Museums are in the business of returning things

April 17, 2024 8:16 AM

New regulations around the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) went into effect earlier this year. Some institutions are scrambling to comply by removing and rethinking exhibits (The American Museum of Natural History to Close Exhibits Displaying Native American Belongings) - others already had solid processes in place to comply with the spirit of the law, enacted in 1990 (Some Museums Scrambled to Remove Native American Items From Display. These Museums Didn’t Need to). Others drag their feet (Alaskan tribes came to Denver to reclaim their cultural heritage. They left empty-handed). Meanwhile, in addition to sacred artifacts, hundreds of institutions still inappropriately hold thousands of human remains.. All of this occurs in the context of such scandals as the theft of human remains by a National Park Service employee who stored them in his garage for thirty years explicitly to avoid complying with the law.
posted by bq (5 comments total)

I have not had the chance to visit the newly reopened Yale Peabody Museum, but hearing from others a lot was done to return? repatriate? many things; some processes made for informative displays on their own merits. Plus for a natural history museum I heard that effort was made to exclude human remains or to clearly signal traces for visitors for whom that is a barrier/significant issue.
posted by drowsy at 8:43 AM on April 17 [1 favorite]

Neither here nor there, but it's really weird to see the statue of Roosevelt at the top of the ProPublica AMNH article, as it was removed years ago.
posted by phooky at 10:05 AM on April 17

In the "Some Museums Scrambled" ProPublica link, the Museum of Us in San Diego is cited as one of the institutions ahead of the curve, and there are quotes from Kara Vetter, its awesome senior director of cultural resources. What's not mentioned: the museum acknowledges its location on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Kumeyaay Nation, and Indigenous stakeholders shape policy and exhibition updates.
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:16 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]

That Effigy Mounds story is INFURIATING

Thanks for these links, bq.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 3:23 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]

I recently sent an email to the British Museum telling them they'd mispelled 'stolen' as ' Found/Acquired ' on a page about a moai. They responded pretending not to know what I was talking about:

Thank you for your feedback about the collections database record for this Moai. However, I have looked at it and don’t see where the word ‘stolen’ has been spelt incorrectly. Perhaps you could check the record again and, if you still see the mistake, could get back to me to point out what I am missing by indicating exactly where it is.

posted by signal at 6:37 PM on April 17