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40REPATRIATION?Tristram Hunt, Director, Victoria and Albert MuseumFrom Benin Bronzes to Captain Cook spears, the restitution of contested heritage has emerged as a defining challenge for cultural institutions. It is one that must be addressed if museums are to thrive as meaningful repositories of social and educational value. In the United Kingdom, stubborn debates surrounding the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles, housed in the British Museum, often dominate headlines. Yet numerous successful returns both from the UK and abroad have quietly gained momentum. These recent developments %u2013 from the Horniman Museum in south London to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York %u2013 illustrate that museums are in fact increasingly addressing the complex legacy of artifacts acquired through colonialism and other coercive means in collaborative and innovative ways. When managed well, this can turn the return of objects from a net loss for the outgoing institution into a valuable opportunity for enrichment and learning.In South Kensington, the Victoria and Albert Museum stewards over 2.8 million objects spanning 5000 years of human creativity. Inevitably, many of those objects contain complicated histories, and some were acquired as a direct result of British colonial violence. Colonisers plundered not just land and its resources but the cultural property of the colonised. Prized possessions and treasures of both monumental and routine significance were looted and shipped to museums and private collections in the West. Such was the case for 17 pieces of Asante gold court regalia in the V&A collection looted by British troops during the 1874 AngloAsante Wars in Kumasi, Ghana. The intricate and beautifully crafted objects are exquisite examples of the techniques and artistry for which Asante goldsmiths are renowned. And moreover, they are of enormous cultural, historical and spiritual significance to the Asante people, having been invested with the spirits of former kings and decorated with a complex visual lexicon. Yet despite a growing countrywide consensus around restitution (in 2021, 62% of Britons said they support returning historical artefacts to their country of origin on a permanent basis), national museums like the V&A face significant legal constraints. Under The National Heritage Act of 1983, Trustees are prohibited from deaccessioning items from the national collection except in very narrow circumstances. While that legal obstacle could have brought an end to any dialogue, and indeed, it still too often does, thanks to the leadership of Asantehene Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II, King of the Asante people, the V&A entered into a Renewable Cultural Partnership with the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi. The agreement is based on the exchange of knowledge and skills between both parties and sees all 17 objects returned to Ghana for the first time in 150 years on longterm loan, renewable for up to nine years. It was, earlier this year, both educative and humbling to be part of the important celebrations in Kumasi returning the regalia as part of the Silver Jubilee of Otumfuo Tutu II and the anniversary of the Sagranti war (as it is known). At South Kensington, meanwhile, we have commissioned V&A curator and jeweller Emefa Cole to collaborate with the Asantehene%u2019s official goldsmith to create a new work of art in response to the objects%u2019 absence from our galleries and the new partnership with Kumasi. In Edinburgh, the National Museum of Scotland has decided (permanently) to %u2018rematriate%u2019 the Nisga%u2019a totem pole to the Nisga%u2019a Nation. The totem pole was carved and commissioned around 1860 to honour the memory of an ancestor killed in battle. A matrilineal people, the pole would have been passed down through the maternal family line. But in the 1920s, Canadian anthropologist Marius Barbeau collected and later sold the pole to what was then the Royal Scottish Museum in an attempt to %u2018save,%u2019 as he saw it, the work of indigenous art from the threat of Canadian colonialism.