Stewarding the Sacred In and Out of Museums: Repatriation, Reciprocity, and Other Forms of Return

Drawing primarily on examples from the Fowler Museum at UCLA, I will explore a variety of ways in which an institution that holds a significant number of sacred objects (or ancestors, relatives, non-human beings, etc.) in its collections can engage in processes of return. Responsible stewardship in contemporary museums increasingly includes negotiating the return of sacred materials to communities of origin or their recognized descendants. As understood here, "return" broadly encompasses a range of collaborative engagements between the museum and represented groups, including deaccessioning and repatriation as well as collaborative storage and care. In my discussion of specific cases, I will highlight key issues concerning the ethics and responsibilities of collection and collection management.