It is an interesting discussion and it begs a question: who should be the rightful owner of an antique object?
I cannot accept the idea that antique objects of art (or culture) belong exclusively to the ethic tribe of the creator. If one wants to insist upon this rule, then all Rembrandts should be returned to the Netherlands. I bet that 99.99999% of our collections "rightfully belong" to somebody else.
There is an unfortunate tendency to counterpose "Western society" with the rest of the world ( the former being greedy, materialistic and imperialistic whereas the latter being uniformly labelled as spiritual, environmetally sensitive and possessing deep wisdom).
Balderdash! Any society curious enogh about other cultures and rich/powerful enough to acqure artefacts , did it with gusto! Turkish museums are filled with European trophies including the sword of Stefan cel Mare . The Russian Tsars built the Hermitage for their acquisitions, and our Nihon-to colleagues salivate at night over their Koto katanas taken to the US by veterans of WWII. Japanese, in exchange, buy Van Goghs. Taiwanese museums are filled with the goods from China taken there by Chang Kai-shek (those that were not, were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution by Mao's goons).
Objects of art from any culture were sold, re-sold, taken af war trophies, stolen and found innumerable times over the centuries. Our only hope to see them preserved 1000 years from now is to place them in professional museums, not to surrender them to their tribal shamans. Had it not been for the Western museums, most ethnographic artefacts would have beed destroyed, lost and damaged by the elements in their natural habitats.
These Kenyan sticks would have rotted long ago had they stayed with the tribal witch doctors.
If a creator society wants, they can borrow the artifacts from other museums. But the idea that all Nigerian swords belong to Lagos, all Michelangelos to Rome, all Russian icons to Moscow and all statues of Buddha to Bangkok strikes me as absurd.
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