Exploration of the Practice of Restitution Lost Cultural Relics in Museums

On a global scale, a large number of cultural relics are scattered in foreign countries due to war looting, illegal smuggling, and other means. Public collection institutions and private collectors in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan are the main destinations for lost cultural relics. The issue of recovering lost cultural relics has sparked heated discussions worldwide for several years. Not only has it attracted widespread attention from governments around the world in terms of law, politics, morality, and economy, but it has also become a topic of common concern for all sectors of society. However, due to complex factors such as the universal adherence to the principle of non-retroactivity in international conventions, the recovery of lost cultural relics is extremely difficult. In August 2022, the Horniman Museum in the UK made an important decision to restitute 72 Benin era cultural relics stored in the museum to Nigeria. This move not only means a substantive response to the demand for the restitution of lost cultural relics due to armed conflict plundering in the colonial context, but also marks a historic breakthrough for British museums in the process of decolonization. This case has high reference value for discussing how museums can restitute lost cultural relics.