Art Daily Newsletter
In a moving ceremony,
officials returned Toi Moko to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
(Te Papa) in Wellington.
MONTREAL.- The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts returned a Toi Moko to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa) in Wellington, in a moving ceremony with officials from both museums present. The return to New Zealand of this Māori head follows a request by the indigenous māori population of New Zealand that, for the past two decades, has been making efforts to repatriate about 500 tattooed and mummified remains or heads in public and private collections around the world. In 2011, at the urging of the Museum’s management, the MMFA’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously in favour of this request, which, it felt, “is not true restitution, and thus a transfer of property, because ownership of the human body is inalienable.” “In the context of the research done last year on the collections of world cultures at our Reinvented Museum, Te Papa’s request warranted atten- ... More |
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