Calls for Artifact Repatriation Are Exposing the Political History of Urban Monuments
The mass destruction caused by 20th-century wars created new forms of artifact preservation and exhibition, backed by Western international groups. But calls to repatriate artifacts are calling into question norms of commemoration and public display.
A French worker posing next to a heavily fortified statue in the Jardin des Tuileries sculpture garden, Paris, France, World War I. Sandbags were erected around the monuments to protect them in case of German attack. (Hulton Archive via Getty Images)
The last five years have seen pledges by museums in France, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom to start returning colonial spoils like objects, monuments, and human remains to their countries of origin. In June, Germany’s foreign secretary, Annalena Baerbock, traveled to Nigeria to attend a ceremony honoring Germany’s agreement to return eleven hundred looted artifacts — the single largest act of repatriation in recorded history — stating that Germany was “beginning to right the wrongs” of the past.
While acts of repatriation like Germany’s are clearly to be encouraged, true restitution of cultural artifacts will be a long and more complicated matter.
This is the story told by Lucia Allais in her book, Designs of Destruction: The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth Century. There, she describes the role of culture in the making of the global liberal order. Tracing an arc from World War I to the Wilsonian Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (CIC) and the founding of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1945, Allais shows that the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of an increasingly complex technocratic machinery to regulate and promote cultural artifacts.
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