Unlike most museums, this one hopes that its collection, instead of growing, will shrink.
This is already happening, somewhat. Even before Unesco (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) launched its Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects, three items had disappeared from its “shelves”. (They were returned a few months before the website was launched.)
Six months on, the site (museum.unesco.org) has welcomed more than 160,000 visitors, and logged more than 1.4 million page views, per Unesco data.
The virtual space aims to raise awareness about the impact of the illicit trafficking of cultural property, and encourage restitution and good practices, says Sunna Altnoder, head of Unesco’s illicit trafficking and return and restitution unit.
In keeping with this aim, the dramatically designed virtual space (more on that in a bit) was launched in September, in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s ministry of culture, and the International Criminal Police Organization or Interpol.
Placed on record here are over 250 artefacts: art works, ceremonial and religious objects, musical instruments, natural specimens, ancient inscriptions and archaeological finds (including a 35-million-year-old trilobite from Morocco).
There are plans to expand the collection; the Interpol database lists over 57,000 such thefts.
These are objects that have been looted from historic sites, museums, religious institutions or private collections and then illegally exported across borders; or misplaced or extracted during conflicts.
Some have been taken during illicit archaeological and paleontological excavations; even sunken monuments and shipwrecks are targeted, to feed the demand for historic collectibles. (Sadly, since the Interpol database only reflects cases filed with Interpol, it does not include most colonial-era losses, extractions and tussles, which continue to be negotiated diplomatically between governments rather than listed as thefts.).
MISSING TREASURE
How big is the problem of stolen cultural artefacts?
In 2024 alone, more than 37,000 such items — busts of deities, coins, jewellery, ancient animal remains, paintings and so on — were seized around the world. This wasn’t even especially high. In 2020, that number stood at 854,742.
Such thefts tend to be extremely lucrative, so operations are generally well-funded. Enforcement is difficult, given the complicated routes such artefacts take once they are stolen. Sometimes, it can be years before a theft is even discovered. In cases where an item is recovered, arrests and convictions can be hard to secure, and can take several years. So, to the criminals involved, these represent low-risk, high-reward operations.
Meanwhile, unlike, say, wildlife trafficking, there is little public outrage. The theft of heritage artefacts trends to be viewed as a sort of victimless crime. But, of course, it isn’t.
Each piece on the Interpol list represents an object missed, a case filed and, often, a community in mourning. In notes written by the home country of each artefact now in the virtual museum, the sense of loss emerges keenly.
The missing pieces of their altar are like “missing pages of a story”, representatives of Estonia’s Kaarma Church on Saaremaa Island write, of the 16th-century wooden sculptures stolen from their place of worship. The figurines taken include representations of Mary, an angel, John the Baptist, the resurrected and the devil, and formed part of an altarpiece titled The Last Judgement. “It is almost impossible to assign a material value to these sculptures,” a representative of the Saaremaa Museum said, speaking to the press soon after the theft, in 1999.
Burkina Faso, meanwhile, has submitted images of an 8th-century granite statuette of Taga-Bi, a protective deity designed as the twin sister of another statuette, Oure-Bi, with both used in rituals of the indigenous Kurumba community.
“It is passed down from generation to generation and represents an important element in the regulation of social life… Its presence within the community could guarantee a climate of stability and security for the village and its surroundings,” the object note submitted by the West African country states.
India has submitted three religious statuettes, of the deities Bhairava, Nataraja and Brahma, all originating in parts of modern-day Chhattisgarh, between the 6th and 9th centuries CE.
The Bhairava, a particularly rare depiction in stone, shows this unusually fierce avatar of Shiva dancing on a corpse, wielding a drum and a dagger. The Nataraja shows the Hindu deity wielding a trident, accompanied by his bull mount Nandi, his hair in a jatamukuta or crown of matted hair.
Among the Sudanese artefacts is a statue of Queen Nawidemak, a 1st century CE gold sculpture from Ancient Nubia that likely served a ceremonial or symbolic function. “It is particularly important as it represents a female monarch, something that was common in Nubian society but rare elsewhere in the ancient world,” the object note states.
“Such thefts are always more than a material loss,” says Altnoder. They can sever links between communities and their ancient past. “Sometimes a statuette is, in fact, an ancestor; sometimes rituals cannot take place anymore; and in all cases a theft deprives the community of their rights to use and enjoy their cultural property.”
A WORLD-WIDE WEB
Now to the digital form of the museum itself. The “structure” unfolds along a spiral path, fanning out like a baobab tree, symbolically connecting cultures and continents.
“The baobab is a symbol of resilience and a central figure in the lives of many African communities,” says architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, originally from Burkina Faso and now practising in Germany. “The roots represent the foundations of our identity. The branches reflect the various forms and expressions of culture across continents, all connected to the same trunk and growing from shared origins.”
Inside are three “halls”: the gallery of objects; an auditorium (where one may learn about the museum and its mission); and the Room of Return and Restitution.
In the first gallery, each item sits on a virtual pillar and can be viewed from different angles. Visitors can search for artefacts using filters such as region, material, type (ancient inscriptions, archaeological finds, etc) and usage (wear it, use it every day, bury it, combat, and so on).
There are three objects in the Room of Return and Restitution, all from Morocco: a shark’s tooth and two trilobite fossils, dating to between 146 million and 34 million years ago, intercepted by Customs authorities in Chile and returned in 2024.
Meanwhile, though the hope is that the museum will shrink, it is more likely to expand, as new thefts and more artefacts from the existing Interpol database are added over time.
New halls will be added within the museum too. These will offer primers on what is illegal to buy, trade in and take across international borders, in various countries. The hope is that such information will help the general public, as well as art market professionals, do due diligence to ensure, Altnoder says, that the objects they engage with have not been illicitly trafficked and taken against the wishes of the communities and people they belong to.
