ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines contemporary approaches to the subject from the viewpoint of museums and professionals, focusing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject. The earliest museums of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed out of scholarly and aristocratic collections of the Renaissance. It divides into three parts. First, it includes chapters from Besterman and Bienkowski, who provide analyses of the shifting role of museums in relation to the restitution of cultural property. Second, it focuses on restitution in museums in specific parts of the world - Norway, New Zealand, Scotland and the USA - with chapters contributed by museum professionals. Third, it explores examples of the repatriation of objects from museum collections - the return of Ojibwe objects to the 'wrong' community in 1999, the restitution of a group of skulls to the island of Urk in 2010.
