Toledo Museum Of Art Partners To Repatriate Ethiopian Objects

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) has established a new institutional partnership with the Ethiopian Heritage Authority (EHA), which will facilitate the return of five objects from a private collection to Ethiopia.

Collector Bob McCarthy, whose focus is medieval art, initially approached the TMA about donating objects for repatriation. However, the items lacked provenance documents, complicating the determination of their legitimate custodianship. The professional guidelines for such artifacts have historically been unclear. The Unesco 1970 Convention against“illicit acquisition of cultural properties” was the first significant legislation on this matter. Although its enforcement was substantially strengthened by a 30-year review in 2000, the black market for antiquities expanded considerably during the interim period between 1970 and 2000. In 2008, the American Alliance of Museums officially adopted the 1970 Convention resolution as an institutional best practice, shifting the discourse around antiquities toward more diligent provenance research.

“It's left this donut hole where you end up with this retroactive assigning of a best practice,” said Adam M. Levine, the TMA's director and chief executive.“Literally millions of works of art have been collected in good faith but not the standard between 1970 and 2008, and this is the position Bob McCarthy found himself in.”

The museum's collaboration with McCarthy began during discussions for a reinstallation of its Cloister gallery, which is dedicated to medieval art and architecture. Sophie Ong, the TMA's assistant director of strategic initiatives, is overseeing this project.

“Because we were doing the groundwork in Ethiopia, we looked for solutions of how to solve this problem of objects that have no evidence of exportation from the country,” Ong said.

The Cloister gallery's reinstallation is expected to be completed next year and will explore connections between nations such as Ethiopia, Armenia, and the Byzantine and Islamic Empires through shared religion or ideas. This reinstallation will feature objects with documented provenance, but the broader aim of the partnership with the EHA is to research and ultimately repatriate objects lacking such documentation.

Ong added,“[The museum] has to acquire these objects and engage directly with scholars and museum professionals in Ethiopia, as well as us going to Ethiopia ourselves. Over the course of acquisition, research, cataloguing, loans and installation displays, new findings will emerge and ownership should then be rightly transferred next to Ethiopia.”

Levine and Ong refer to artifacts like the five from McCarthy, which lack provenance, as“objects in limbo” rather than“orphaned objects,” emphasizing respect for their true origin despite missing documentation. For items in this category, there is no direct evidence of illicit activity, yet no proof of legitimate movement either.

“In the course of our research on provenance, two manuscripts were identified that were known to be in Ethiopia post-1970 that likely were removed from the country,” Ong stated.“There are also three crosses, transferred by Bob McCarthy to the Ethiopian Heritage Authority.”

This partnership seeks not only to find solutions for individual objects but also to foster a good faith international relationship that can serve as a model for other institutions. The agreement is planned to continue for the next 20 years, with the first decade dedicated to research, capacity building, and restitution, and the second decade focusing on the long-term disposition of each object returned to Ethiopia.

“What we're trying to do in this partnership is move to a position of stewardship rather than ownership. Ethiopia's contributions to art history should be shared with the world,” Levine commented.“This is an opportunity to engage with real problems we have in the art world. I think one of the things it highlights is a lot can be accomplished when you don't assume what the other party wants and when you engage them in actual conversation.”

We previously reported:

Guatemala's Museo de Arte Colonial will reopen after a court-ordered raid in December 2025 led to its closure and the relocation of 287 artworks.

Source: The Art Newspaper

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