Decidedly, questions of restitution of spoliated property punctuate the news with metronomic regularity. Last week, the Greek hopes of recovering friezes from the Parthenon, exhibited at the British Museum in London, were again showered by the United Kingdom. A few days later, we learned from the specialized site Art Daily that following an agreement between two families of collectors, a frieze by Edvard Munch, Dance on the beach, looted in 1934 and invisible since, would be exhibited in London at the end of February and then put up for sale by Sotheby’s on March 1. Meanwhile, in France, the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul-Malak specified Monday, in the worldthe terms of an acceleration “historical” on the restitution of cultural property, announcing that three framework laws, and not just one as previously envisaged, would be proposed this year for the vote of parliamentarians. Until then subject to the principle of inalienability and imprescriptibility, works entered into French collections could thus be downgraded by decree by avoiding the long wait for the parliamentary shuttle.
Following the dynamics triggered by his “Ouagadougou speech” in 2017, Emmanuel Macron, in fact, had wished that the former head of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, appointed ambassador for heritage in 2021, and moreover put under investigation in a case of trafficking in antiquities, “can carry out work for [fixer] a doctrine and criteria for restitutability” of foreign works, recalled the Minister. Its report must be submitted in the coming weeks, the ministry told AFP on Monday. “As our collections are inalienable, if we have to make a specific law for each return, it will be long and complex”argued Abdul-Malak after the return of 26 works to Benin in 2021.
In March, it’s a painting by Gustav Klimt, Rosebush under the trees, hung in the Musée d’Orsay since 1980, which had been returned by France to the heirs of its owner, within the framework of an exceptional law authorizing the delivery of 15 works from public collections to the heirs of looted Jewish families. Concerning spoliation during the Nazi era, the Minister will introduce a framework law “in the coming months” pour “facilitate” refunds, in order to “going to the end of our duty to remember”. A third framework law on the restitution of identified human remains of foreign origin and claimed by third countries will also arrive “soon in the legislative calendar”a project led by centrist senator Catherine Morin-Desailly.