Cultural Restitution
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Switzerland
Updated December 2024
Below is a schedule of successful restitutions made by Switzerland to a country or community of source, plus other restitution news. Entries are updated regularly.
December 2024
An ancient carved tree, stolen from a ceremonial site in 1917 and kept inside a vault at Basel Museum of Cultures, will be returned to Australia
October 2024
An anonymous Swiss private collector has returned a collection of more than 60 pre-Columbian objects that had been in her family for several generations to Central and South America
July 2024
In response to requests from the Sri Lankan government and the Vedda tribe, the Museum of Cultures and the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland has returned a collection of 90 aboriginal artefacts, including human bones and tools
April 2024
The head of a statue of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II, illicitly smuggled out of Egypt more than 30 years ago and tracked to Bern, has been handed over to the Egyptian Embassy
April 2024
Switzerland appoints Nikola Doll to play a central coordinating role in charge of Swiss provenance research and looted art acquired in both colonial and Nazi contexts
November 2023
Three 900-year-old mummies from the collection of the Geneva Museum of Ethnography have been returned to Bolivia's National Museum of Archaeology
November 2023
Switzerland's Federal Council will set up an independent committee to advise on art looted during the Nazi era and on cultural objects collected due to colonialism
July 2023
A fragment from the head of a stone statue of Ramesses II, stolen from Abydos in the late 1980s or early 1990s, has been returned to the Egyptian government at a ceremony in Bern
April 2023
A debate has resurfaced over whether the coffin and mummified remains of Shep-en-Isis should be returned by the St Gallen Abbey Library to Egypt
February 2023
More than half the 96 Benin Bronzes in Swiss collections were looted, according to a report published by the Benin Initiative Switzerland
February 2023
Geneva's Museum of Ethnography has returned two sacred objects, a mask and a rattle, to their original Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, following a formal request for their return last August
SWI swissinfo.ch
February 2023
A new report published by the Swiss Benin Initiative reveals twenty-one objects in Swiss museum collections were looted from Benin City in 1897
January 2023
A court in Geneva has given an 18-month suspended jail sentence to Ali Aboutaam, founder of Phoenix Ancient Art, following a six-year investigation over 15,000 antiquities inherited from his father
September 2022
Five museums in Basel are given CHF250,000 to trace the provenance of objects in their collections and to communicate the results 'transparently'
November 2021
Three looted sculptures from Palmyra, smuggled into Switzerland in 2009 or 2010, have been returned to Syria's permanent mission at the United Nations
August 2021
A large hoard of decorated Mannaean bricks of c. 700BC, looted from an Iranian archaeological site, has been recovered from a Swiss bonded warehouse and returned to Tehran
October 2020
Switzerland returns 27 stolen Etruscan artefacts to Italian authorities in Bern, including a 2,000-year-old marble bust discovered at the Geneva Freeport
November 2018
Switzerland returns 26 ancient Egyptian artefacts to Egypt, confiscated in the context of two criminal cases in cantons Lucerne and Valais
April 2018
Switzerland returns to Serbia approximately 550 ancient Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman coins, about to be sold online
February 2016
Forty-five crates containing Etruscan and Roman antiquities, discovered in the Geneva Freeport by Italy's art crime Carabinieri police in collaboration with the Swiss authorities, belonged to disgraced antiquities dealer Robin Symes
June 2010
The Barbier-Mueller Museum of Geneva 'donates' a Makonde Mask, stolen in 1984 from the National Museum of Tanzania, back to the United Republic of Tanzania
http://www.archivalplatform.org/news/entry/barbier-museller_museum/
June 2010
Italian Carabinieri recover from Switzerland over 300 antiquities from Lazio, Puglia, Sardinia and Magna Graecia
2009
Italy recovers 137 ancient pottery pieces, statues and other artefacts from Switzerland that had been in the possession of Zurich-based restorers Fritz Burki & Son
November 2008
Switzerland returns 4,400 ancient artefacts to Italy, stolen from archaeological sites and seized in 2001 from storage rooms belonging to two Basel-based dealers
http://illicitculturalproperty.com/tag/switzerland/
September 2008
Switzerland to return a 19-inch eye stolen in 1972 from an Egyptian statue of Amenhotep III to Egyptian authorities
http://illicitculturalproperty.com/tag/switzerland/
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