A Thoughtful, Detailed Rebuttal to My "Make Art Loans, Not War" Op-Ed

I'm really getting knocked lately. But I don't mind when it's a thoughtful, detailed, intelligent and passionate response.

Kwame Opoku takes issue with my recent LA Times Op-Ed piece on the Afrikanet.info website:

Many of the stolen cultural objects cannot simply be left where they are even if the owners agree finally to donate or, lend some of them....These are not just art objects, as Lee Rosenbaum may think. Many embody the unity and the spirit of the particular African people. These objects have to be returned, even if symbolically, so that our peoples see and feel that the long exile of their gods and kings has ended....

Besides, why should those who have been deprived of their cultural objects even think, at this stage, of making loans of the same objects to those who have been keeping them and still even today largely refuse to consider the issue of restitution?

I will only say in self-defense that I never meant to suggest that everything should stay where it is. What I said is that "source countries, possessing more high-quality artifacts from their ancient pasts than they can adequately display, don't need to get everything [emphasis added] back." I did not say, nor do I believe, that they should not get anything back.

I see a little patch of common ground in this quote from Opoku: "These objects have to be returned, even if symbolically." Some objects, certainly the ones that "embody the unity and the spirit" of a culture, should be physically returned. Others may be able to stay where they are on loan, with a clear acknowledgement by the exhibiting institution of the source country's ownership.

Can't we try to move from combativeness to mutually beneficial cooperation?

Having said that, I will acknowledge that museums are clearly aware of repatriation imperatives involving European countries. But as Opoku would surely argue, and as recent events in Southern California have illustrated, there's much more work to be done in addressing the cultural-property concerns of other areas of the world, including Africa and Southeast Asia.