The restitution of art looted during colonial times has taken its first marked step in the Netherlands. The Government has decided to return to Indonesia and Sri Lanka 478 cultural objects that unfairly ended up in Dutch museums through coercion. Pieces include the Indonesian Lombok Treasure, made up of jewels, and the Sri Lankan Kandy cannon, decorated in gold, silver and bronze inlaid with rubies. His return marks the beginning of cooperation between the three parties involved and has been possible after the Commission for Colonial Collections, an advisory body to the Executive, studied the case. The works are now housed between the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, and the National Museum of World Cultures, in Leiden.
The pieces will return after further investigation also carried out in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. “It is a historic moment because we are returning objects that should never have reached the Netherlands,” according to Gunay Uslu, the Dutch State Secretary for Culture. In addition to the studies, for the restitution to be a fact, the objects must be requested by the countries of origin. “It is also time to look to the future because it is not only about giving back. A period of collaboration and exchange opens between those involved ”, she added. There is another Indonesian request still unanswered. It refers to the Dubois collection, made up of some 40,000 fossils in an excavation by the Dutch physician and anthropologist Eugène Dubois. It includes the cover of the skull of Java Man, considered the first discovered specimen of erectus, a hominid that lived in Asia. It is on display at the Naturalis natural science museum in Leiden.
Six pieces will come out of the Rijksmuseum: two swords, two rifles, a dagger and the Kandy cannon. Taco Dibbits, its director, indicates in a statement that the decision “marks a step towards cooperation, exchange of knowledge and relations with Sri Lanka in the context of research and a common history.” The cannon comes from ancient Ceylon and its arrival in the Netherlands has been explained over time as a gift or as war booty. The troops of the East India Company (VOC, in its Dutch acronym) agreed in the eighteenth century with Lewke Disava, the king of Kandy (today a city in Sri Lanka), then representative of an independent and native monarchy, in the lucrative cinnamon trade. The VOC can be considered the first multinational and its powers were similar to those of a government. A drought that disrupted the harvest sparked a rebellion against the company’s tax burden, and when the king sided with the rebels, strife broke out. The investigations carried out to establish the origin of the artillery weapon indicate that it was not a gift, but an appropriation in times of armed conflict. After the siege of Kandy, it ended up in the hands of William V, Prince of Orange. Since 1800 it has been part of the museum’s collection.
The Lombok Treasury was looted in the course of one of the largest Dutch colonial raids, in 1894 on Bali and Lombok itself (island of present-day Indonesia). The result was the expansion of control in the area, then called the East Indies – from Indonesia to the region of the Indian subcontinent – to differentiate it from the West Indies (Americas). In the shipping catalog there are 335 objects of gold, silver and jewelery with precious stones, four figurines, a dagger and the Pita Maha collection, which contains 132 objects of Balinese art.
France, Germany and Belgium have also studied their colonial collections and returned pieces. Britain, which has colonial art of dubious origin, notably in the British Museum, is more reticent for now.
The Dutch National Museum of World Cultures, with funds of almost 450,000 objects, also supports the return. “The provenance of a part of these works has not been established and we want to fix it. It is not that everything has been stolen, there are also simple purchases”, in the words of its director, Marieke van Bommel. In this way, she has tried to clear up doubts about the loss that the return of this kind of work may entail for museum collections. The moving of the pieces originating in Indonesia will be next Monday, July 10. The others will travel later, but this year.
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