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Digital restitution

  • What actually is digital restitution? Photo on slide 1: View of the "I miss you" exhibition of 96 Benin bronzes returned by Germany to Nigeria in 2022 at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne. Photo: Raimond Spekking (CC BY-SA 4.0)

  • Museums around the world have been making efforts to digitise their collections. In this process, they create digital reproductions of the object and related data. These digital assets are owned by museums and are protected by copyright laws of their country. Photo: Public domain

  • Some publish collections with an open license for re-use. Other museums monetise the use and distribution of the digital collections. Photo: Canva

  • A significant number of objects in European museums have contested origins and a history of being forcefully taken from a community/country. The recorded data and documentation about such objects bear a colonial context and narrative... Photo: Rosie Williams, British Museum, Adamanese Artefacts, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

  • ...they exclude the voice of the source-community (country of origin) and such glaring knowledge gaps in the collection record get reinforced in digitised versions that are circulated online resulting in the establishment of a one-sided view. Photo: Canva

  • When museums make efforts to return such objects to their rightful owners, should they choose to remove the information of repatriated objects from their public platforms? Or should they retain digital images, data, and digital models for researchers and enable the public greater accessibility?

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