The complex nature of repatriation and restitution of African arts has been clearly articulated by First Word author Amanda M. Maples, and other recent First Word authors (Roberts 2019; Ndiaye 2019), as well as participants in the various conferences held over the past two years on the topic. As such, I will restrict my comments to some of the issues raised by my provenance research on the Fowler Museum's collection. Based on my limited experience, we are desperately in need of two vital resources: a set of guidelines or best practices and the funding to implement them.
Without a national mandate to restitute stolen African arts,1 American institutions are left to determine a process on their own.2 Many of the African arts curators I know are engaged in some form of provenance research, and it makes little sense for each of us to create separate...