Yet another gray area, Tim. There is certainly less freedom of choice on the colonial end, but there is still room for agency. If a local gave the mask as a gift to an outgoing English bureaucrat, that is a lot different than someone busting into a local museum and taking it. Or, to put it into a context much closer to home, a Native American artifact could have been stolen from a site, taken as a prize in war, traded for in peace, or found on the roadside. The closer you get to looted, as in the case of all of the forced art sales that the Nazis did, the less legitimate title is (even that required a new law to give the families of the victims a remedy).
Last edited by Exhibitman; 10-26-2023 at 02:22 PM.
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