Reflections on the International Conference on Heritage Recovery 

In June 2025, three former CO-OP interns attended the International Conference on Recovery of Cultural Heritage, organized by Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign in Lalitpur, Nepal. Ing Morokoth and Phuy Meychean presented panel papers on their research into the trafficking and art market networks of Khmer antiquities. Pim Fitzpayne reports here on select presentations and themes of the conference, including what research into ‘art market histories’ may enable and how the dimensions of activism and scholarship intervene in the practicalities of repatriation and restitution. All summations of the presentations represent the interpretation of the author. 

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Arriving in Kathmandu for the 2025 International Conference on Heritage Recovery, which took place on 16-18 June 2025, I was slightly unprepared not only for the presence of shrines, stupas, and mandirs on what seemed like almost every street corner, but also for the fact that they were often locked and heavily barred.¹ As our UNESCO guide explained during a visit on the last day of the conference, past experience with looting means that, except during certain hours for worship, locals prefer to keep the shrines closed for now.

This context of historical and on-going looting of deities from local shrines formed the backdrop to and informed the conference, organised by the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign (NHRC). Following on from last year’s conference, and the 2024 Lalitpur Declaration, the overall tone was one of action. The conference brought together academics, lawyers, museum professionals, journalists, NGOs and campaigners, to discuss a wide range of topics, from the ethics of the art market and the role of museums in repatriation, to legal frameworks for repatriation claims, to the use of social media in heritage activism. The atmosphere was collaborative, as participants and attendees shared their knowledge and expertise, to explore how their research and experience of advocacy and repatriation claims could be applied to other cases, in particular that of Nepal’s stolen gods.

Writing ‘art market histories’

In my own research on the market for Khmer sacred images, I have been thinking about ways in which authenticity (as a desirable quality in artworks) is constructed in and by the art market, and whether and how models of restitution and repatriation can address the transformations that sacred images undergo in order to become ‘authentic’ artworks.² Having also had practical experience of provenance research and the making of restitution claims, I was interested to see how the research of art historians and other academics might interact with and complement the experience of campaigners and lawyers, practitioners of restitution. The second panel session on ‘Ethics and exploitation in the ‘art’ market’ combined historical studies of the art market with a perspective on the contemporary market, with the panel being made up of two art historians and one member of the NHRC. Focusing on two South Indian images, Edmond de Taillac (École Normale Supérieure) drew on photographs and archival sources in a study of the networks connecting a French colonial administrator with the Paris-based dealer C.T. Loo, and then with the Musée Guimet, France’s national museum of Asian art, illuminating the “entangled histories” of market and museum.  He also alluded to the ‘competition’ between Britain and France that seems to have motivated some colonial collecting and archaeology in South Asia. The notion of colonial powers competing to own ‘more’ or ‘better’, and to display it in their museums, points to the extent to which sacred Indian images, like the Chola bronzes discussed by de Taillac, became commoditised during the colonial period. Léa Saint-Raymond (École Normale Supérieure), on the other hand, considered the development of the market for Himalayan art through an analysis of late 19^th– to mid-20^th-century Paris auction catalogues featuring Himalayan art. She described how a combination of archival research and quantitative and textual analysis of the catalogues has allowed her to identify certain trends in the market, for example, categories of artworks that achieved the highest prices at auction, and dips in the success of sales (based on the percentage of objects remaining unsold). Significantly, she also suggested ways in which this type of data analysis, besides being valuable for study of the art market itself, might be used to identify and trace objects that could be the subject of restitution claims: for example, where spikes in supply are connected to military expeditions.

The implication is what might be described as a more proactive form of provenance research that starts not from the object but from the market, and it seems to me that combining the approaches of de Taillac and Saint-Raymond, examining both networks of actors and auctions, and the interactions between them, could generate further productive insights. The aim might be an adapted form of Hicks’ necrography (2021): writing histories of the art market, focusing on the commodification of sacred images, removed from shrines and transformed into artworks to be bought and sold. The focus of the majority of the speakers at the conference was on heritage and repatriation claims relating to 19^th and 20^th century periods of colonisation and/or related conflict and trade, so such histories might similarly focus on markets established in and since the colonial period (although this risks overlooking the historical dimensions of the role of sacred art in economies beyond the colonial and postcolonial periods, and the economic factors that may have influenced the materials and commissioning of ancient statuary). The writing of art market histories could go some way to developing models for restitution that could, then, address not just the return of an object but also the knowledge created by and about it in museums, and the harms that may have been committed in order for it to be there, including the often complex internal or domestic factors affecting the shaping of ‘art markets’, such as the complicity of local elites, or the role of local looters (discussed below in the context of Sijapati’s paper).

The final presentation of that panel, however, made me ask myself to what extent my interest in such histories reflects my current position – as someone thinking about the movement of objects and their dislocation from certain places and possible (re)integration into other places – and how this might differ if I was in the position now of claiming the return of looted objects. NHRC campaigner Roshan Mishra argued that, in the case of objects looted from sites in Nepal, and often later sold in the USA or European countries, provenance research has avoided ethical accountability. Mishra spoke powerfully of “reclaiming heritage, legally, digitally and emotionally”, of restitution as the restoration of dignity: “We have to let our gods live and die with dignity”. Other interventions by NHRC campaigners, particularly around the work of Nepali activist group Lost Arts of Nepal, made a similar emotional impact upon me as an audience member. Social activism relies to some extent on emotional appeal and it was clear that for the NHRC this seems to be deeply rooted in the communities from which sacred statues had been taken, in some cases less than a generation ago. It also relies to a large degree on social media, which was evident in discussions of the work of Lost Arts of Nepal, which uses a strong social media presence to drive calls for repatriation, by matching images of statues in museums and auctions outside of Nepal with archival images of the same statues in original locations in Nepal. During the conference, updates were given in between panel sessions of new posts by Lost Arts of Nepal. The passion of the NHRC, conference participants and audience was palpable, and further encapsulated by the attempts of participants to intervene in the online sale of a precious necklace, bearing an inscription recording its donation as an offering to a local god of Kathmandu. Thus, I was struck by the way in which the conference itself became activism, and by the strong sense of community that seems to drive these groups. In using social media to spread awareness of looting and of repatriation cases, nuance and complexity are necessarily lost, but the message can rapidly and effectively reach a wide audience. And perhaps if this leads to repatriation and restitution claims which successfully bring about the return of stolen objects, this should be sufficient, and provenance research can usefully make a contribution. A provenance research that proceeds from the market could also provide opportunities for collaboration between countries seeking to make repatriation claims. As Bradley Gordon, lawyer of the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts on restitution, noted in another discussion, the dealers of Khmer art encountered in his team’s provenance research tend also to have dealt in Nepali art, Indian art, and so on. Sharing the findings of broader, market-based provenance research could provide useful evidence or paths for further research for other countries.

However, at the same time, I wonder whether in acknowledging the need for a pragmatic approach, there is also a sense in which, or perhaps a risk that, repatriation and restitution are seen as definitive ends or at least as the most important steps in a process, because they are easily identifiable or quantifiable. To what extent does a split or division between, on the one hand, a focus on the goal of repatriation or restitution and, on the other, a preoccupation with their processes and impacts reflect a division between academics and practitioners? And to what extent, then, does this kind of conference, and the discourse between academics and lawyers and campaigners that it facilitates, have the potential to influence the shape of future restitution, such that a balance might be achieved between process, outcome, and impact?

Re-evaluating conceptual and theoretical frameworks

Emily K. Scolaro (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), whose research focuses on the Khmer antiquities trade, examined some of the assumptions behind terms used in repatriation debates, and suggested that a reassessment of these terms could go somewhere to achieving a more equitable process. She urged the audience to reflect on the language we use to define cultural objects, on the basis that the meanings produced by words also define which and whose stories are told. In Scolaro’s call for a re-evaluation of the use of terms like ‘cultural property’, which characterise Nepali gods, or Khmer sacred images, as ‘things’ that can be owned, and embed them into a Euro-American legal framework, I found an echo of the philosopher Karen J. Warren’s analysis of contemporary debates on restitution. Warren pointed to the adversarial dimension of the debates, which seems both to follow from and to have contributed to an existing framework that privileges concepts of ‘property’ and ‘ownership’ (and which continues to characterise some conversations (or lack thereof) around restitution). She highlighted the limitations of this framework, which appears to treat all cultural contexts as heterogeneous, and thus fails to account for differences in conceptions of “the past”, or for consequent limitations in concepts of ‘property’, ‘ownership’, and ‘rights’ (Warren 1999, p. 15). Warren suggested that the debates could instead be reframed around “endangered cultural heritages, endangered cultural pasts”, rather than cultural property, and that the preservation of these could be thought of in terms of stewardship, grounded in “considerations of care and contextual appropriateness”, rather than in terms of ownership (Warren 1999, p. 19). Arguments based on a shift towards “stewardship” and “care” have continued to be made in academic literature relating to cultural heritage and to repatriation³ and have extended into critical reflections on the keeping of archives⁴; however, in practice, and as Scolaro indicated, the mechanisms of repatriation seemingly continue to function on the basis of a hierarchy of value in which ‘property’ and (national) cultural heritage are privileged.

Criminologist Emiline Smith (University of Glasgow) addressed similar considerations in her paper on theoretical frameworks for justice. Here, she encouraged those who work on restitution to ask who and what justice is for, and how the limitations of existing frameworks for justice might be overcome by envisaging and working within alternative frameworks, such as that of transformative justice⁵. Rather than focusing on a single particular instance of harm, necessarily posited as something that can be resolved or cured by the action or event of restitution, transformative justice, for Smith, seeks to respond to harm without creating more harm, and operates at a wider social level, advocating collective reckoning with looting. As she explained, a transformative justice framework would have the potential to foreground local perspectives, the communities from whom objects have been taken, and who may be overlooked within existing frameworks which, however unintentionally, accord a greater role or significance to nation states and to notions of ‘national’ culture or heritage.

Scolaro’s and Smith’s interrogations of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of restitution could be said on one hand to highlight the gulf between academic debates about restitution and restitution in practice, particularly when a number of presentations on the second day of the conference focused on what might be described as practical aspects of repatriation, including cultural property agreements⁶ and the types of legal mechanisms that have allowed nation states to claim the return of objects from other nation states. However, while parties continue to avail themselves of these types of agreements and legal frameworks, to attempt to prevent illegal trade, or to bring claims for the return of looted objects, they also acknowledge the flaws in the conceptual frameworks of these processes: Bradley Gordon, for example, indicated that the Cambodian restitution team is sensitive to the language it uses in press releases, tending to avoid terms like ‘artefact’ and ‘antiquity’. He noted, also, that they have taken an approach favouring negotiation over litigation.

Thus, the conference seemed to provide a valuable space for dialogue between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, and even to allow for the possibility of questions on the shape of restitution to make their way into wider advocacy. For example, the panel on ‘The Law of Return – International frameworks for repatriation’ was comprised of Smith, professor of cultural heritage law Hao Liu (Shandong University), who discussed the mechanisms which China has used in its claims for the repatriation of objects from, for example, Japan, and lawyer Yatish Ohja, who identified a number of gaps in Nepal’s existing laws and suggested changes to address both the impact of past looting and the possibility of preventing future illicit trade. Here, the interrelation of ideas put forward by academics and practising lawyers demonstrated how theoretical and practical concerns around restitution policy and international heritage law might be addressed together.  For me, this conference and others like it can, then, be a site for thinking future restitution models, which could consider the specific contexts of the communities from which objects have been taken, and what happens to objects (and what objects can do) after repatriation.

Overlooked voices in the restitution debate

It seemed to me that two other speakers addressed the potentialities of restitution, with emphasis on a localised approach, in their papers. Oral historian Shreya Sharma, whose work focuses on the Partition of India, described how oral histories can be a tool to tell stories that archives do not, and thus, for those whose stories have often been silenced, a form of agency. Sharma characterised Partition not as a historical event but as an ongoing rupture, affecting craft traditions and intangible culture, and showed how oral histories can speak of and confront these losses in ways that traditional archives and museums, material culture, cannot. Suresh Lakhe, from the Patan Museum, speaking in the context of a discussion of the repatriation of the Laksmi Narayan, also touched on the importance of intangible heritage to communities who have suffered the loss of tangible objects, observing that the return of tangible heritage, of material objects, is also a return of intangible heritage. The physical repatriation of an object would seem for me to be a moment in which the stories told and knowledge created about the material object could fruitfully be recorded and passed on. This might allow for an acknowledgement of the ways in which communities may be affected or transformed by the displacement or return of the object in question, and thereby lead towards a restitution that better serves the communities to which objects are returned.

Writer Alisha Sijapati, one of the founding members of the NHRC, on the other hand, addressed a significant and at times delicate issue which tends to be avoided in discussions of restitution, namely that of the identity and motivations of looters themselves, and the need to confront the question of internal complicity head on. As Sijapati noted, arguments for and against repatriation to Nepal may be very black and white: with some attributing looting purely to foreign demand for Nepali artworks, and others blaming the Nepali looters who sold them. The reality is often much more complex than this, and I think the conclusion that follows from Sijapati’s paper, that restitution should provide a space for communities to address these types of questions and reflect on how such scenarios might be avoided, whether through heritage education or other means, has the potential to generate productive conversations.

Thus, while acknowledging the important role of social media in increasing awareness of looting and repatriation cases, the dominance of the social heritage activist dimension at the conference, and the need for pragmatic approaches to repatriation, I left the conference feeling not so much a gulf between theory and practice but rather a sense that in their shared motivations there is room for change that supports repatriation and restitution claims and refocuses attention on exactly what those claims look like. As I mentioned above, groups like the NHRC and Lost Arts of Nepal are driven by communities from which objects have sometimes been stolen in very recent memory. And it is this community perspective that for me at time seems to be lost in existing restitution debates and repatriation processes. While Nepal provides a process by which members of the public can petition their local authorities to apply for the return of repatriated objects to the original shrines from which they were taken, the temporary display of repatriated objects at the National Museum (visited on the last day of the conference) demonstrated, by the minimalist approach to the exhibition text and labels, how easily the stories connected with these objects can be overlooked or hidden, however unintentionally.

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Notes

1. Due to a delayed flight, I missed the first morning of the conference, and my comments presented here reflect my impressions of the panels and keynote presentations I was able to attend. ↩︎
2. The terms ‘restitution’ and ‘repatriation’ are often used interchangeably; however, while etymologically ‘repatriation’ refers to the physical return of an object to its country of origin, I perceive ‘restitution’ to refer to a change in ownership, which may not necessarily involve physical return or return to a country, and which carries the connotation (from the perspective of Western moral/legal frameworks) of the remedying of a wrong. ↩︎
3. See, for example, Matthes 2017 (in which he argued for a “radical redistribution” of art based on museums’ and cultural institutions’ duty of stewardship), Wylie 2005 on stewardship in the context of archaeology ↩︎
4. See, for example, Wurl 2005, Odumosu 2020, Stuparitz 2024 ↩︎
5. On transformative justice, see, for example, Mingus 2019 (cited by Smith) ↩︎
6. By this term, I refer to the bilateral agreements entered into between the USA and other states in order to implement the 1970 UNESCO Convention. These agreements create US law that prevents the import into the US of objects and materials specified in the agreements. The panel session on this topic emphasised the way in which such agreements can prevent illegal trafficking and avoid the need for repatriation claims by preventing objects from entering the US market. ↩︎

References

Hicks, D. (2020) The Brutish Museums : the Benin bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution. London: Pluto Press.  

Matthes, E.H. (2017) “Repatriation and the Radical Redistribution of Art”, Ergo, Volume 4, No. 32, 2017. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0004.032 (accessed 3 September 2025). 

Mingus, M. (2019) Transformative Justice: A Brief Description. Available at: https://transformharm.org/tj_resource/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/ (accessed 3 September 2025).  

Odumosu, T. (2020) “The Crying Child: On Colonial Archives, Digitization, and Ethics of Care in the Cultural Commons”, Current Anthropology 61, no. S22, pp. S289–302. 

Stuparitz, O. (2024) “Archival Care at Arsip Jazz Indonesia”, Asian Music, Volume 55, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2024, pp. 75-113. 

Warren, K.J. (1999) “Introduction: A Philosophical Perspective on the Ethics and Resolution of Cultural Property Issues”, in P.M. Messenger (ed.) The ethics of collecting cultural property : whose culture? whose property? 2nd ed., updated and enl. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 1-26.  

Wurl, J. (2005) “Ethnicity as provenance: in search of values and principles for documenting the immigrant experience”, Archival Issues 29(1), pp. 65-76. 

Wylie, A. (2005) “The Promise and Perils of an Ethic of Stewardship”, in Meskell, L. and Pels, P. (eds) Embedding ethics : shifting boundaries of the anthropological profession. English ed. Oxford, UK: Berg, pp. 47-68.