The Colonized World Wants Its Artifacts Back. Will It Happen?

I remember traveling through multiple cities in Switzerland nearly two decades ago and marveling at the amazing collections of art that relatively small museums had on display. Until someone pointed out that many of them likely came from the private collections of Nazi soldiers who hid them there after stealing them from Jewish families during World War II, and then their ownership history was lost. This is an even bigger problem when you consider the tens of thousands of artifacts stolen from colonized nations over hundreds of years.

As this Unthinkable Idea article from Vice explores, what if all of these artifacts were finally returned to their nations of origin? It's an important question with a complicated answer. It would certainly be the moral thing, but there are many layers of bureaucracy and millions of dollars at stake in making it a reality. So it is happening slowly. And in some cases, not at all. Which is presumably what makes this an "unthinkable idea" in the first place.