While some countries (such as the USA) are becoming more progressive in their handling of restitution claims, it seems that the French are moving in the opposite direction, by blocking the return of a mummified Maori head, already agreed to by a museum in Normandy.

From:
New Zealand Herald

Editorial: Maori head a pawn in larger game
5:00AM Monday January 07, 2008

There seemed nothing particularly unusual when the mayor of a Normandy city decided that the tattooed, mummified head of a Maori warrior should be given back to New Zealand. It would, said Pierre Albertini, be a gesture of spiritual healing and repugnance at the colonial-era trade in human artefacts. More than 30 institutions worldwide have reacted the same way since this country began seeking the return of indigenous human remains in 1992. Last year, for example, Scotland’s Aberdeen University handed back nine preserved and tattooed heads of Maori warriors.

Mr Albertini’s commendable undertaking has, however, been torpedoed by an intervention from Paris. France has never handed back such remains, and its Culture Ministry, backed by the verdict of an administrative court, has blocked any transfer of the toi moko gifted to the Museum of Natural History in Rouen in 1875 by a French collector.

At first, the obstacle seemed to be mainly procedural. According to the ministry, Rouen had breached a legal requirement for French public museums by failing to consult a Government scientific panel about its decision. Smoothing this over would not have been difficult had the ministry wanted the head returned to Te Papa. Increasingly, however, it is apparent the case has become part of an international tug-of-war over foreign artworks and artefacts in French museums. The Culture Ministry believes that if individual museums are allowed to act like Rouen, France could lose even more valuable artefacts from the likes of ancient Egypt or Peru.

It justifies clinging to such treasures on the basis that they are now part of France’s national heritage. This is a weak, morally untenable argument that lays no store in Maori grievance over what was a grotesque trade until banned by the British in 1831. Worse still, France cannot even use the patronising arguments commonly trotted out by other museums unwilling to return artefacts.

The most notable of these institutions is the British Museum, which has refused repeatedly to return the Elgin Marbles to the Parthenon in Athens. Over the past few years, a host of treasures has been given back to Greece, including artefacts from the Acropolis that ended up in Germany and Sweden. But the British Museum has staved off the Greeks, saying it is a universal museum of human civilisation and that in Greece the marbles would be reduced to a merely national display. They would be seen by far fewer people. Furthermore, the sculptures had been looked after better in London than would have been the case in Athens.

It can hardly be said that the Maori head has been treated well by the French. Deprived utterly of historical context, it was on public display in Rouen, a provincial centre, until the museum closed in 1996. Only when curators were delving into the inventory before the museum reopened last February was the head rediscovered. The local council, which owns the institution, immediately set about doing the right thing, with support from the Ministry of Research and Higher Education in Paris. Central Government policy has, however, stopped it in its tracks.

The real purpose of the French resistance is, of course, to stop a flood of demands for the return of treasures. Encouragingly, it and nations that think the same way are increasingly isolated. A moral shift is favouring the claims of countries of origin, and repatriation is very much in vogue. In such a climate, the French should feel ashamed about clinging to the Maori head. It was not theirs in the first place, never has been theirs, never will be theirs, and should be returned immediately.

It justifies clinging to such treasures on the basis that they are now part of France’s national heritage. This is a weak, morally untenable argument that lays no store in Maori grievance over what was a grotesque trade until banned by the British in 1831. Worse still, France cannot even use the patronising arguments commonly trotted out by other museums unwilling to return artefacts.

The most notable of these institutions is the British Museum, which has refused repeatedly to return the Elgin Marbles to the Parthenon in Athens. Over the past few years, a host of treasures has been given back to Greece, including artefacts from the Acropolis that ended up in Germany and Sweden. But the British Museum has staved off the Greeks, saying it is a universal museum of human civilisation and that in Greece the marbles would be reduced to a merely national display. They would be seen by far fewer people. Furthermore, the sculptures had been looked after better in London than would have been the case in Athens.

It can hardly be said that the Maori head has been treated well by the French. Deprived utterly of historical context, it was on public display in Rouen, a provincial centre, until the museum closed in 1996. Only when curators were delving into the inventory before the museum reopened last February was the head rediscovered. The local council, which owns the institution, immediately set about doing the right thing, with support from the Ministry of Research and Higher Education in Paris. Central Government policy has, however, stopped it in its tracks.

The real purpose of the French resistance is, of course, to stop a flood of demands for the return of treasures. Encouragingly, it and nations that think the same way are increasingly isolated. A moral shift is favouring the claims of countries of origin, and repatriation is very much in vogue. In such a climate, the French should feel ashamed about clinging to the Maori head. It was not theirs in the first place, never has been theirs, never will be theirs, and should be returned immediately.

From:
Time Magazine Blogs

January 3, 2008 12:47
If I Only Had a Head
Posted by Richard Lacayo

A French court has blocked the natural history museum of the city of Rouen from returning a mummified, tattooed Maori head to New Zealand, a transfer that was opposed by the French culture minstry on the grounds that the head was part of France’s cultural heritage. The head had been donated to the Rouen museum by a French collector in 1875, a time when apparently it was possible to collect human remains and not be considered an offshoot of that family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Where, I wonder, is Marie Antoinette’s head? And how would the French feel if it was in a display case in Auckland? From the time it first popped up in the news last fall this story has struck me as a particularly egregious expansion of the ever expanding notion of cultural property — and this at the very time that nations have been learning to regard human remains differently from other things that might be categorized as cultural “objects”. Last September the Field Museum in Chicago returned Maori bones and a preserved head to the same New Zealand Museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, that made the request to Rouen. (On the other hand, if that’s the right way to put it, the American Museum of Natural History in New York still has 35 Maori heads.) And of course in the U.S., federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding are subject to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires them to return Native American remains and cultural objects to the appropriate tribe.

What I suspect is that the French might not have been so quick to act in this case if it had not been for the successful Italian campaign to reclaim ancient art from American museums. When Christine Abanel, the French culture minister, stepped in to block the return of the head last fall, she said she was concerned that sending it back could set a precedent that would open the way to demands for the return of other human remains in French collections. I would bet she’s also worried about demands for the return of other kinds of cultural property. For one thing, the Louvre has a few chunks of the Parthenon marbles. Though the Greeks are more focused on getting back the ones in the British Museum, they want the Louvre marbles too.

And now that I think of it, didn’t this painting used to be in a church in Venice?