The repatriation of stolen art or objects without clear ownership history is an ongoing issue in modern museum studies which will likely change the way museums look and operate in the future. China has joined a rapidly increasing number of nations calling for the return of their cultural heritage abroad. These calls for repatriation reflect the changing importance of traditional culture within China.
In 2009, the collection of the late fashion designer, Yves Saint-Laurent, was presented at a Paris auction. China protested the inclusion of two bronze statues of rat and rabbit heads which had been plundered by Anglo-Franco imperialists. They were part of a set of twelve bronze heads depicting the animals of the Chinese zodiac that had adorned a fountain in the Yuanmingyuan, Garden of Perfect Brightness, for the Qianlong emperor in Beijing. The royal resort of the Qing dynasty was a complex of gardens, temples, palaces, and pavilions measuring 350 hectares in the northwest area of Beijing at its height. It was widely viewed as the pinnacle of Chinese gardening art and the statues are considered national treasures.
Chinese lawyers tried to block the sale of the heads in the French court, but French-Sino relations were already strained due to disagreements about the Dalai Lama, human rights, and Tibetan freedom, so their efforts were denied. When the sale continued, China declared sanctions against the auction house, Christie’s. Cai Mingchao purposely made an insincerely high bid in order to stop the auction, but had no intention of actually paying the money. He was acting independently of the Chinese government, who feared the pieces would once again fall into foreign hands. The statues were withdrawn from sale and images of the bronze heads have been removed from Christie’s website, perhaps in an effort of the auction house to hide the controversial memory. The rat and rabbit heads were eventually returned to China by a wealthy French businessman, François-Henri Pinault.
The actual designation of the pieces as Chinese national treasures has been contestested, as the Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, represents an early mix of Western and European styles. While the Qing dynasty garden possessed many architectural features derived from the styles of the lower Yangtze region, the urban Qing ruler also added several European inspired buildings in his garden under the supervision of the Italian Jesuit, Giuseppe Castiglione. Castiglione designed the zodiac fountain to sit in front of a building which was not modeled after Chinese architectural tropes, but rather the Palace at Versailles. This has led people to question the significance of the bronze heads in the Chinese artistic canon.
The main reason the pieces gained so much attention lies in how they ended up in France in the first place- namely, they were plundered. In 1860, French and British troops raided the Summer Palace to punish the Chinese people for delaying the settlement of the Second Opium War (1856-1860), burning wooden figures, crushing stone structures, and taking as much loot as possible. The leader of the expedition was James Bruce, the Eighth Earl of Elgin, whose father is responsible for looting the Parthenon marbles, now held in the British Museum. The politics of the scenario cannot be overlooked, with the British representative a second-generation cultural criminal. The looting of the Yuanmingyuan was a direct attack on the authority of the emperor. European seizure of the emperor’s treasures and the leveling of his palaces undermined relations with China and became a large source of humiliation and shame. The return of the rat and rabbit heads is therefore considered a way of righting a wrong enacted by the Anglo-Franco imperialists.
Zodiac bronze head, Pig, bronze, 18th C., Qing Dynasty, Poly Art Museum, Beijing, China, donated by Stanley Ho in 2003.
Though the 2009 Christie’s auction was a higher profile case, this was not the first time the controversial zodiac statues had emerged on the global market. In 2000, the heads of the ox, monkey, and tiger were put to auction in Hong Kong, which was also protested by the Chinese government who considered holding the sale on Chinese soil to be an insult. The pieces were returned to Chinese ownership through the intervention of the People’s Liberation Army who offered the highest bid through the Poly group. These heads are now held in Beijing’s Poly Museum and have been displayed proudly across the nation.
The return of the pieces has been a combined effort of Chinese entrepreneurs and wealthy art collectors. The bronze head of the horse emerged at a Sotheby’s auction in 2007 and was purchased for $8.9 million by Chinese casino mogul, Stanley Ho. In 2019, Ho donated the sculpture to the Chinese government, and it is now held in the Capital Museum in Beijing, China. Stanley Ho had previously been responsible for the return of the statue of the pig head to China. He purchased the zodiac head for HK$6 million in 2003, donating the piece to Beijing’s Poly Art Museum. It is interesting to note that the pieces are not being held together in the same institution. One would think the full impact of their loss and the significance of their return would be more strongly emphasized by being displayed together. Seeing the seven heads in Chinese possession exhibited together as they were originally constructed pays homage to what was lost in the sacking of the Yuanmingyuan.
The combination of Chinese and European baroque styles characteristic of the Old Summer Palace is especially evident in the seven stone columns repatriated to China from Norway in 2023. The columns were originally located in the Western Mansion, Xiyang Lou, area of Yuanmingyuan. Johan Wilhelm Normann Munthe (1864-1935), a known collector of thousands of Chinese cultural artifacts, is credited with acquiring the seven columns, having lived in China for decades. They came to be in the possession of the West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts in Bergen, Norway, Munthe’s birthplace, now a part of the museum complex KODE.
In 2013, Huang Nubo, a wealthy Chinese entrepreneur and the founder and active chairman of the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group, visited the museum. Upon seeing the columns, Nubo opened a case for repatriation, originally hoping to have the pieces permanently exhibited in his alma mater, Peking University in Beijing, China. Nubo made a donation to KODE and established a trilateral agreement to initiate a series of cultural exchange opportunities between the two nations. The return of the columns was approved by the Norwegian government in 2019 and China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration had the pieces moved to the administration of the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park.
The stone pillars measure within 80 to 92 centimeters in height and embody a blend of Sino-European styles. Their fronts are decorated with ornate carvings modeled after Western motifs such as fleur-de-lis and shell patterns. The sides were adorned with vases filled with traditional Chinese flowers including magnolias, lotus flowers, and chrysanthemums. The scroll-like carvings and window patterns are reminiscent of those present on traditional Chinese architectural columns and balustrades. Chinese experts examined the structural properties of the seven pillars and confirmed they were constructed of white marble, decorated with natural and geometric motifs in bas-relief. The quality, ornamentation, and composition of the relics match the existing ruins from the Yuanmingyuan’s Western style mansion.
Following delays due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pieces debuted in October of 2023. The Exhibition of Repatriated Stone Pillars of Yuanmingyuan and 2023 Beijing Public Archaeology Season is a long-term exhibition in the Zhengjue Temple of the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park. The exhibition failed to mention the involvement of Huang Nubo in the repatriation of the cultural artifacts. An introduction at the exhibition credited the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the National Cultural Administration, several government bodies, universities, institutions, and various societal efforts with organizing the donation of these pieces from the KODE collections to China. There is a stronger emphasis on a collaborative, nation-wide, effort to facilitate the return of culturally significant artifacts, as opposed to that of a wealthy individual.
Both sources consulted on the return of the pillars, China Daily and Global Times, are owned by the Chinese Communist Party. China Daily News is an English-language news source that is under the jurisdiction of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, and Global Times is a daily tabloid under the patronage of the Chinese Communist Party’s leading newspaper, The People’s Daily. These newspapers offer a highly nationalistic perspective and demonstrate changing cultural values in China. The calls for repatriation by the Chinese Communist party reflects a pride in traditional Chinese culture and a desire to have these pieces returned safely to Chinese soil. This relatively new perspective taken by the governing bodies strongly contrasts the actions of the Red Guard.
With Mao Zedong’s call to destroy the “Four Olds”- old thinking, customs, culture, and habits- in 1966 and the rise of the Red Guard Movement which supplied political unrest with a physical outlet, Chinese society underwent a significant transformation. Chairman Mao’s May Sixteenth, 1966, Notification of the Central Party Committee signaled the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, which served as a means of removing his political rival, Liu Shaoqi, the president of China, from power. He used his platform to declare his opposition of all “academic authorities” who he accused of opposing socialism and supporting the bourgeois and exploitative classes (Pan, 2023). Red Guard groups were quickly formed in middle schools, high schools, and universities, organizing rebellions against their teachers and administrators who they accused of misleading the Cultural Revolution on campus. The Red Guard attacked teachers, artists, authors, intellectuals, former capitalists, landlords, and rightists who were black-listed for their criticisms of the Party. Violence, bloodshed, and suicide occurred at the hands of the Red Guard supported and directed by the Maoist Cultural Revolution authorities. Many were attracted to Chairman Mao because of his message of rebellion against tradition and authority which were associated with the oppression and suffering of many.
The previous attitude of tolerance towards all religious practices was lost in an effort to abolish the old ways in favor of the new. Religions that had been influential in China since the Northern and Southern dynasties like Buddhism and Daoism were synonymous with the oppression of feudal lords. Everything associated with these faiths therefore had to be eradicated, including temples and icons. When religion is stripped of its social and cultural roles, its political associations become preeminent, explaining why its tangible embodiments like temples, statuary, and art were attacked in place of the more abstract feudal system. The destruction of traditional Chinese iconography “both symbolizes and renders completely visible the destruction of the old order” (Wang, pg. 10, 2014). The economic basis of the old order had already been destroyed when the landlord class was removed from power and their lands seized with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. New rituals emerged which sought to both challenge and replace more traditional practices, with images of Mao replacing those of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as the savior figure of China. In light of the mass destruction of relics in China during the “red terror”, calls for repatriation made by the Communist Party in China mark a significant change in governing attitudes towards traditional culture. China recently joined a growing number of nations demanding the repatriation of pieces with inadequate provenances in the collection of the British Museum. China published its demands in the state-run English newspaper, Global Times, mentioning a few of the museum’s approximately 23,000 Chinese art and artifacts. The Global Times piece argued that the majority of the British Museum’s vast collection of roughly eight million items originate from places outside of the UK, “and a significant portion of it was acquired through improper channels, even dirty and sinful means” (Global Times, August 28, 2023). These calls for restitution come just weeks after the revelation that nearly 2,000 pieces have gone missing from the museum’s collection. Peter John Higgs, senior curator for Greek and Roman art is believed to have been responsible for the thefts and has since been fired. The institution’s director, Hartwig Fischer, stepped down prematurely in light of the scandal. The Global Times article explains how opponents of repatriation often argue that the stolen objects are safer in the British Museum than they would be in their countries of origin, but this position has been weakened dramatically by the scandal. The article adds that this rebuttal has been enough to convince a few victimized nations, “indirectly weakening the motivation and determination to recover artifacts from the British Museum… [however, they] doubt very much that it is an excuse of cultural colonization and brainwashing of developing countries.” Even if the British Museum may have more resources than the nations from which the art was taken, this does not excuse the means by which they were acquired.
Out of the 23,000 Chinese pieces in the museum’s collection, only about 2,000 objects are on display. One piece specifically mentioned by the Global Times included Gu Kaizhi’s Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies, dating between the fifth and seventh centuries. This scroll and the “Liao tri-colored luohan statues, ritual bronzes from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, stone buddhist sutra scrolls of the Wei and Jin dynasties” lack sufficient records of ownership (Global Times August 28, 2023). The article argues that it is difficult to trace exactly how most of the Chinese collection ended up in the British Museum, and as long as the institution cannot prove that the pieces were obtained “legally and honestly”, China, or any nation of origin, maintains the right to demand repatriation.
The Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies is considered an influential milestone in the development of Chinese painting. The Admonitions scroll illustrates the Nüshi Zhen, a text composed by Zhang Hua (c. AD 232-300) and bears many seals and colophons from the Huizong and Qianlong emperors. It begins with a fragment of Song dynasty kesi tapestry-woven silk from a previous mounting of the handscroll decorated with peonies, followed by a large three-character inscription. The scroll is organized by quotations from Zhang Hua’s texts and subsequent figure illustrations, void of any background or setting. A landscape painting of trees by Zou Yigui was at the end of the scroll but is now mounted separately. The styles of the figures show an important development in Han illustrations; the drapery is done in long, continuous brush strokes, vitality emanating from the swirling draperies in accordance with Han dynasty images, while the facial expressions of the figures are portrayed in a level of detail that surpasses the more generalized features of Han figures.
In 2009, the description of the Admonitions scroll in the British Museum’s online collection read: “In private hands from the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644) to the middle of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the scroll was then received like a prodigal child into the collection of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-95). Around the end of the nineteenth century, it came into the possession of a British officer named Captain Clarence Johnson, who took it to the British Museum for appraisal in 1903. It was immediately bought, for €25, and has since been held there in trust for the British nation, as the museum’s charter demands,” (Kraus, pg. 840, 2009). Today, the acquisition entry explains that the handscroll was purchased by the museum from Captain C. Johnson, who had “acquired the scroll in Beijing in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion and the occupation of the city by the Eight Nation Alliance.” Given the nature of the Boxer Rebellion and its goal of diminishing Japanese and Western influence in China, Johnson likely did not take the pieces by means of a legal transaction. The British Museum does conclude that “The exact circumstances of how Johnson came to possess the scroll are unclear,” which situates the Admonitions scroll within the narrative of pieces whose provenance cannot be confidently traced.
“Jade Teapot”, Yu Ting, jade, diameter: 8.5 cm; height, 7.2 cm; width, 14 cm, 2011, Suzhou, Jiangsu province, purchased by British Museum from Yu Ting in 2017. https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/09/Jade-teapot-1024×797.jpg
Social media influencers have also joined the discussion surrounding repatriation following the release of a three-part video series that went viral on the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, Douyin. The series follows the story of a teapot that transforms into a woman and escapes the British Museum and is now being adapted into an animated film. The videos, created by two Chinese social media influencers, had reached over 370 million views by the time the article was published. The video aligns closely with calls by the Chinese state media to the United Kingdom for the return of cultural art and artifacts in its possession. The film adaptation, Escape from the British Museum, will expand on the video series by focusing on multiple objects who miss their motherland and wish to return home for the new year. The teapot which the Douyin series follows is believed to be Yu Ting’s jade teapot, produced in 2011 and purchased by the British Museum in 2017. This is a newer piece that does not carry the same political undertones as some of the more historical pieces and was purchased directly from the producer, undermining the message of the video series in the eyes of the British Museum. Instead of acknowledging the calls for repatriation, a spokesperson for the museum said “The British Museum has a long history of cultural collaboration in China which has resulted in a number of important exhibitions, partnerships and research projects…It is committed to exhibiting its Chinese collections, here at the British Museum, and across the world through our collection-sharing programs.” This statement attempts to underline the importance of the British Museum in sharing traditional Chinese art and artifacts with the world, though does not address the legal and moral issues of provenance that accompany calls for restitution.
The return of the bronze heads looted from the Yuanmingyuan during the Second Opium War, as well as the seven stone pillars, emphasize changing perspectives towards traditional culture in China. The repatriation of these objects to China was a product of collaborative efforts among governing bodies, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and a casino mogul. The restitution of cultural artifacts taken from the pillaged Old Summer Palace represents an atonement to the humiliation and wrongs inflicted on the nation by Anglo-Franco imperialists. Calls for the return of works residing in the British Museum have inspired nationalistic feelings towards traditional culture that is further strengthened by the sentimental social media series. This desire for the repatriation of culturally significant artifacts has captured the attention of many different people in China, championed by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, a stark contrast to the violent opposition of traditional culture during the Red Gaurd Movement. The issue of repatriation remains a highly debated topic, with one skeptical netizen commenting that after escaping the British Museum, the teapot from the viral video series returns to China to find that all her brothers and sisters were destroyed at the hands of the Red Guard.
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