As the call for museums to pursue repatriation continues to make headlines, this presentation will explore how the act of return can be a catalyst for change at an institutional level. The Indianapolis Museum of Art returned 18 ancestors to their owners, the Mijikenda people, in Kenya, in October 2022 and participated in a ceremonial return in July 2023. This experience helped prompt the IMA to grapple with the long overdue reconciliation of ethics, policy, and collection practices. Learn how this example of repatriation was implemented, start to finish.
Presented by Jennifer Gallatin Rigsby, Registrar for Permanent Collections at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields
