Glossary Collecting and the antiquities trade
Repatriation
The return of cultural objects to their country or community of origin, whether through legal action, negotiation or a voluntary gift.
Repatriation covers many routes: court orders for stolen property, returns negotiated between governments, museums giving objects back, and private owners handing over collections. Restitution is the narrower legal term for returning property to an owner from whom it was unlawfully taken.
Cypriot cases in the compendium include the Kanakaria mosaics, stolen from a church in the occupied north and ordered returned to the Church of Cyprus by a US federal court in 1989, and single objects that still come back from the market (Looting in Occupied Northern Cyprus). Among private collectors, David Johnson resolved to give his whole collection of 250 to 300 pieces back to Cyprus, having concluded that objects without a documented history before 1974 could not honestly be kept.
Related terms
- 1970 UNESCO Convention
The 1970 international treaty on preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of cultural property; its year is the trade's usual provenance benchmark.
- US-Cyprus Memorandum of Understanding
An agreement between the United States and Cyprus, first signed in 2002, restricting US imports of designated Cypriot archaeological and Byzantine material.
- Deaccession
The formal removal of an object from a museum's permanent collection, usually followed by its sale, exchange or transfer.
Where it appears
- Buying Back: Recovering Cypriot Antiquities and Church Art by Purchase Instead of in Court
- The State as Buyer: How the Cyprus Museum, Its Partners and the Church Bought Cypriot Antiquities
- Christ Antiphonitis: The Frescoes and Icons of a Kyrenia Range Church after 1974
- Repatriations, 2023 to 2026: The Returns of Cypriot Antiquities and Church Art Read as a Body of Cases
- Northern Types with Lawful Histories: Vounous, Lapithos, Enkomi and Salamis Material Abroad
- The Munich Seizure of 1997: Church Art from the Occupied North and its Return
- Church Art in the Occupied North after 1974: Churches, Icons, Mosaics and Frescoes
- Collecting Cypriot Antiquities Today: Law, Provenance and Due Diligence
- Cypriot Antiquities in the Internet Era: Online Sales, Platforms and Checking a History Online
- Licensed Dealers and Registered Collections: The 1935 System and Its Record, to 1974
- Policing and Monitoring: How the Republic of Cyprus Polices Antiquities and Watches the Market Abroad
- Register of Antiquities Bought by the Cyprus Museum, the Leventis Foundation and the Church
and 6 more compendium pages