Southeast Asia steps up efforts to retrieve cultural artefacts
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York CIty, USA. Anton Ivanov Photo/AdobeStock.com
In recent years, Southeast Asian countries have had success in lobbying museums, governments and art collectors in the West to return cultural artefacts taken from their lands. Examples from 2024 include the return of a 900-year-old bronze statue – known as the ‘Golden Boy’ – to Thailand from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, while 70 artefacts arrived back in Cambodia from different institutions in the US. The previous year, two museums in the Netherlands returned a collection of Indonesian and Sri Lankan artefacts.
The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (the ‘Convention’) came into effect in 1972 and is designed to encourage the return of cultural artefacts to their rightful country, while also deterring further trafficking. ‘It was a wake-up call, particularly to museums around the world and other collections, to say that […] we’re going to pay a lot more attention to the provenance of works of objects of cultural significance that come into the collection,’ explains Steven Schindler, incoming Co-Chair of the IBA Art, Cultural Institutions and Heritage Law Committee.
Prior to this, many individual collectors and governments took what they wanted, particularly during the time of colonial rule by European powers – for example, when the Dutch ruled Indonesia, the French controlled Cambodia and the British reigned in Malaysia – a period that lasted until the middle of the century.
[The UN Convention] was a wake-up call, particularly to museums, to say that […] we’re going to pay a lot more attention to the provenance of works of objects of cultural significance
Steven Schindler
Incoming Co-Chair, IBA Art, Cultural Institutions and Heritage Law Committee
However, Kristin Hausler, Director of the Centre for International Law and an expert in cultural heritage, highlights that in research she was involved in at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, existing legal frameworks were generally found not to have been helpful in securing the return of artefacts. ‘In all of the cases we considered, once a decision to return an object had been made, based on a perceived moral duty to do so, legal hurdles could be lowered,’ she says. ‘But it is interesting to note that the law neither helped, nor supported those returns.’
Discussing the Convention specifically, Brad Gordon, Managing Partner of Edenbridge Asia in Cambodia – a firm that has worked on the return of over 300 objects to the country – highlights that the framework only applies to artefacts taken after the 1970s. As a result, ‘the Convention doesn’t help us if something was taken out in the sixties or the fifties,’ he explains.
This is one of the reasons why only four out of the 147 countries that have ratified the Convention are from Southeast Asia – namely, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam – says Stephen Murphy, Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS University of London. For example, he says, the Convention wouldn’t help the Indonesians in regard to artefacts taken during the Dutch colonial period.
The Convention also only applies to inventoried objects, so it’s not applicable to those that were looted, explains Hausler. There’s some debate as to whether items taken during periods of colonial rule were looted. ‘You can debate whether that’s looting or whether that’s preservation – that’s how the Western, colonial powers framed it at the time,’ explains Murphy.
With these gaps in mind, instead of leaning into the Convention, in cases where repatriation has happened it’s largely been the result of litigation that countries have pursued in the courts, says Schindler. This has particularly been the case where repatriation has taken place from the US. Litigation can be more effective where museums are not government-owned but private entities and therefore not beholden to the Convention, which was signed at a country level. For example, a number of sculptures were returned to Cambodia and Thailand in 2023 from the US following collaboration between local investigators and the latter’s law enforcement agencies.
Cameron Shapiro, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied repatriations in Cambodia, highlights however that the Convention has established the groundwork for diplomatic engagement and institutional reform, providing a legal pathway for returns. ‘For a country like Cambodia, the Convention has helped shape its domestic laws and institutions protecting cultural heritage and combating trafficking in the region,’ he says.
Shapiro cites Cambodia’s 1996 Law on the Protection of Cultural Heritage and the establishment of the Authority for the Protection of the Site and Management of the Region of Angkor as examples. ‘Additionally, [the Convention] has acted as a baseline for its memorandums of understanding with the US that have helped maintain cooperation,’ he explains.
Hausler believes the Convention has also deterred reputable art dealers and buyers from acquiring objects that lack ‘clean provenance’ from 1970 onwards. If more Southeast Asian states ratified the Convention, it would send a clear signal to the rest of the world that the protection of the region’s heritage is taken seriously, she adds.
It could also encourage more repatriation within the region. According to Gordon, repatriation from the West to the East is not the only issue – there are some Cambodian artefacts, for example, known to be collections in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.
Murphy, however, warns against seeing the Convention as a ‘silver bullet’ in Southeast Asia. ‘Just by ratifying it, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden, museums are going to start handing back antiquities,’ he says, as there’s still process, due diligence and convincing to do.