After many years of campaigning, false starts & re-iterated demands, agreements were finally reached between Yale University & the Peruvian government for the return of various disputed artefacts collected by Hiram Bingham. These have been gradually been arriving back in Cusco.

From:
NPR

Finders Not Keepers: Yale Returns Artifacts To Peru
by Diane Orson
January 1, 2012 from WNPR

High in the Andes Mountains, Peruvians have been lining up to see a collection of antiquities that have finally returned home. The objects from the Inca site of Machu Picchu spent the past 100 years at Yale University in Connecticut, where they were at the center of a long-running international custody battle.

Now, the university is giving back thousands of ceramics, jewelry and human bones from the Peabody Museum in New Haven to the International Center for the Study of Machu Picchu and Inca Culture.
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Following the Met’s agreement to return nineteen artefacts to Egypt, Egypt hopes that the return of other more significant works may follow.

From:
NPR

Egypt Called; It Wants Its Rosetta Stone Back
by Neda Ulaby
November 14, 2010

This past week, the Metropolitan Museum in New York announced it will return 19 small objects from King Tut’s tomb to Egypt. Now the Egyptians are asking the British to return the Rosetta Stone.

LIANE HANSEN, host: Last week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced it will return 19 small objects from King Tut’s tomb to Egypt. The museum’s research proved they were stolen.

As NPR’s Neda Ulaby reports, this is part of an increased sensitivity in the museum world towards such objects. Egyptian archeologists hope more significant works may follow.
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In what must be one of the largest acts of restitution to native Americans (at least in terms of quantity of artefacts), the Smithsonian Institution is to return over two hundred artefacts to the Yurok tribe in northern California. The fact that such major repatriations of artefacts are possible proves that returning some artefacts does not have to threaten the future of museums, despite what many institutions would currently like the public to believe.

From:
National Public Radio

Yurok Tribe Celebrates Reclaiming Sacred Artifacts
by NPR Staff
August 13, 2010

The Smithsonian Institution has returned more than 200 sacred artifacts to the Yurok Indian tribe in Northern California in one of the largest repatriations of Native American artifacts in U.S. history.

The Yurok received necklaces, headdresses and other ceremonial regalia that had been in the museum’s collection for nearly 100 years.
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Ian Jenkins, a senior curator at the British Museum describes in a radio interview why he believes that the Parthenon Marbles should not be returned.

Listen to the interview here.

From:
National Public Radio (USA)

Britain, Greece Quarrel Over Ancient Relics
All Things Considered, June 28, 2009 · The Parthenon is a national symbol in Greece, but many of the marble sculptures that adorned the temple are in London. The British Museum houses the ancient relics, famously called the Elgin Marbles, claiming it’s better equipped to care for them.

But now, the Greek government has built a state of the art museum — at a price tag of $200 million — and it wants those sculptures back.

The British Museum’s senior curator, Ian Jenkins, tells Guy Raz why the museum refuses to return the marbles to their original home.