LOS ANGELES — Officials from the Fowler Museum at UCLA on Monday announced the return of a colonial-era African royal necklace and other cultural artifacts to the West African country of Ghana.
The returned objects include gold jewelry, an elephant tail whisk and an ornamental chair originally taken from the Asante Kingdom in what is now Ghana by British forces during a 19th-century conflict.
Fowler director Silvia Forni and other museum staff announced the return of the objects to the ruler of Ghana’s Asante people, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, on Monday, the 150th anniversary of the British looting of Kumasi, a city in the Asante region of Ghana, according to the Fowler.
“We are globally shifting away from the idea of museums as unquestionable repositories of art, as collecting institutions entitled to own and interpret art based primarily on scholarly expertise, to the idea of museums as custodians, with ethical responsibility for the collection and towards the communities of origin of these collections,” Forni said in a statement.
Forni said the Fowler conducted extensive research into its colonial-era African collection. Once the museum confirmed the histories of the objects, Fowler officials began a years-long process to return the objects to the Asante, according to the museum.
“At the Fowler Museum, we think of ourselves as temporary custodians of the objects in our collection,” said Erica P. Jones, the Fowler’s senior curator of African arts. “In the case of pieces that were violently or coercively taken from their original owners or communities, it is our ethical responsibility to do what we can to return those objects. It is a process that will occupy generations of Fowler staff, but it is something that we are unwavering in our commitment to accomplish.”
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