Reflections on Museum Week 2018 and Restitution-Juniper Publishers
Archaeology & Anthropology - Juniper Publishers Opinion Discussions on restitution have been acquiring momentum. Museum Week in 2018 has been marked in the press by a series of articles which support this direction. It started with an email from an Indian colleague who was at the ARCA conference last year where I was talking about the history of collecting of European museums and the gathering of antiquities during the late 18th and early 19th century. This is an argument about which I have been very passionate and that has been at the core of my research interests, teaching and public engagement, since my postgraduate days. On the Queen’s birthday, Anuraag Saxena had written a provocative and passionate article Your Majesty: Thou shalt not steal on the need to return Indian artefacts to India, calling for a ‘reverse [of] the colonial-era plunder, especially symbols of our culture - our heritage’. With the India Pride Project, Anuraag is an active prop...
