In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Nagpra) to facilitate the return of such items and human remains to the appropriate tribes, which the law declares are their rightful owners. Some museums, such as one at the University of Denver, decline gifts that have poor provenance.įor centuries, Native Americans have decried the looting of the graves of their ancestors by pothunters and scientists and the display of their remains and belongings in museums.
The Arizona museum has documented about 80% of its collection, as has the Brooklyn Museum and other institutions that are considered less prestigious than the Met but that have substantial Native American collections.
“That’s a lot of missing documentation, which is a problem,” said Kelley Hays-Gilpin, a curator at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Photograph: Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Christian DiorĮxperts say a lack of documented histories is a red flag that objects could have been stolen or may be fake. Most either have no histories listed, leave gaps in ownership ranging from 200 to 2,000 years or identify previous owners in such vague terms as an “English gentleman” and “a family in Scotland”.Ĭharles and Valerie Diker attend the 2017 Guggenheim International Gala in New York City. In 2017, as other institutions grappled with returning colonial-era spoils, the Met announced the Dikers’ gift of another 91 Native American works.Ī ProPublica review of records the museum has posted online found that only 15% of the 139 works donated or loaned by the Dikers over the years have solid or complete ownership histories, with some lacking any provenance at all. The Dikers, who have amassed one of the most significant private collections of Native American works, have been donating or lending objects to the Met since 1993. Ownership was transferred to the Met in 2017. But the museum’s timeline doesn’t start until 2003, when the Dikers bought them from a collector. Historians say the masks were taken in 1871. The Met’s ownership history for the masks, also known as provenance, omits more than a century of their whereabouts.
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