The restitution debate: Part III– Restitution and Jamaica

The British Museum holds three Taíno wood sculptures of Cemis (deities) from Jamaica, which are among the best-known examples of Taíno art. They were found in 1792 by a surveyor in a cave in Carpenter’s Mountain in what was then the Parish of Vere, now southern Manchester, and appear to have been removed from the island shortly after. They were, in 1799, shown and reviewed at the Society of Antiquaries in London and in the early twentieth century entered the British Museum as an acquisition from a major private collection of ethnographic art, the so-called Oldman Collection. None of the Carpenter’s Mountain carvings are on view at the present time, although they have been exhibited from time to time, at the British Museum and elsewhere, and they have also been studied and written about.

Minister of Culture Oliva Grange, in 2019 announced in Parliament that Jamaica would, through its National Council on Reparations, seek the restitution of these objects. The announcement received significant attention in the international media, but the British Museum disputed that the carvings were illegally collected by them or that they had been languishing in storage, and furthermore stated that they had not received any restitution request from the Jamaican Government. A symposium was organized by UNESCO and the Ministry just before the pandemic lockdown started and one of the issues arising is that there were several international treaties regarding the prevention of the illicit trade in cultural goods that Jamaica needed to sign to have UNESCO’s support for its restitution claim. Perhaps progress has been made since then, but Jamaica’s restitution plans appear to have dropped from the news cycle. It would be good to know where things are at.

None of the Carpenter’s Mountain carvings have ever been exhibited in Jamaica or, for that matter, elsewhere in the Caribbean. Plaster casts were sent to the Institute of Jamaica in 1939 and there has been some speculation, as reported by Joanna Ostapkowiczin in a 2015 Jamaica Journal article, that this may have been in response to an early restitution request, although there are no records to confirm this. These plaster casts were part of the permanent exhibits at the Taíno Museum (formerly known as the Arawak Museum), that opened in 1965 at White Marl, a major Taíno settlement and midden site in St Catherine. That museum has been closed for many years now (with some plans for it to be relocated to Twin Sisters Cave in Hellshire) and the casts now are at the National Museum Jamaica. This situation, too, requires urgent attention, as Jamaica could and should have a Taíno Museum of some substance.

The National Gallery of Jamaica had requested the loan of the original Carpenter’s Mountain carvings on two occasions. The first was when David Boxer was preparing his inaugural exhibition for the recently established National Gallery of Jamaica, which was to be a first major survey of Jamaican art history. According to what he repeatedly told me, the loan was declined or not even responded to, and he, therefore, decided to survey the art from the start of the colonial period onward. The resulting exhibition was Five Centuries of Art in Jamaica (1975) and was a seminal effort in how Jamaica’s art history was articulated. The second attempt was for the Arawak Vibrations exhibition in 1994, which was presented on Jamaica’s quincentennial, but the NGJ was, ironically and perhaps strategically, unable to meet the British Museum’s stringent loan requirements, in terms of the insurance values and the technical specifications for handling, display and climate control.

There is also a Taíno woodcarving in the Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection at the Metropolitan Museum, which has been variously attributed to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. The latter is now generally accepted on stylistic grounds, as there are Taíno carvings in Dominican collections that have a very similar aesthetic. This sculpture is in fact on permanent view and was recently featured in the Arte del Mar exhibition, which explored the artistic and cultural exchanges along the Caribbean rim during the precolonial period. The carving was acquired in Ireland by one Edna Dakeyne, of London, England, who sold it to Nelson Rockefeller in 1954. That this carving surfaced in the Anglophone world may lend credence to claims that it may in fact have come from Jamaica. Only dendrological tests could confirm its exact provenance and I am not aware whether these have been done. Until conclusive proof is provided, the question of rightful cultural ownership thus, again, arises.

Jamaica may be well-placed to demand the restitution of the Carpenter Mountain carvings but it may be an arduous process, given the British Museum’s intransigent response to restitution requests. The question also arises whether Jamaica is prepared, at this time, to receive and permanently exhibit the carvings. The broader point is, of course, that it is high time for Caribbean museums and relevant authorities to do an inventory of relevant holdings in overseas museums, to consult with local and international stakeholders, and to articulate clear policies and strategies on these matters, nationally and on a shared regional level — this is perhaps something for the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC) to investigate. This also means, however, that there must be a greater effort in the region to meet international museum standards, in terms of facilities, programmes and governance, and not only to be able to negotiate restitutions but also for the benefit of the requesting institutions, their general collections and programmes, and the important public mandates they serve.

More attention also needs to be paid, finally, to mitigating the undocumented trade in Taíno artifacts and other Caribbean antiquities, which continues in and beyond the region and which is alive and well in Jamaica. This not only deprives local museums of potentially major collections, but also precludes the scientific study of excavations and the development of archaeological knowledge, as many things are removed from the find site by untrained and unauthorized “finders.” And finally, Caribbean states that have not yet done so, should make sure to sign and adhere to the applicable international treaties and conventions, to help protect their own cultural assets and those of others.

Dr Veerle Poupeye is an art historian specialized in art from the Caribbean. She lectures at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and works as an independent curator, writer, researcher, and cultural consultant. Her personal blog can be found at veerlepoupeye.com.