A Paris Museum Has 18,000 Skulls. It’s Reluctant to Say Whose.

Critics say the Museum of Mankind withholds information about its vast collection of human remains that could help former colonies and descendants of conquered peoples get them back.

image from article, with caption: A skull on display in the museum. Eighteen-thousand more skulls are kept in cardboard boxes in the basement. Credit... Godong/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images

 

By Constant Méheut, The New York Times, Nov. 28, 2022, Updated 1:50 p.m. ET 

Excerpt: 

PARIS — With its monumental Art Deco facade overlooking the Eiffel Tower, the Musée de l’Homme, or Museum of Mankind, is a Paris landmark. Every year, hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to this anthropology museum to experience its prehistoric skeletons and ancient statuettes.

But beneath the galleries, hidden in the basement, lies a more contentious collection: 18,000 skulls that include the remains of African tribal chiefs, Cambodian rebels and Indigenous people from Oceania. Many were gathered in France’s former colonies, and the collection also includes the skulls of more than 200 Native Americans, including from the Sioux and Navajo tribes.

The remains, kept in cardboard boxes stored in metal racks, form one the world’s largest human skull collections, spanning centuries and covering every corner of the earth.

But they are also stark reminders of a sensitive past and, as such, have been shrouded in secrecy. Information on the skulls’ identities and the context of their collection, which could open the door to restitution claims, has never been made public, but is outlined in museum documents obtained by The New York Times. ...

In the United States, a 1990 federal law has facilitated the return of Native American remains, although restitutions have moved at a slow pace. A number of prominent universities and museums, including University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Smithsonian Institution have discussed, and in some cases, developed policies for how to deal with the remains of enslaved people that are held in their collections. ...

Like other institutions, the Museum of Mankind has faced growing repatriation requests — from countries including Madagascar and Argentina, and from Indigenous people in Hawaii. But unlike many counterparts in Europe and the United States, the museum has not invested significantly in provenance research for its human remains collection, nor published guidelines for their handling and return. ... 

A representative for France’s culture ministry said officials were working on a sweeping law to regulate future returns of human remains. ... 

Another image from article, with caption: Hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to the Museum of Mankind in Paris every year to experience its collection, with prehistoric skeletons and ancient statuettes. Credit...JC Domenech, via National Museum of Natural History, France