Inside The Fowler Museum's Decision To Return Historical Artifacts To The Asante Kingdom

A collection of historical artifacts belonging to the Asante kingdom is back in the kingdom's possession as of February 5.

The returning of the artifacts, which took place on the 150-year anniversary of the day British soldiers looted the Asante city of Kumasi, is a part of a growing movement among museums in the U.S. and across the world to return unethically obtained artifacts and human remains from around the world.

The Asante kingdom, located in what is now Ghana, fought British colonists during the 19th century, during which time British troops stole items from the Asante people or demanded them as indemnity payments after the war — including the seven newly returned artifacts.

The long process of returning the artifacts

The process of repatriating the artifacts started in 2019, while museum staff researching its African collection learned the full story of how they came into the museum's possession, according to the Fowler Museum's senior curator of African art Erica Jones. They were originally a gift from the trust of Sir Henry Wellcome, who had purchased the items at auction.

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Jones said that the decision to repatriate the artifacts was an easy one — once the Fowler Museum's staff realized that the artifacts had been stolen, they contacted the Asante king through an intermediary, musicologist Kwasi Ampene of Tufts University, and worked out how best to return the objects.

Fowler Museum director Silvia Forni and Manhyia Palace Museum Director Ivor Agyeman-Duah sign documents formally restoring the artifacts to the possession of the Asante kingdom.

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Courtesy of Erica P. Jones

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The hardest part, Jones said, was a lengthy bureaucratic process that made it more difficult to meet the Asante king's requested deadline — the Feb. 5 anniversary of their looting.

"One of the pieces that we returned is an elephant tail fly whisk, and elephants are endangered, and transporting endangered species is restricted," Jones said.

Jones said the museum had to get a special permit from the U.S. government to transport this artifact as a result, even though it was over 150 years old.

In addition to bureaucratic hurdles, the Fowler Museum also grappled with ethical concerns related to returning the items.

"This is also in some ways like reopening old wounds, and this was something that the king said to us as well," Jones said. "Returns are not as simple as just giving something back and saying, 'Isn't this great?' There is also something that happens on the other end of it."

But as for the moment when the artifacts were publicly presented to the Asante people — Jones, who traveled to Ghana to deliver them by hand, said it was a joyous moment as people crowded around and surrounded the objects in order to handle them.

"There's this precious quality to the way museum professionals handle things," Jones said. "It was a very fulfilling handing [the artifacts] over in that way."

About the objects

According to UCLA, the returned items were as follows:

• the elephant tail whisk
• two royal stool ornaments
• a gorget (royal necklace) or stool ornament
• two strands of beads used as bracelets or anklets
• an ornamental chair

Four of the artifacts were looted directly, while three were obtained as part of post-war negotiations between the Asante and the British military, when the Asantehene — the traditional title of the Asante king — was ordered to give up 50,000 ounces of gold to the British.

This royal necklace, known as a gorget, was originally taken from Ghana by British military forces in 1874.

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Courtesy of Don Cole/Fowler Museum at UCLA

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The record of the looting was surprisingly complete — it was even documented in the papers accompanying the items when the Wellcome Trust gave them to the Fowler Museum in 1965.

"We were looking at documentation that really hadn't been looked at since we received the gift, and on that documentation, it said, 'looted by,' with individual's names, on February 5th of 1874," Jones said.

Even though they've been returned to their original owners, visitors to the Fowler Museum will still be able to see representations of these works. With the permission of the current Asantehene, the Fowler Museum made 3D renderings of the artifacts, which the museum has permission to display for future visitors.

A global repatriation movement

The Fowler Museum's returning of these artifacts comes as part of a growing movement to repatriate items in museum collections that were unethically obtained, especially human remains.

Locally, UCLA has said it is committed to identifying and returning unethically obtained artifacts in its collection, launching an initiative last year to return objects to their nations of origin. The Fowler Museum has already returned the majority of its collection of human remains.

The Autry Museum of the American West has made about 25 percent of its collection of remains — those of 41 Native Americans — available for repatriation as of last year, according to data from ProPublica.

Nationally, the American Museum of Natural History has removed human remains from display while they review their repatriation practices, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is in the process of returning Khmer statues to Cambodia and Thailand.

Jones said that while every repatriation is different, she hopes that future efforts to return artifacts to the African continent can build on the framework established in this case.

"We're a part of UCLA and we needed to formalize all kinds of policies for returning that didn't really exist," she said. "I personally have a number of returns that I would love to see happen over the coming years. But we have a better sense of what to expect now in terms of what are potential roadblocks and hurdles that we'll have to encounter in the process."