Abstract This book examines why some states agree to return looted art displayed in their national museums and why some states continue to resist. The ever-growing international demands for restitution of art looted during imperial expansions and colonial occupations demonstrate that the value of art objects for states has changed. While objects collected and displayed in grand European museums, such as the British Museum or the Louvre, used to represent objects of cultural status for which European powers competed, they have over time come to represent objects of stigma. The same objects that granted states high international status now threaten to provoke status decline, as they implicate the states that possess them in historical crimes and serve as material reminders of past violence. It is art restitution, not collection, that has now become an expression of high international status. Based on extensive fieldwork in fourteen countries, the book presents in-depth case studies of restitution claims in two high-profile cases—the Parthenon (“Elgin”) Marbles and the Benin Bronzes, as well as the never before published case of Nazi-looted art in the National Museum of Serbia. Through multisite archival research, the book painstakingly reconstructs how the paintings by Tintoretto, Robert, Corot, among many others, were looted by the Nazis throughout Western Europe, but ended up in the Belgrade museum, which refuses to give them back. The book demonstrates that art restitution is a question of international politics and should be understood in the context of status-seeking and quest for global prestige.
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