Museology of an Imperfect Return: The Machu Picchu Collection at Casa Concha

The repatriation of the Machu Picchu collection from Yale to Cusco (Peru) was hailed “successful” as the first known example of the return of cultural artifacts by a country other than the former colonial power. This article argues that this view should be reassessed, both in terms of the success of the return and the relativization of the idea of colonial power. Transcultural and postcolonial epistemological models are used to frame the conceptualization of the museum as a “contact zone,” while highlighting how the curatorial discourse fails to address the critical issue of the polyphony of conflicting historical narratives, instead reproducing a hegemonic expression of Western knowledge in an intercultural space.