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How to Return Stolen Art (Update)

August 28, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Museum as Trophy Case

In the Kelvin Grove Museum in Glasgow, curator Patricia Allen stands before a display case containing Benin Bronzes—artworks looted by British soldiers during the 1897 punitive expedition that burned Benin City, killed much of the population, expelled the Oba, and shipped thousands of objects back to England. "They even took the bolts from the doors," Allen notes. When asked whether museums today feel less like curated collections and more like trophy cases, she replies: "They were trophy cases. Now they're sort of carbones of doom, particularly as we slide down the economic scale. I think of them as big sort of almost like warehouses of loot."

Allen is an unusual figure in the museum world. Born in Brazil to a Singaporean-Eurasian mother and a father raised in colonial Africa, she describes herself as "a mole" inside the system—"one of the colonized" working among curators who were "very much British or European." Early in her career, she watched a senior curator explain Chinese dolls to visitors and realized "everything she said was wrong. I had dolls like that." That moment made her question what was happening in museums where "very little of this collection is appreciated or it's not given the same status as European art."

The Confession of Entitlement

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (02:07) **Glasgow Museum Visit and the Benin Bronzes** - Dubner visits the Kelvin Grove Museum with curator Patricia Allen to see looted Benin Bronzes firsthand.
  • 2 (06:06) **Patricia Allen: The Curator as Insider-Outsider** - Allen describes her background as a microbiologist turned archaeologist turned curator, and her perspective as someone from colonized nations.
  • 3 (12:04) **Glasgow’s Repatriation Decision and Criteria** - Glasgow Museums publicly commits to returning 19 Benin objects to Nigeria, along with artifacts to India and the Lakota tribe.
  • 4 (18:54) **Post-Ad: Nigeria’s Formal Request and the “Glut” of Returns** - Nigeria formally requests repatriation, and Glasgow considers a loan arrangement because Nigeria lacks storage capacity.
  • 5 (24:38) **Lonnie Bunch and the Smithsonian’s Ethical Turn** - Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch explains how building the African American History Museum changed his approach to collections.
  • 6 (32:00) **Economist Tom Wilkening on Long-Term Leases** - Economist Tom Wilkening argues that pairing repatriation with long-term leases creates efficient outcomes for both source countries and museums.
  • 7 (39:47) **The Met’s Agreement with Greece on Cycladic Art** - The Metropolitan Museum of Art announces a 25-year loan agreement with Greece for Leonard Stern’s collection of Cycladic antiquities.

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Show Notes

Museums are purging their collections of looted treasures. Can they also get something in return? And what does it mean to be a museum in the 21st century? (Part 3 of an updated series originally published in 2023.)
 

  • SOURCES:
    • Patricia Allan, museum consultant, former curator of world cultures for the Glasgow Museums.
    • Andrea Bayer, deputy director for collections and administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
    • Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
    • Victor Ehikhamenor, Nigerian writer and artist.
    • Patty Gerstenblith, professor emeritus of law at DePaul University College of Law.
    • Tom Wilkening, professor of economics at the University of Melbourne.

 

 


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