The sacred in secular societies

Those nations and cultural groups lobbying Western museums for the restitution of cultural property acquired during the colonial period are accustomed to having their requests denied on the grounds that modern museums should not be required to atone for historical contingencies. A recent declaration by a group of leading international museum directors phrased it like this: ‘The objects and monumental works that were installed decades and even centuries ago in museums throughout Europe and America were acquired under conditions that are not comparable with current ones.’ In other words, that was then, this is now.

This simple appeal to an unwritten statute of limitations on illicitly acquired material is about to run into new obstacles as the question of human remains returns to the top of the cultural agenda. The increasingly frequent requests by Aboriginal groups for the return of human remains ‘harvested’ during the colonial period and subsequently absorbed into UK museum collections led to the establishment by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in May 2001 of the Working Group on Human Remains, which will make its initial recommendations to ministers in the coming weeks.

The issue of human remains in UK museums was already embattled cultural territory, but it has been lent unexpected emphasis by the recent news that British doctors and morticians removed at least 20,000 brains for research between 1970 and 1999 without seeking the consent of the families concerned. Just as in the colonial period, the human organs were retained for scientific research, and in most cases matters of faith and cultural belief were ignored. In the current controversy, one woman discovered that her late husband’s brain had been removed without permission and she was therefore unable to bury him intact in accordance with the couple’s Jewish faith. Similarly, Aboriginal groups point to a belief system that requires bodies of the deceased to be returned to their ancestral lands.

The Working Group on Human Remains was set up by the DCMS with a brief to examine the current legal status of human remains held within the collections of publicly funded museums and galleries in the United Kingdom.