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Journalism of Courage
“When a cultural object is stolen, we lose a part of our identity. Learning about these missing objects is the first step toward their recovery,” reads an introductory note of UNESCO’s newly launched Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects.
The museum, launched September 29 at UNESCO’s MONDIACULT conference, is “an innovative digital platform [which] reconnects communities with their stolen cultural treasures”, and seeks to confront the illicit trafficking of heritage items, particularly as a result of colonialism.
The digital museum currently displays almost 240 missing objects from 46 countries, a number that is expected to grow, but also eventually fall. This is because the museum aims to “gradually empty itself”, as the objects are recovered, and returned to their countries of origin.
Images of some of these items are so scarce that artificial intelligence was leveraged to recreate spinnable digital versions. Users will be able to access the museum’s design, interactive tools and digitised objects on their own devices or via dedicated screens at the MONDIACULT conference.
Pritzker Architecture Prize-winner Francis Kéré has designed the visual structure of the website in the form of a baobab tree, which is a noted symbol of strength in the African continent. Clicking on it leads to different “rooms” — the Stolen Cultural Objects Gallery, the Auditorium, and the Return and Restitution Room — where one scrolls from animal fossils and statues to idols and paintings, which are searchable by name, material, function, and colour.
The website also features testimonies from affected communities, and points to locations on a map from where the objects were stolen.
“This symbolic structure will host exhibitions that highlight successful restitution cases, best practices, and the devastating impact of cultural loss on communities. It will also serve as a platform for dialogue, bringing together governments, museums, law enforcement, and civil society,” UNESCO stated.
The museum is financially supported by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the project was developed in collaboration with the INTERPOL.
The museum depicts at least two objects submitted from India: ninth-century sandstone sculptures from the Mahadev Temple in Pali, Chhattisgarh.
The first, a Nataraja figure, is described as showing Shiva in his cosmic dance, one hand raised in assurance and another crushing a small demon, symbolising the triumph of knowledge over ignorance. His bull mount, Nandi, gazes upward, reinforcing Shiva’s role as both protector and destroyer.
The second figure, of Brahma, the creator, is shown seated in lalitasana with three visible faces and four arms holding sacred emblems like a rosary and the Vedas. A goose at his feet represents wisdom and clarity.
Together, the two sculptures express the balance of creation and dissolution central to Hindu belief, and illustrate how temple imagery once gave physical form to complex philosophical ideas.
Since UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s) original founding vision in 1945 of restoring physical schools, libraries and museums in Europe after World War II, the body’s purpose has evolved, most prominently into facilitating the “promotion of education, science, culture, and communication”. Among other purposes today with its 194 member states, it lists “responding to artificial intelligence” and “safeguarding heritage”.
“The virtual presence of anything in today’s world is often treated with the same attention as those in reality,” says Sunanda K Sanyal, Professor of Art History & Critical Studies at Lesley University. Repatriation, or the return of an object to the country of origin, has been a “hot issue” in Western museum circles for decades, he told The Indian Express.
“Simply put, it is a sort of atonement for the… exploitation of those societies by the colonising forces. There has also been significant push-back and reluctance from a section of the museum elite, arguing that returned artifacts would not get the same protection in their home cultures due to lack of infrastructure and systemic corruption. This stance, in turn, has been identified by its critics as one of the surviving tropes of colonialism; patronising, at best,” he said.
Repatriating virtually may help ease the “complicated logistics” of transporting objects, Sanyal added.
Other scholars, however, fear that the use of the word ‘repatriation’ for the online realm poses risks for defining ownership of cultural objects at large. An oft-quoted paper by such critics is ‘Virtual Repatriation: It’s Neither Virtual nor Repatriation’ (2012) by Robin Boast and Jim Enote, which raises concern over associating the idea of repatriation — a return to “source communities” — with “projects that seek to improve data sharing and even direct engagement of source communities with their patrimony”.
