the preservation of these objects. It's not that they're not willing to do so Adam but I think they have to be enabled to do so because currently there is an overwhelming power of the state that takes control over these matters to such an extent that you know it's not just the elites I have to put a correction there. I know a very intrepid poor people who have in their fields found fascinating and really interesting objects, and they're not dim by any artistic and they know that these are valuable things and they would have an interest in history and heritage protection. And some of them were even keen to try and with their meager resources open up a little museum on their own location. They have, they have some of them have been so threatened by the instruments of the state that have come and seized their artifacts compulsorily, or told them that what they were housing was illegal and they didn't have a license or a permit to do so. And on the, you know, such thing that they got so petrified by the powers of the state that that local level involvement in heritage is being stymied at some point. So get about the, I've written previously articles about how we need to make it easier for intrepid Indian businessman who have deep pockets to buy back and bring heritage back to India. If it's going up for sale coming up for sale in the West or something, and how customs regulations and laws need to be used to be able to and not have, and those things have been modified. So it's not that there isn't any government change, governments are listening, but I think we also need to think about empowering local museums at some, at some point. Can I bring Steven yes Steven do you want to come in and give me your thoughts on these issues. Yeah, actually I think you know, you know we were talking about binaries and I think this is one of the major binaries between local and government right and when we see these debates play out. And we see sort of national narratives and of course like these restitution debates get co-opted, you know, for political means, as politicians are want to do but I mean I think we need to be careful here though as well is that there's a, the, the example I showed was really to try and try and emphasize that you know we can move beyond the national and how it is still from on a local level on a spiritual level these objects are extremely meaningful. And so if we if we keep hammering on about about national level and national politics we're going to miss the real opportunity and the real value of these restitutions. So I think we have to make that really clear that that that they're that you know we need to start trying to address the local level and yeah we need support and capacity building but I think as well another point I'd like you know I get I get you know this is a this debate goes around and around and around again of course, you know, modern nation states may have different geographical boundaries to, you know, a thousand years ago when the objects were looted and where do you restitute it to and under which jurisdiction but I think you I look at the Thai example of two lentils that were returned from Asian Art Museum San Francisco in February 2021. These are lentils from temples that are still extant in Northeast Thailand. And when these objects were sent back, they spent three months at the National Museum in Bangkok, where the curator did an exhibition explaining to the public how difficult it was to restitute these objects. And they had a really it was a really good way of trying to get local awareness around restitution and using the objects and in that positive way. After that they were sent back to museums and close proximity to these archaeological sites. So, you know, I think it's really important to, you know, when we have objects that actually speak to the monument that's upstanding and you can understand the monument better by having that object in the music site museum, you know, 10 meters away. And surely we should you know that is a very meaningful use of that object we could argue it's much more meaningful. Can you hear me okay. Yes, we can. It's much more meaningful than having it in the museum the West so I think we do need to think of, you know, get beyond those sort of state level narratives in terms of what's meaningful. Can I ask a related question because it seems to me both Norman and you are raising this and this really comes from a question that one of our audience has posed. Would we agree that looted artifacts today that are in a host country belong collectively to the populations of modern nation states demanding it. So basically what the question is being posed is it doesn't belong to the local temple that you suggesting Stephen. What this question is, it belongs to the collective society of the modern nation state in the case of India. In the case of that would be India or Cambodia or whatever. And what that means, the representative of that is the state itself. I'm gathering you questioning that Steve. Yeah, I mean I think we maybe we have to, we may we have this obsession with ownership as well. Maybe we can say custodian ship. Right. You know this is, this is when the museum tactics that they will we're just we're just custodians and stewards of this material. If that's the case, then why do you have laws like the 1963 British Museum Act that doesn't allow it back that clearly states ownership. But yeah, I think we need to get, you know, I want to get away from that that that state level. Yeah, sort of binary obsession with ownership. How about we have it as custodian ship. And we find the most suitable place for these objects to be. My problem with that and perhaps it's my where I come from my worry is you send it to the temple and the next morning somebody gets into the temple and walks away with the piece. Of course. Yeah. What are the dangers of that. Well, I mean, you know, I think, again, this is where it becomes quite specific to which country you're looking at and in Thailand now that would be unlikely to happen in Cambodia, I think, within the national parks and national archaeological parks that would be unlikely to happen. These are large objects as well, you know, you can't just come in and pick them up you need coordinated looting, which actually happened in the 1960s and 70s. When these objects were looted. But today that would be very unlikely. So I think in the Cambodian and the Thai case. I think that's not such a worry. There's the sort of mechanisms in place. So I think we do have to be, you know, careful with those type of statements as well. Can I bring you back to this question, because you implicit in what you said it also poses this question. How does do the looted artifacts belong to the, to the collective population. In my mind, it's not just the collective population collective population of the current nation state, I think it needs to be wider. And I think it is being very well articulated, one of the good phrases that I've seen in the G 20 lineup on the policy is that they call it global covenants. And I think defining that global comments as to how that's going to be administered is is an extremely important step that we need to open up and actually try and discuss, because I think the stakeholders and cultural heritage are several which is good checks and balances are needed on nation states as well. And we can't expect nation states to always do right by the objects and so some kind of a condition of global comments and stewardship or custodian shape if they want to give those words. Those are good words actually they're very noble words, but then let's define, let's define what stewardship. Now, but let me come back to it is another question here from somebody in the audience and they say is repatriation not a question of social justice, even if it is symbolic don't you think it helps undo some of the colonial trauma. I think it does. I think it does. And I think museums it's themselves as an institution, as we have learned have turned into spaces of transitional justice as we call them, as a phrase that has now become common. And I think it is, it is important in museum parlance to be able to see that, but I think the extent of these objects what I'm coming down to is that somebody needs to quantify and say, how much which objects, and then what happens when will the country will the country from which they are being returned go every 18 months to survey the conservation requirements and see that they are being kept well. Will the curators from the receiving country be able to go to the country or to the museum where they were previously kept to learn how to preserve them and keep them, how to mobilize them for the public good. And the initiatives are coming up with these objects came up then and are now going to be enabled. Because there are lots of ways of sharing the knowledge and coming up to this shared ownership of, but we need to start spelling out what will be the processes by which this will be done. Okay, I think universities have a role to play in this. I mean I think both of the I think all of the issues you raise are useful I want to come back to both of you on another question that somebody has asked. And what he or she suggests is that the focus seems to be on museums to examine this issue and, and to examine how we act in them. But what about collections that are in places outside museums in private hands or in other areas. What do you think is there all and how should we think that through. No man again to you and then I'll go to Steven. It's a very difficult question. Frankly, I find it one of the hardest questions to address. Most of our museums as a person who works in museums I know. One of the reasons our museums are so rich and wonderful is because of the scholarship and intrepid nature of some private collector who actually went out, oftentimes against the without any resources from the state backing them and went out and put together extraordinary things that were salvaged, sometimes looted. It's not always a clean story. There are both kinds of stories that in the museums of India were it not for many of the Maharajas who had started saving and collecting objects and rescuing them and building up their own little museum they would never have been. There were intrepid people who started collecting brass utensils and silver and copper utensils, which were not made out of the great stone monuments but they had the wisdom to know that this was civilizationally important. And then musical instruments was another thing the National Museum of India was never out collecting its history of musical historic instruments. There was one lady who was a who was a great musician, and she decided to build up a connection of these things. So I think there are many many the state is very often quite late to wake up and deploy the resources necessary to be able to protect and salvage the objects that are required for a library or for a museum, which some intrepid collector usually catches on to photography, art, print culture are extremely important cases in point we keep talking about antiquities, great antiquities of South Asia and Southeast Asia. But if you wanted to tell a history of 20th century India, for instance, you wouldn't be able to tell it very well by going to the museums of India, because the real history of what happened in the 20th century in India went into private hands and they connected it because the state was so busy connecting antiquities. The lapses, the lapses of the state have sometimes been filled by intrepid private collectors, and that needs to be archived and needs, there needs to be a mechanism for that to enter the museum now, because those collectors can't look after them for posterity, and that their descendants may not be interested. And so if you mention you these things do point up over a few generations in the collections of museums, and the museums have to have collecting policies, such that they are willing to receive these objects. Even what's your thoughts on this. Yeah. Other collections and other, yeah, it's a, it's a really good point that you raise and when that doesn't actually get discussed so much. And in terms of, yeah, I mean, I think the other thing we haven't talked about is, is fakes and forgeries and unfortunately a lot of the time collections can have quite quite large numbers of them. And a lot of the, the issue, a lot of the cases that I've looked at or that I do look at in terms of the Southeast Asian context. I mean, if you look at the way that the United States, the museum systems there work, a lot of a lot of the collections that museums like the Museum, Asian Art San Francisco, art instant Chicago, you name it. And a lot of them come from private collectors so that a lot of them were founded Asian Art San Francisco for example, a lot of it was a lot of that collection was based on every collection. And, but again, you know that then the collection is only as good as the collector and that's why a lot of there's a lot of restitution claims now around Asian Arts San Francisco because a lot of that collection, including the two and, you know, we're looted. So we have to be very careful when we, when we, we think I take Naaman's point as that's the counterpoint. Yeah, of course that and sometimes you have collectors that will will amass collections that museum curators of the state don't think are important but are actually historically very significant. And so they can be a great value so again I think we really have to look on quite case by case basis and actually what's happened in the United States now is is the opposite in about I think 2008. When the museum's association eventually got strict on collecting policies and provenance and museums will now not accept donations from private collectors without clear provenance. So now actually what you have is a lot of collectors who cannot actually donate their collections in the museum so so actually it's sort of you're seeing a reversal in the states in terms of that. And I would add that the late Douglas Latchford was very keen to place his collection in leading museums, and you know that would have been extremely problematic. So we do have to be very careful when we think of private collectors. Okay, so I want to take two quick questions, which I think I cannot not take, given the fact that this is a university and after all. You know, how do we get to re examining the research that has been done on objects when they have been in exile. It seems to me, these objects are in a particular place, and context matters how you think through the symbolic value of these objects and how you tell the stories associated with these objects is determined by the knowledge system in which you immersed in the contextual circumstances in which you emerge. And so the real interesting question that emerges is not simply the object itself, but what does the object say? What does it symbolize the story behind the object? And what happens and how do you, when the objects is repatriated back to its country of origin, or its land of origin? What about the research project there? How do we get back to the lost history? How do we get back to telling the stories that they should be understood? And can they be understood because these societies have evolved? And what is the role, if you like, of art historians, curators, and others in participating in such initiatives? I'll go with you, Stephen, and then I'll go in a minute. Great. Yeah, I think that's, again, a really important question. I think it's one thing I was trying to get to in the second part of my opening remarks is that, you know, that museums are, you know, perfectly placed to actually, the ideal places to actually deal with this as well. And, you know, restitution is a transnational issue, right? By definition it is, because we have objects and different parties in different parts of the world. And the way to really deal with this is through collaboration. And there's been some positive examples. So for example, Cleveland Museum about five years ago returned one of the statues to Cambodia on their own initiative before the border repatriation claim came in. And the Cambodians are quite savvy. They have what they call a win-win policy where they want to work with Western museums, because they don't not want their objects or their culture shown in the Western Museum. They're quite happy for that. But it has to be under the right circumstances, right? It has to be. So basically, what they have done with a number of museums is when an object is restituted, they actually loan a long-term loan back to that museum so that you can build collaboration. So with Cleveland Museum, they spent, they've done two exhibitions now where they, where both museums have collaborated on two very groundbreaking exhibitions and there's been a lot of knowledge sharing. So that is, I think, a really good example of how, you know, both parties can work together to tell the really important stories that need to be told. So I think, you know, that's my point that museums need to take in the West need to start being proactive and start being much more open and start to work with the source communities as opposed to in opposition to them. Fantastic. Let me go to Neman. But Neman, before I want you to answer a second question that has come in from somebody. And that is, how could you speak? How do we think through how we enable access to the cultural heritage that these objects represent both to the diaspora and to the population from the country where the objects originate? We are much more cosmopolitan, verbal community. And many of the diaspora, you've spoken about this early on, how do we enable the access to both? And how can we think through access that enables that? Neman? I think we need to first ascertain that very often the kind of objects that we are looking at and are talking about the first dibs on the best quality objects. For instance, Japan has made it a policy to be able to do this, of every genre that they have are kept in the museums of Japan itself. And they have allowed the rest of the world's museums to be able to have everything else as it were. Because, but if ever something comes up, which is equivalent to a national treasure of extreme importance for Japan and for the Japanese identity and culture, the first example and the finest and most historically crucial example of that will lie in the Japanese museum. Now taking that as an example, we will find that the holdings of some of our museums in the west of South Asian artifacts, for instance, are so exhaustive. And they are, they beg a belief, the quantity. So I don't think there is any question about the diaspora being deprived. And I don't think there is any question either about a requirement to revert to it. Both matters can be solved because the sheer quantity of objects that we are looking at is so vast we're not talking about that once culture. This is the sad thing as an art historian, I feel that the public debate on these issues has oftentimes been reduced to a few star pieces, and to a few egregious looters and smugglers whose case studies seem to have distorted our perception of the entire field of what collections enable, what private collect, what museums enable, I think cannot be marked or should not be just destroying because of a few really heinous acts that have taken place. And indeed such acts need to be exposed. And then we can be talking more fruitfully about this shared knowledge building that we are talking about, and building this shared custodianship. So the example that Stuart gave off the Cleveland Museum of Arts investment in what they did was a long drawn out effect. Now coming to this issue that you raised in the first question about the who is going to write those optic biographies and those narratives and assess the actual ownership and the changing reception and meaning of an artwork. Very good question coming from an academician, because I can say to you, it takes us what three to four years over a PhD at least to be able to get four or five object biographies put down properly in a single PhD. And the kind of research that is often required to chase one site one object down can take a long time sometimes. And so provenance research isn't easy. It's not just going to happen. It's going to make me mean a very significant shift in our departments and in our pedagogical emphasis for all of us to be able to give this it's due. We don't have to be not just sitting in one university or two, but it's going to have to happen across the board in higher education, where we start giving optic biographies and provenance research their space. So I know we're coming to the end of the conversation that I'm going to push the envelope and go for another five or 10 minutes. I have two questions. One is really about how objects, if you like manipulated by political agendas of one time or the other, and how this becomes part of a political agenda of groups in different parts of the world. And, and what I want us is their problem about this should we be worried about this, because the societies that we think of in the developing world. There are societies like Western societies heterogeneous in multiplicity of ways they constructed by power, their element, their groups that are marginalized their groups that are elite that they reflect all of that. The danger is that some groups in those societies can if you like use the power to enhance and use this debate for their own advantage and for their dominance as opposed to others. Is that something that we should worry about. I'll start at Stephen this time and then come to you know my Stephen. That's, that's one of the sticky your questions right with restitution repatriation debates. And one of one of the art you know one of the arguments that's that's often cited for not restituting. I think it is it isn't it isn't danger and we have to really be aware of it. I think sometimes archaeologists in particular, maybe can can sometimes lose sight of it and you know in in our quite objective frameworks where we say well we're just producing histories and producing knowledge for the greater good of society but then of course, those narratives and those those findings can then be used or co-opted by the nation state or, as you say, people in certain positions of power so that is always going to be a danger. I mean, I don't know about restitution, or, or any type of archaeological art, or, or historical research. I mean, for me it's it's always why I've been trying to think of how do you bring it back to the local and how do you, how do you sort of. How do you try and counter that with with local epistemologies and working with local communities. And of course, we've had that question about how do you identify who's the local community and so on and so forth, but, and you could also involve the local communities, right so. There's a question directly on that to you actually. Should we focus on communities or place of origin. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a good question but I think, you know, in order to mitigate I think that's how we would do it. And, of course, again, the local community may not be the same community as the one that before but in many other times, it is so. So again, it's, it's, it's a tricky one. Yeah, I mean, and again, a lot of times things get repatriated to the capital. So in Thailand as well they have this, they have this term where they say, you know, we were never colonized but we have internal colonization as in, we have the Bangkok as the center and then the local communities in the regional areas and are still, you know, still made, you know, sort of under that influence but again, yeah, there's been a strong local museum movement that's built up in Thailand over the past 20 years a very grassroots NGO based local museum local heritage movements and that are very powerful now and actually has driven a lot of the debate around restitution. And so again, there's, these are ways if we can encourage that we can mitigate against the political aspects of it, and we can also maybe start to address the question that was asked as you know, who, yeah, so we should be supporting those movements. All right, well thank you Stephen I'm going to final question to the man, the man there is a two part question that somebody poses which I think will be perfect for you. If we consider the role of the museum as many say is to increase simply increasingly how to attack the global heritage and raise awareness of cultural destruction. How can they do this while simultaneously holding looted collections. How do we bring those two elements together. I wrote a line in a article last year, which said, even in for me is better than relevance. That's something we should remember. And I think, honestly, I mean, the museum is getting more to us with people who talk about its loot, and they come to the museum to see the, see the museum it's bringing in visitors to the museum to see the loot and to hear the narrative of how the looting happened and what happened about these objects, and somewhere in the middle of all of this somebody is going to be inspired by the object to be able to do this and I think may come and become an art historian one day. But I think there is, there is this that are narratives that are going to come up for each generation that are going to mobilize these objects and make them relevant for their communities. And I think that's what we need to remember. The museum should not feel threatened the museum is the keeper of these stories as much as it is the keeper of the object. It is the keeper of the narratives and the curatorial stories that go along with these objects that mobilize them and make them relevant for the public, and not just the object itself. But ultimately the object has to be kept safe enough and conserved scientifically enough, so that it can be mobilized to tell the next generation's important stories. Today we are talking about restitution and the reparations of colonial norms. This is a new site of the fact that our descendants are going to hold us accountable for not doing enough for the climate, for instance, and they're going to look into these very objects and these very museums to tell histories of climate change, rather than telling histories of climate change. Right, they're going to use these objects for different sets of narratives which are going to be important for them in that generation. And I think that's that's something that we need to be humble enough to recognize. I think you're very right in raising the point that museums preserve historical evidence of the ways in which religion and culture were practiced in previous times. It also makes museums extremely vulnerable, as they may demonstrate a past, which is very different from the way in which traditions and religions are perceived today. And coming from a country where the perceived ideas of tradition outweigh the facts of history. Museums are often the only place which maintain that evidence, safeguarding it for the next generation to be able to tell that story, or another version of that story. And over this past 10-15 years, this revelation of the difference between past and present has led to very serious attacks on museums and heritage sites all over the world. For example, Tunisia, Syria, India faces its own vulnerabilities and I think we need to alongside repatriation honestly think about how we are safeguarding these institutions that are going to house this evidence. Because they are very vulnerable to attack from all sides and to grant them the autonomy and security that they require is going to have to be the job of this global commons if they really want that. I want to end there because it's a powerful voice in the moment and it's a powerful voice in part because of your ideas and your thought processes. But it's also a powerful voice because you're located in the south. You're located enough in India. And it seems to me as somebody who's recently moved to London, I'm quite struck by the un-nuanced character of this debate. And the fact that somebody from the south is arguing for what I would imagine is a radical pragmatism, a radical, yes we need to correct the tragedies of our pasts. But we need to do this in a pragmatic way. We need to do it in a thoughtful way. We need to do it in a way that protects us as a heritage for the collective of humanity itself. And we need more nuance come to who gets returned, who decide what gets returned, repatriated, the obligations of the host country, the obligations of the new host. And I love the idea that you drew from the Japanese experience where the national treasures go back to the museums of the land, but there is enough out there that doesn't make this a zero-sub game. And so what I think all of this is suggesting at the end is we need a far more nuanced conversation in the public discourse around repatriation in the west than is apparently the case. And in part, because it's driven too much by politicians and too little by scholars, activists, thoughtful, cultural colleagues who feel both the importance of return, of correcting the histories of our past, but recognizing that we're trying to build a common future. And I think that the messaging from both of you actually highlights that. So I want to say thank you, Naman. I know it's very, very late in Delhi. I want to thank you Stephen for all of the time that you've taken. And if there's a message that I'm hearing from both of you is let's have a more complex debate, a more nuanced debate, one that heals the divisions of our past, but that builds a global common future. I'll stop there. Thank you very, very, very much. Thank you, Stephen, and thank you very much. Thank you, Anu. Thank you, Naman. It was a real pleasure.