‘Plundered Pieces: Should Cultural Artifacts Be Repatriated?’

Join the Lisska Center at the Denison Museum as we explore “Plundered Pieces: Should Cultural Artifacts Be Repatriated?” Conversation moderated by Diana Mafe and Megan Hancock.

Museums exhibit rare cultural artifacts from across time and space. Visitors can marvel at the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Marbles, and the Ife Head in London, the Bust of Nefertiti in Berlin, Chola Bronzes in Cleveland, or Benin Bronzes in New York. But the provenance of these kinds of artifacts remains hotly contested. Some argue that pieces should be repatriated to their home countries, especially if they were acquired during colonial or war occupation. Others question national and cultural claims to artifacts and point to the potential loss of access and preservation. The recent opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza and the delayed opening of the Museum of West African Art in Benin City have further reinvigorated this debate. Join us for a roundtable discussion with three expert colleagues followed by audience Q&A. 

About our panel… 

Brad Lepper is the senior archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage Program and an occasional visiting assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Denison University. For much of his career he served as the Ohio History Connection’s Curator of Archaeology and was involved in many NAGPRA consultations and repatriations to various federally recognized tribal nations. 

Ksenia Un is assistant professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Denison University, where she specializes in modern and contemporary Eurasia. In her teaching of art and visual histories from the nineteenth century to the contemporary, she encourages ways of seeing which work against disciplinary legacies that are constitutive of empires, past and present. Her first book project examines how visual culture shaped understandings of diversity in the course of the late Russian Empire’s eastward expansion. 

Rhodora Vennarucci is assistant professor of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Denison University, where she specializes in the socio-economic history of the Roman world with published and forthcoming works that focus on both ends of the distributive system in Italy: rural production and urban retailing. She co-directs the Marzuolo Archaeological Project in Tuscany and Archaeological Reconnaissance Ficulle project in Umbria, Italy, and is the scientific director of the Virtual Roman Retail project.