It’s finally here! My chapter, printed and published, on why deaccessioning is not the same as restitution. Some of the most important points below 1/

To start - Deaccessioning is primarily about selling and has been since the term was first used. Restitution is not selling and never should be /2

For example, the British Museum auctioned off some of their Benin materials, but some they actually sold directly to Nigeria and ensured that they paid FULL market price for them. This is not restitution. /3

These types of materials and their return are specifically about racism and social justice and always have been:

“looting in wars between civilized nations has been virtually abandoned. It is, however, still tolerated in conflicts with barbarous or semi-barbarous foes” 1904 /4

Basically, England only has these materials because they were using them to make racist narratives of empire. That makes their continued presence in the museum and their potential returns about social justice. /5

So how is this connected to the Black Lives Matter movement? Why did the Twitter replies to the British Museum statement receive so much criticism?

Mainly because audiences can clearly see the connections between maintaining racism and refusing to return the Benin Bronzes /6

Those calls for the return of Benin bronzes in response to the British Museums BLM statement weren’t new or surprising.

Returns have a long history, and obscuring them only makes it seem like they have never happened and therefore shouldn’t. /7

Contrary to popular belief, museums arent stagnant and unchanging permanent repositories or “great barrels of amber”

Returns have happened and they should happen. /8

The first claims for return of the Benin materials were in the 1930s. That’s almost a century ago.

And they continued pretty consistently through 70s, and through the 90s with the work of Bernie Grant @BGTrust. These claims didnt appear out of nowhere in June 2020 /9

So claims for returns aren’t new. And they’re not about deaccession either, because this isn’t about selling

Really, the idea that returns are “new,” or a form of “looting the museum,” can only happen if you ignore these long histories or pretend deaccession is restitution /10

When we don’t attend to these separate and long-standing histories, or when we pretend that deaccession sand restitutions are the same, we can feed into this narrative, because of the negative connotations connected to deaccessioning-for-sales /11

And it’s important to recognise that this narrative of looting and emptying the museum doesn’t happen with other types of returns:

/12

A key quote from my chapter:

“Though there are many news articles which frame returns and restitution as a form of looting which will empty museums, there appears to be little concern that restitutions of human remains or Nazi looted art are a form of emptying the museum” /13

Basically, the double standards here are clear: human remains returns or returns of Nazi looted art are never considering “emptying” the museum /14

Ultimately, in the case of the Benin materials, there is a long history of racism and social justice connected to these materials and the claims for their return which deserve attention /15

To sum up this thread, when the British Museum deaccessioned works from Benin, or when they sold them to Nigeria, that wasn’t social justice. Because selling it is not what restitution is. Returns are social justice, claims have been happening for 100 years, and times up /end

If you want to read more about this, you can also buy the full version of my thread here and use the code DXS10 for a discount: https://museumsetc.com/products/collections-and-deaccessioning

Thanks again to @MarkGoldEsq and @SJandl and @museumsetc for supporting the work of a young researcher

And, as always, eternal thanks to my amazingly supportive supervisor @profdanhicks