restitution – cali.legal

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The Bureaucracy of Regret: France’s Quiet Beginning to Undo Colonial Plunder

2026-05-11 0 comments

Inside the dim, glass-walled galleries of the Musée du Quai Branly, the ghosts of the French empire are kept at a meticulous relative humidity of 50%. For decades, these objects, including carved ancestral figures from Gabon, royal sceptres from Dahomey, and reliquaries from Madagascar, existed in a state of ‘suspended animation’. They were protected by a legal doctrine as unyielding as the museum’s reinforced glass: inaliénabilité. Rooted in the 1566 Edict of Moulins, which sought to […]

The Chicago Acquisition: A Masterclass in Curation or a Case Study in Loss?

2026-02-24 0 comments

The Art Institute of Chicago recently announced a sweeping set of acquisitions that reads like a high-end grocery list for the soul. From the modernist sharp edges of Christian Schad to the architectural provocations of Amanda Williams, the museum is clearly in a “treat yourself” phase. However, tucked away in the press release, amidst the celebration of local legend Richard Hunt’s monumental sculpture, sits a rare 17th-century textile: ‘A Nayaka Nobleman with Courtiers and Courtesans.’ While the […]

From Museums to Memories: What France’s Restitution Law Means for the World and for India

2025-08-27 0 comments

The New French Law on Restitution France now stands at the edge of an unfamiliar, but long-awaited, horizon. In July 2025, Culture Minister Rachida Dati introduced a draft law that would, if passed, make it far easier for looted or misappropriated cultural artifacts to be returned to their countries of origin. For the first time, restitution would not require the exhausting ritual of special parliamentary legislation for each object. Instead, a decree approved by the […]