“Today has been our most successful first day at Frieze LA since the first year of the fair,” Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot said in a statement emailed to ARTnews.

David Zwirner’s first-day sales included works by Joe Bradley, John McCracken, Steven Shearer, Lisa Yuskavage, Huma Bhabha, Dana Schutz and Suzan Frecon for values between $250,000 and $650,000.

Along with the mega-dealers who sold works in the early hours of the celebrity-filled fair, Casey Kaplan, Vielmetter, Roberts Projects, and Tina Kim Gallery also reported sales of works priced at $250,000 or higher.

Dominique Gallery said it placed all works in its solo presentation by Mustafa Ali Clayton, including sculptures ranging from $12,000 to $100,000. New York’s Kasmin Gallery reported ten works by vanessa german sold on opening day, each priced between $25,000 and $65,000. The artist won the Heinz Award for the Arts in 2022. pt.2 gallery from Oakland, California, said it placed all of their works by Muzae Sesay, but did not disclose sales amounts.

Below, a look at seven works that were sold during Frieze’s first couple days, according to the galleries that brought them to the fair.

(All sales are in USD unless otherwise indicated. Sales information is provided voluntarily by galleries but does not include confirmation of transactions, discounts, or other fees.)

The 19th century domed, decorated shield was Lot 903 in Anderson & Garland’s sale “The Collector’s Auction”, scheduled to take place Thursday morning at its head office in the English city of Newcastle. The metal and animal hide artifact had been inscribed with the location and date of the conflict “Magdala 13th April 1868”, (now known as Maqdala) and given a modest price estimate of £800-£1,200.

News of the sale’s cancellation was first reported by The Art Newspaper.

The shield was part of large trove of royal, religious, and military artifacts that were looted after British forces seized a compound of the Coptic Christian Emperor Tewodros II, in what was then known as Abyssinia. Sites in the northern village where Tewodros was based were looted by released British hostages and British forces, and the objects were taken back to the UK.

The withdrawal of Lot 903 took place after Abebaw Ayalew, director general of Ethiopia’s Heritage Authority, wrote to the auction house on February 23. Ayalew’s letter said that the shield had been “wrongfully acquired”, asked for the sale to be cancelled and for it to be repatriated back to the Ethiopian government.

The Telegraph also reported that a restitution committee overseen by Ethiopia’s National Heritage agency, a branch of the country’s tourism board, had labeled the sale as “inappropriate and immoral.”

The lot description for the shield on Anderson & Garland’s website did note the historical event behind the shield’s acquisition by describing how British commander General Robert Napier (later Lord Napier of Magdala) had ordered “the destruction of Tewodros’ artillery and the burning of Madgala as retribution” as well as troops “looting many local artifacts which they took back to Britain”.

However, The Art Newspaper reported that the auction house did not provide details on the shield’s provenance after 1868.

Anderson & Garland did not respond to a request for comment from ARTnews.

The new location at 19 E. 66th Street will be the third for the eponymous London-based post-war and contemporary art gallery, which was founded in 2012. It opened a second space in Rome’s Via Margutta in 2022.

The inaugural show at the New York location will be a showcase of African Canadian mixed-media artist Jan Wade in her first-ever solo show in the United States. It will precede the retrospective exhibition Soul Power at the Art Gallery of Hamilton opening on June 27.

In a press statement, Saltoun called it an “honor and privilege” to open a space in “a city renowned for hosting some of the most important exhibitions of the past 100 years.”

ARTnews spoke with director Aloisia Leopardi about the new space, what she’s most excited about, and why the gallery felt now was the right time to come to New York.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

ARTnews: What was the planning process for this new location? How did Covid-19 affect that?

Aloisia Leopiardi: The conversations had been going on for a long time. There’s moments in which things like Covid-19 slow [business] down. But this slowing down actually creates new opportunities. And that’s when we thought of opening a gallery in New York.

Actually, it happened quite fast. Richard and I were in New York for the Independent [Art Fair] last May. We both hadn’t been in a long time. And we were both like, “Wow, New York always has that feeling.”

I think it’s something that as Europeans, living in London or spending lots of time in Italy, when you go to New York, everything is so vibrant. Everything moves at twice the speed. It’s really fascinating. So we immediately started thinking we need to open a gallery in New York. At first, it was more of a dream initially. And then we’ve been contacted about this opportunity.

We’re opening the gallery in this ex-gallery space that freed up recently. We made an offer on the space just at the end of the year, and the offer got accepted, weirdly enough.

Lots of galleries closed during Covid-19. I think it helped us in this case because we were able to make an offer, enter, get the space.

We’ve had the space from January until now. It’s been renovated a bit. We’re very excited. The process has been kind of simple in a way. It’s been very smooth.

We’re really excited to be opening in May, with Jan Wade, who is our Canadian artist. It’s going to be the first solo show she’s ever had in in America.

After 10 years in London and then opening in Rome, what do you feel like you learned the most from those experiences that you will bring to the New York space?

First of all, our program is quite unique. We focus a lot on women artists. Now, it’s something that has become more and more common, but if you think about 10 years ago, no one was really showing women artists.

The first reason why we also chose to open in Rome is because in the ’60s and ’70s, there were fantastic artists working in Italy, which is similar, to New York to the US, if you think about it, it’s like two different periods, two different groups forming in the cities at different times.

Women were not represented at the time. Working with estates, you manage to find huge bodies of works that you can work with. So Rome, in that sense, was a very special place for us because we really rediscovered lots of artists we would have never discovered if we hadn’t opened a gallery in Rome. like Romany Eveleigh, who is going to be in the Venice Biennale this year. She was completely unknown until we started working with her.

We hope to do the same: bring our artists to New York, bring our program that is heavily focused on historical women artists, but also discover new artists at the same time. It gives us the possibility of spending more time there doing studio visits and estates visits.

In terms of difficulties, yes, of course, there are thousands of difficulties, especially the beginning: finding your way around, building a new team from scratch. Each one of us will have to work way harder, that’s for sure. Especially at the beginning, traveling back and forth between the three spaces, thinking of a program that would fit. Also every program is different. So it has to be catered to the audience it’s being presented to.

But New York, in that sense, also has amazing curators. We collaborate a lot with curators. Often we invite curators to either work with a gallery artist or present group exhibitions. So the location will also facilitate a lot of the dialogue with a more US-based crowd which could include curators and artists.

We already represent a few artists that are based in the US so that will give us the opportunity of really working with their works in more depth and be able to do more exhibitions.

For now, we were just coming to New York for art fairs. It will be nice to have a real presence for collectors also to see that we’re investing in New York and we’ll be able to see them more often. They’ll be able to have a sense of what our program looks like by attending our exhibitions. I think that will make a huge difference in terms of our credibility as well with building stronger relationships with artists, curators, and collectors.

What were some of the other positive indicators or business considerations that encouraged you to open a location in New York?

We have a program that is quite unique. We have a big US base of collectors. In a way, you know, it’s always a risk. We don’t really know how it will go, but we feel quite positive. I think New York is still really important for galleries to be there when they have an opportunity.

We are sharing the space with Franklin Parrasch. That will help us. We will do three exhibitions a year.

It’s a bit of a smaller program in New York at the beginning, which will help us get the whole programming going, the staff, etc. It will also give us time to go there and and focus on meetings, build, rebuild … we enhance our connections with the institutions, with collectors, with artists and then possibly expand the program even more. I think New York would be also positive if we sign on a new artist. I think like that already would be a great opportunity in a way because, from an artist’s point of view, or collector’s point of view, you feel you can trust a gallery with three spaces. Having three spaces allows us the possibility of showing more artists, bringing on new people, allows us to do more art fairs, just be more involved in general.

It’s a bit like the bigger galleries that actually we’re surrounded by—Hauser or Zwirner—they have spaces all around the world and it works for them. We’re a much smaller gallery, but I think it makes sense. The more you expand, the wider your network becomes, and the easier it is to sell, take on new artists, and have stronger relationships with curators.

It’s always difficult because we’ve never worked in the US before, apart from fairs. You never know, it might be a tragedy, but hopefully, hopefully it’s not going to be.

I feel like what’s good is that our program is so unique. Even speaking about recessions and sales going down, we have people coming up to us because we’re the only one really representing these sorts of artists. That helps us in a way. We never really had issues selling or our sales going down too much.

How did you decide on Jan Wade as the inaugural show?

The main reason why we chose Jan’s work is, first of all, because it coincides with her retrospective at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario. And secondly, because there’s lots of references, Jan Wade references a lot of her Southern American roots and the historic slave trade.

We thought there was a very strong, contemporary political relevance with what’s happening in the US today. Her paternal grandparents were from Virginia, Southern America. And because her work has never really been presented in the US before, just in Canada. The show now that’s opening at at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. And then she had a show before that was at the Vancouver art gallery in 2021 and 2022.

We thought it was a good moment to present her work, which we find is very strong. We’ve never shown her work before in a solo exhibition. We thought it would be interesting to bring it to a wider audience and for her to finally get the visibility that she deserves. She was born in 1952 and never really had much visibility until recently with these two major respectives in Canada, but that’s it. And so we thought it was the right time to bring her to New York and see how the public reacts because there’s all these resonances with the US.

How did you choose the location on the Upper East Side?

Everyone’s now opening in Tribeca, so it’s a bit of a strange location to open in. But actually, I’m so excited about it, because MoMA is like a 20-minute walk. It means that between one meeting and the other, I can literally pop into all my favorite museums that I never have the chance to visit during art fairs because I’m stuck at the booth. I think that will make a huge difference. Just to spend time in the book shops, you can discover new catalogs and publications. I think that will be really exciting.

I think the only difficulty for us working as a team will be the time difference. That will need a bit of adjusting.

I think the most exciting thing is that New York is always generating incredible exhibitions and no w we will finally have the opportunity of seeing, exploring, and discussing. I think that also adds to the beauty of New York in a way because there’s this aspect to it which is in constant evolution, which is so beautiful.

“Our excavations at Smallhythe revealed previously undiscovered Roman activity, dating from the first – third centuries [CE], where we found tiles stamped with the mark of the Roman fleet (the Classis Britannica), ceramics including an intact pot, and evidence for buildings, boundary features and pits – which provide tantalizing clues to the nature of this riverside community,” National Trust archaeologist Nathalie Cohen said in a press statement.

“But to come across a head of a figurine of Mercury, in pipeclay, is incredibly rare. Just 5cm tall, the head is clearly visible as Mercury, with his winged headdress. We sadly did not find the remaining part of the figurine.”

The two-inch (5cm) head is made of pipeclay and was found as part of an excavation of a “previously unrecorded Roman settlement” at Smallhythe Place, a research and archaeological site in the English county of Kent.

The discovery’s rarity owes to the fact that most figurines made of that material found in Britain are of goddesses, with most of them portraying Venus. The material was produced primarily in central Gaul (modern-day France) and was imported. The National Trust noted that while Mercury is the most common god for metal figurines, fewer than 10 examples made of pipeclay from Roman Britain have so far surfaced.

“Pipeclay figurines were mainly used by civilians for private religious practice in domestic shrines, and occasionally in temples and the graves of often sick children,” Roman pipeclay figurines expert Dr. Matthew Fittock said in a statement. “Finds like this at Smallhythe provide an extremely valuable insight into the religious beliefs and practices of the culturally mixed populations of the Roman provinces.”

The first case study in the agency’s January 2024, 15-page alert highlighted “an investigation into a sanctioned Hezbollah financier identified approximately a million pounds sterling in fine artwork belonging to this individual in art storage facilities in the UK.”

While the financier is unnamed, an investigative report earlier this month from The National identified the person as Nazem Said Ahmad, a Beirut-based art collector who has been indicted in the US and the UK.

The National also reported that police in the UK recently seized works belonging to Ahmad from an art storage warehouse near Heathrow Airport and the Phillips London auction house. UK police seized a total of nine works from Phillips and 23 from the Williams & Hill art storage warehouse.

The estimated total value of the seized works was approximately $1.26 million (£995,764). According to The National, the works included Picasso’s 1962 linocut Nature morte a la pasteque (Still Life with a Watermelon) and three works by Andy Warhol, including Details of Renaissance Paintings (Leonardo da Vinci, The Annunciation, 1472), 1984.

The most valuable works seized by UK police from a warehouse location of art storage company Williams & Hill were a Stanley Whitney painting, Sing All Day, with an estimated worth of £225,000 ($315,000), and Divine Wind, a painting by Iranian artist Ali Banisadr valued at £175,000 ($222,000). The latter sold at a Christie’s auction in 2012 for $92,500.

Last March, Ahmad was charged in the US with violating and evading US sanctions on $440 million worth of imports and exports in art and diamonds. He was also sanctioned in the UK this past April under the government’s counterterrorism regulations. The press release noted Ahmad’s “extensive art collection in the UK” and that he had conducted business with multiple UK-based artists, art galleries, and auction houses.

Ahmad has also been sanctioned by the US government since 2019 for his alleged role as a major financial donor to Hezbollah. Despite these sanctions, Architectural Digest Middle East featured Ahmad’s penthouse in Beirut in 2022, with a focus on his paintings and sculptures (the article has been since removed from the magazine’s website). According to the article, Ahmad’s art collection also includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ai Weiwei, Thomas Heatherwick, and Marc Quinn. 

Phillips’s statement to The National said the auction house was fully cooperating with authorities in the US and the UK, including having provided the US Department of Justice in February 2020 with a full list of properties it held that belonged to Ahmad. “On becoming aware of the allegations and the action taken by the US authorities, Phillips immediately ensured that Mr Ahmad was banned from transacting with us and froze all artworks belonging to Mr Ahmad in our possession globally at that time.”

The auction house did not respond to a request for comment from ARTnews.

The NCA alert on the risks of sanctions evasion and money laundering is intended for a wide range of art industry businesses and service providers, including purpose-built warehouses, auction houses, art dealerships, galleries, museums, freeports, shipping and transport companies, insurance companies as well as agents, brokers, lawyers, accountants, and banking providers.

Bob Cozzolino was fired from his position at MIA as Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings on January 9. Cozzolino, who had a garnered praise for spotlighting underrepresented artists, told local media that his dismissal was part of a larger trend of changes made by Luber.

“There were some things that I experienced that lots of other people at Mia experienced, including being marginalized for speaking up for equity issues,” Cozzolino told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “People who were doing equity work were considered activists or radical, instead of how the culture of the field should be.”

In response to Cozzolino’s firing, more than 450 members of the city’s art community signed an open letter of support. The signers included acclaimed filmmaker David Lynch and Minnesota artist Dyani White Hawk, one of the recipients of the McArthur “genius” grant last year.

“I am extremely disappointed to learn of the way his contributions to the museum and our community were dismissed,” White Hawk told MPR News, which first reported the news.

An Instagram account claiming to represent current and former MIA employees, @reimagine_mia, also started posting on February 21.

“It’s performative DEAI theater, but behind the scenes Mia is making it a toxic environment for people of color,” OPEIU representative Cesar Montufar told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Luber told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune it was “unfortunate” and “so not true” that Cozzolino’s dismissal had been tied to allegations about DEI work stopping at the museum in 2020 or not happening, pointing to the hiring of Virajita Singh in 2022 as its first chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Luber also denied accusations the museum was a toxic work environment and said it was a normal for an organization with so many hourly employees to have regular turnover each year.

Another person who recently left the museum was Anniessa Antar, “an activation specialist” from 2019 to 2021. Antar was also a coordinator for the institution for MASS Action, a national initiative aimed at helping increase equity and inclusivity at museums.

“As a person of color in the space doing equity work, working to really break down silos and trying to involve as many people as possible, the work was met with constant blockades,” Antar told MPR News.

On February 21, the museum published a three-page statement online about its DEI and accessibility efforts. It included statistics about its staff of more than 250 people, including 27.9% identifying as people of color; expanding its collection in the areas of Art & Disabilities, Native American Art, Indigenous Futurism, African American Art, Japanese Art and Latin American Art; as well as “hiring a curator of Latin American art and securing endowed funding to support this position over the long-term”.

In an email, MIA spokesperson Molly Lax told ARTnews that Cozzolino’s employment was terminated for cause and that his firing was “not because of his commitment to DEI issues but despite his commitment to these issues”. Lax also noted that Cozzolino was given an opportunity to address concerns and provided a “detailed letter” outlining the reasons for his termination, which was also given to the union.

The union has filed a grievance in response to the termination of Cozzolino’s employment.

“That OPEIU now seems also to think they need a public campaign against the museum suggests that they do not believe they will be successful in the grievance process,” Lax wrote.

After emphasizing the statistic about the diversity of MIA’s staff, Lax added, “Moreover, the average tenure of our employees is 9.2 years, suggesting people like working here.”

Lax also told ARTnews “there are no other pending grievances from either union alleging someone else was wrongfully terminated, for any reason, let alone their race—and, regardless of any potential union grievance, it would be illegal to target employees because of their identity.”

Update, February 26, 2024: This article was updated after publication to include a statement from Minneapolis Institute of Art spokesperson Molly Lax.

Soon, sections of the mural will be uncovered and made visible to the public for the first time in decades. They will be shown at the museum this year as part of a special exhibition there.

Museum visitors will be able to see restorer Albrecht Körber remove the white paint covering Richter’s mural starting March 9. “The public might interpret the ongoing restoration work as a metaphor for the process of uncovering layers of history and giving new perspectives on a chapter of East German history,” the museum told the Art Newspaper.

Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter was only 24 years old when he created the Lebensfreude (Joy of Life) mural for his thesis at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. The work shows groups of cheerful and festive figures engaged in everyday and leisure activities, such as dancing, going to a beach, or sitting in a park.

The German Hygiene Museum initially asked Richter if it could expose and display the painting in 1994, but the artist said no, with the reasoning that “the mural is not one of the artworks most worth keeping in the world.”

When the museum asked again in 2022, Richter said yes.

It’s worth noting that Richter has carefully controlled which paintings count as those authored by him. In his online catalogue, the first work is Tisch (Table), from 1961, a full five years after this mural was made. Richter also destroyed most of his earlier works in 1960 in a fire at the Düsseldorf Art Academy after he fled East Germany. This was part of the reason why East German heritage authorities decided to paint over the mural in 1979, according to the Art Newspaper.

The mural’s restoration and public display is a joint project between the German Hygiene Museum and the Wüstenrot Foundation in cooperation with the Dresden University of Fine Arts, which is advising the project. The project’s educational measures are supported through a grant from the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation. 

The repairs to the roofs above galleries devoted to Greek, Cypriot, and Japanese artworks are being done in response to an “endless series of leaks” at the popular institution, with buckets used to catch drips and extra heaters being used to reduce humidity levels.

Last November, museum board chair George Osborne admitted in a speech that for decades, the building “has been patched up in a piecemeal way and by closing galleries when the rain comes in.”

Osborne has an ambitious plan to upgrade the British Museum’s entire building, starting with galleries on the ground floor, including the large room where the Parthenon Marbles are on display. However, progress for the plan has slowed due to the scandal last year over the 2,000 lost, stolen, and damaged items from the museum’s collection, which resulted in the resignation of director Hartwig Fischer.

While Mark Jones serves as interim director, there is currently a search for a new, permanent director who would also be tasked with leading the project.

Last year, the museum wrote in a planning application that urgent work was required to mitigate water leaks which threatened the physical institution’s integrity, putting its collection “at risk of significant damage.” Additionally, the museum said it wanted to address “public safety” concerns.

Humidity levels are another concern. According to the Art Newspaper, in December 2022, Assyrian reliefs at the museum were “threatened by serious condensation” after “unusual meteorological conditions led to moisture forming on the surface of the ninth-century BC sculptures.” In order to prevent any permanent damage, emergency measures were used to dry the sculptures out.

Moisture is also a concern for the British Museum’s central archive after historic records were moved in 2017.

A museum spokesperson pointed to the fact that the museum was founded 270 years ago, saying in a statement to the Art Newspaper, “We have been open about the fact it is in need of full-scale renovation.” The museum’s master plan, the spokesperson said, represents “one of the most significant cultural redevelopment projects undertaken anywhere in the world.”

Over the past several weeks, museums across the United States have been covering up and removing displays of Native American ancestors and cultural objects.

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York closed two halls and covered seven other display cases that featured “severely outdated ” exhibits of Native American cultural items in late January. More than half a dozen other major museums recently removed or covered up Native American items on display, including the Denver Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

These actions are the most visible responses to major revisions to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which went into effect in mid-January . The new regulations are designed to address loopholes, speed up returns, give institutions five years to inventory and prepare all ancestors and related funerary objects for repatriation, as well as grant more authority to tribes throughout the process.

Despite NAGPRA’s 1990 passage, institutions like the AMNH have continued to use considerable resources—including anthropology departments, storage facilities, government funding, and tax-deductible contributions—to collect, preserve, research, display, and expand collections of these items.

“There are hundreds of thousands of objects, thousands of collections, and thousands of private collectors,” Erin Thompson, a professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, recently told ARTnews regarding her research on the repatriation of such items, including at the AMNH. “It’s taken hundreds of years to form these collections. It’s not going to be quickly resolved.”

(On the advice of Indigenous experts, ARTnews has avoided referring to cultural objects, burial belongings, and Native bodies held by museums and other institutions that come from federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Native entities as “artifacts,” “antiquities,” and/or “human remains,” despite the latter being commonly used.)

When President George H.W. Bush signed NAGPRA into law, he said it promised “the protection and return of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.” But federal data shows that, more than three decades later, institutions continue to possess about half the 200,000 Native bodies they had initially reported to the Interior Department after the passing of NAGPRA.

In January 2023, ProPublica published a substantial investigation into which institutions held the most items under NAGPRA jurisdiction and the different methods they used to repeatedly thwart the repatriation process, including labeling such items “culturally unidentifiable.”

The new revisions now require museums by federal law to inventory their collections of Native ancestors and sacred objects within the next five years; get “free, prior, and informed” consent from lineal descendants, Indian tribes, or Native Hawaiian organizations before conducting research, accessing or exhibiting those items; as well as follow clear timelines for the repatriation of ancestors and burial belongings.

“Institutions don’t have ownership rights to Native bodies and cultural heritage unless they can prove right of possession,” Shannon O’Loughlin (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), attorney and chief executive of the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA), told ARTnews. “It forces the institution to bring tribes to the table.”

This includes eliminating the “culturally unidentifiable” label through the simple use of geography and tribal consultation to determine an item or ancestor’s cultural affiliation.

While the American Alliance of Museums expressed concerns about how the new regulations will be a burden on staff and resources, the AAIA found that institutions gained knowledge about their collections after consulting tribes in accordance with NAGPRA. “Now, they’re better able to provide public education that’s appropriate and factual, and it’s done in collaboration with those Native nations,” O’Loughlin said.

There have also been institutions that have complied with NAGPRA without additional staff or resources. O’Loughlin pointed to the AMNH and its president, Sean Decatur, as a “really good and present example” after three decades of noncompliance. “I was grateful to see that they had such a thoughtful response to the covering and closing of their Native exhibits. And he talked about how important it was to comply with the law,” O’Loughlin said, referencing Decatur’s January letter to museum staff.

To help with the costs of consultation, inventory development, and repatriation of physical items, the National Park Service awarded $3.4 million in grants last year to museums and Indian Tribes, including nearly $100,000 to the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

Museums that fail to comply with the new revisions can incur a base penaltyexceeding $8,000, with additional penalties compounding per day of noncompliance.

It’s also worth remembering the unpaid emotional and cultural labor involved on the other side of NAGPRA for Tribal officials and Native communities seeking the repatriation of ancestral bodies and cultural objects, some of which were treated with toxic pesticides and preservatives by institutions.

“There’s people doing work in our communities, for things that we’ve never, ever had to do,” artist Nicholas Galanin (Tlingít/Unangax̂) told ARTnews. “How do we rebury an ancestral remain, and bring it home?”

Galanin previously tackled the subject in his 2019 photo and video series Fair Warning: A Sacred Place, which depicts empty display cases from the Northwest Coast Hall at AMNH alongside audio recordings of auctioneers collecting final bids for Indigenous objects. If museums do repatriate a significant number of items formerly on public display, the pieces could offer a vision for what those cases would look like devoid of the things they previously held.

After decades of investing in collecting, maintaining, and preserving collections of Native ancestors and sacred objects, the legacy of the new regulations may reveal which museums and institutions genuinely want to develop long-term relationships with Indigenous communities.

“Will the museum still be invested in the community when the objects are gone?” Galanin said. “I’m curious about that.”

This column is part of our ongoing series, The New Era of Restitution and Repatriation. Follow along for more stories throughout this week.

Only a few days after the institution opened an exhibit of 10 recovered gems, a Chilean social media influencer’s campaign brought additional attention on moai statues from Easter Island and called for their return.

Mike Milfort encouraged his 1 million followers to aggressively respond to or “spam” the British Museum’s posts on Instagram with “return the moai” comments. As a result, the institution turned off comments on that post.

Easter Island was what the first European visitors called the island of Rapa Nui, located 2,300 miles off the coast of Chile. According to BBC News, the island’s large basalt statues statues are believed to represent the spirits of prominent ancestors, and date back to 1400 CE and 1650 CE.

The nearly-eight-foot-tall carved basalt statue in the British Museum, identified as Hoa Hakananaiʻa or “Lost, hidden or stolen friend,” is one of two moai Commodore Richard Powell gifted to Queen Victoria in 1868. The second moai, gifted by the captain of HMS Topaze, is known as Hava.

The Queen donated the two statues to the British Museum in 1869.

Freya Samuel, a museum decolonization and digital engagement consultant, told the Art Newspaper the institution’s decision to turn off comments “effectively censored” people’s voices. “Social media is a powerful vehicle for ordinary people to show that they really do care about repatriation.”

The British Museum’s social media activity has prompted previous backlashes, such as a post made on Twitter in solidarity with the George Floyd protests, which caused many commenters to call on the institution to account for the stolen items in its own collection.

Of the choice to turn off comments on this new new post, a social spokesperson for the museum told the Art Newspaper: “Comments were only deactivated on one social media post. We welcome debate, but this has to be balanced against the need for safeguarding considerations, especially where young people are concerned.”

The spokesperson also cited the British Museum Act 1963, which prevents the institution from removing objects from the collection.