Have you ever imagined yourself, on a visit to a major museum, busting through a wall, arms full of ill-begotten African artifacts and ready to return them to their rightful homes? No? Well, you may soon have the chance, thanks to South African video game studio Nyamakop.

Earlier this month at the annual Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, Nyamakop unveiled its latest project, Relooted, a side-scrolling puzzle platformer—think early Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia games—where players join a crew of Robin Hood-esque thieves staging elaborate heists to take back stolen artifacts from Western museums, and repatriate them to the peoples from whom they were taken.

As Nyamakop lays out on the game’s listing on the online video game marketplace Epic Games, Relooted takes place in a near future where “the political powers that be brokered a Transatlantic Returns Treaty, promising the repatriation of African artifacts from museums.” But the hitch in the treaty is that it only applies to artifacts on “public display,” leading museums to circumvent the requirement by placing the pieces in highly guarded private collections. And that’s where players come in: scoping out a given facility, carefully constructing an exit route, and then, of course, stealing the artifact and escaping.

As Ben Myres, the creative director of the game, explained to Epic in a news post, all of the artifacts in Relooted are based on real-world pieces in Western museums. In crafting the various missions, the developer team spent two years of research narrowing done the list of which pieces, of the hundreds still held by Western museums, into something manageable.

“We looked for artifacts with great stories in terms of how they were looted,” he said. “Why were they important to people? Just anything associated with them.”

By way of explanation, Myres pointed to the Ngadji drum, a wooden drum made by the Pokomo people in Kenya to call for worship or celebrate the start of a king’s reign. It was confiscated by the British in 1902 and has since remained in the British Museum’s collections despite the efforts of Kenyan researchers to have the piece returned.

“The first Kenyan people to see it in the last 100 years were in the 2010s,” Myre said. “The person who saw the drum was a descendant of the king it was taken from originally. So these aren’t artifacts that were just found in the dust and excavated by archaeologists. These were still active cultures.”

According to Myre, each artifact in the game was faithfully rendered into a 3D model based on available photos or scans, a challenge given that many of the artifacts are inaccessible and have long been in storage.

However, while the artifacts are based on real objects, the museums in the game are not.

While Nyamakop is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, the developer team includes people from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Relooted is the studio’s second game; the first was Semblance, a 2018 game that became the first African-developed original IP to release on a Nintendo game console ever. It is one of the largest independent game developers in sub-Saharan Africa, according to its website.

“There are not a lot of opportunities for people here to professionally make video games,” Myres said. “So if you’re offering people here that opportunity, and it so happens that it’s an African-inspired thing—which you don’t get to see a lot of in games—people are pretty, pretty excited about doing that.

Relooted has yet to announce a release date, but a rendering of its game play is visible in the trailer that accompanied its announcement:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently announced that it will return three ancient sculptures to Iraq, dating from 3rd to 2nd millennium BCE. They are estimated to be collectively worth $500,000.

The items are a Sumerian vessel made of gypsum alabaster (ca. 2600–2500 BCE) and two Babylonian terracotta sculptures (ca. 2000-1600 BCE) depicting a male head and a female head, respectively. The museum said it was making the return in “cooperation with the Manhattan DA’s office,” and that the return had come after the Met had “received new information” amid the investigation into Robin Symes, a dealer accused of being a member of a network that traded in looted artifacts.

A press release from the DA’s Office said that the Symes investigation has resulted in the seizure of 135 antiquities valued at more than $58 million. The release also noted that two of the items were seized by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) earlier this year.

The two Babylonian ceramic sculptures are thought to be from Isin, an archaeological site in Iraq, and were looted in the late 1960s. The Manhattan DA’s office noted that Head of a male was then smuggled out of Iraq and was in Symes’s possession in London by 1971. The next year, Symes sold the sculpture to the Met; it remained in the institution’s collection until it was seized by the ATU.

Vessel supported by two rams was first offered to the Met in 1956 by Switzerland-based antiquities dealer-trafficker Nicolas Koutoulakis, “who informed the museum that the Vessel had been found at a site near the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur. The Vessel then passed through multiple private collectors and dealers, including Symes, before permanently entering The Met’s collection in 1989,” according to the Manhattan DA’s office.

The museum’s press release said the vessel was gifted to the museum in 1989 by the Norbert Schimmel Trust, named after a longtime trustee who died in 1990. The museum noted that “it appeared on the Baghdad art market, was purchased by Swiss dealer Nicolas Koutoulakis by 1956 and later acquired by Cecile de Rothschild.”

“The Met is committed to the responsible collecting of art and the shared stewardship of the world’s cultural heritage and has made significant investments in accelerating the proactive research of our collection,” Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s director and CEO, said in a press statement. “The Museum is grateful for our ongoing conversations with Iraq regarding future collaborative endeavors, and we look forward to working together to advance our shared dedication to fostering knowledge and appreciation of Iraqi art and culture.” 

“We continue to recover and return antiquities that were trafficked by Robin Symes,” District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. said in a press statement. “That is a testament to the hard work of attorneys, analysts and investigators who are committed to undoing the significant damage traffickers have caused to our worldwide cultural heritage.”

H. E. Nazar Al Khirullah, Ambassador of the Republic of Iraq to the US, described the leadership of the ATU as “instrumental” in the recovery of his country’s looted heritage. “We also appreciate our strong and ongoing partnership with The Met, whose commitment to cultural preservation complements our shared mission to safeguard the world’s antiquities,” he said in a press statement.

Symes’s legacy of trafficking antiquities includes 351 antiquities returned to Greece after a 17-year legal battle, two antiquities worth $1.26 million returned to Libya, 750 artifacts recovered by Italy, a limestone elephant returned to Iraq, and an alabaster female figure returned to Yemen, all in 2023.

Symes was convicted of contempt of court for lying about antiquities he held in storage locations around the world in 2005. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but only served seven months. He died in 2023.

The Fowler Museum at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) recently returned 11 objects to an Aboriginal community in Northern Australia.

A kangaroo tooth headband and 10 glass spearheads, some of which are more than 100 years old, were voluntarily returned by the museum to the Larrakia Community of Australia’s Northern Territory in a handover ceremony on May 20.

The tools and woven fiber artifacts—collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—are ceremonial items of deep spiritual and cultural importance to the Larrakia Community.

Half of the returned objects first arrived at the Fowler Museum in 1965 through a large donation from the Wellcome Trust. Pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry Wellcome collected medical and archaeological artifacts, estimated at approximately 1 million objects. After Wellcome died in 1936, the Wellcome Trust dispersed his holdings. The British Museum received the largest gift, while the Fowler Museum received 30,000 objects in 1965. The remaining objects the Fowler Museum returned to the Larrakia Community on May 20 were gifts from private collectors.

Since 2021, elders from the Larrakia Community have worked closely with AIATSIS and the Fowler Museum to identify these 11 items and facilitate their return.

The timing for the return of the objects is guided by the community they originate from. Next year, the Larrakia community plans to open a cultural center—“a place for this material to come and be cared for in accordance with Larrakia cultural protocols next year,” as Dylan Daniel-Marsh, A/g Executive Director Partnerships and Engagement Group for AIATSIS, told ARTnews.

AIATSIS is an Indigenous-led national cultural institution solely dedicated to the diverse history, cultures, and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia. In 2018, AIATSIS established a Return of Cultural Heritage program (RoCH) to identify and facilitate the safe return of cultural heritage items from overseas institutions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collections.

AIATSIS has facilitated the return of more than 2,300 items back to Australia, including 20 Warumungu objects from the Fowler Museum last July.

“There was a moment in which we briefly talked about doing a joint repatriation of Larrakia and Warumungu, and then decided to keep them separate,” Silvia Forni, the director of the Fowler Museum, told ARTnews.

In addition to the 20 Warumungu objects returned last July, the Fowler Museum also returned seven objects to the Asante Kingdom in the Republic of Ghana last February. Forni said that repatriation was paid for out of the museum’s own operating funds and was “incredibly expensive,” due to the high cost of shipping cultural treasures. This repatriation, by contrast, was less costly.

Larrakia Custodians Tina Baum (Gulumirrgin-Larrakia/Wardaman/Karajarri) and Darryn Wilson (Larrakia / Gulumirrgin Academic) described pride in being the first people from their community to have seen the objects in a long time.

“They have a time capsule feel about them,” Wilson said. “They are items that are created in the past that will allow future generations to appreciate Larrakia craftsmanship.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office returned eight artifacts to Peru during a ceremony at the Peruvian consulate in New York on May 15.

The items returned included funerary items that were taken illegally from tombs in northern Peru during the 1960s and ’70s. The return marks the second time New York officials have repatriated a group of works to Peru.

Also among the returned objects is a copper mask believed to represent a fanged Moche deity Ai Apaec, which has historically been associated with protection. The mask, which dates to approximately 300 BCE, is believed to have been taken from Loma Negra, a burial site of Peru’s Piura Valley that was looted of Moche metalwork several decades ago. A ceramic portrait vessel dating to 1000–700 BCE from the Chavín culture, one of the earliest pre-Columbian societies in the region, was also given back last week.

The District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has reported that it has sent home more than 2,000 artifacts after confiscations to their countries of origin, including numerous objects to countries like Italy, Greece, and Turkey. The total value of those items is estimated to be around $250 million. New York officials have less frequently directed their attention to countries in Latin America.

The handover comes amid growing attention on antiquities in Peru, with one recent find taking place at Áspero, a coastal settlement associated with the Caral civilization, where researchers uncovered an elaborate funerary site with human remains believed to date back 5,000 years.

France will repatriate the skulls of King Toera and two Sakalava warriors to Madagascar, marking the first return of human remains under a new French law passed in 2023. The remains, which were taken during France’s colonization of the island in 1897, have been held for more than a century in Paris’s Natural History Museum.

The decision was announced by French prime minister François Bayrou and follows a formal request by Madagascar in 2022, as well as a review by a bilateral scientific committee. A decree published on April 2 orders the museum to return the skulls within a year. The move is being positioned as both a symbolic and legal milestone: the first application of France’s new framework for returning human remains taken during colonial campaigns, and an acknowledgment—however belated—of the brutality that accompanied the expansion of its empire.

During the French seizure of the island in August 1897, King Toera was reportedly negotiating his surrender when French forces massacred hundreds of people in the village of Ambiky. The severed heads of three Sakalava leaders, including the king, were subsequently shipped to Paris. Their presence in a scientific institution, unburied and unacknowledged for more than 120 years, became a lingering source of pain for descendants and a rallying point for restitution advocates.

Ceremonies to mark the return, including a tour of the remains across Madagascar, are now scheduled for August. Initially planned to coincide with a visit by President Emmanuel Macron, they were postponed after descendants of the king and tribal leaders objected, citing cultural prohibitions against holding such rituals in April.

French senator Catherine Morin-Desailly welcomed the decision but stressed the need for further legal reform. The 2023 law only allows returns requested by foreign states, excluding France’s own overseas territories. She also called for progress on legislation governing the restitution of cultural objects from the colonial era, many of which remain locked in public collections.

A related case is already on the horizon: On April 28, the French Senate will debate a bill allowing the return of a sacred “talking drum” to the Ivory Coast. The drum, once used to warn villages of colonial raids, was seized by French authorities and remains in a state collection.

The Tate recently announced it will return a painting by Henry Gibbs to the heirs of a Jewish Belgian art collector after initial claims it had been looted by Nazis.

The painting being returned is by the Canterbury artist is Aeneas and his family fleeing Burning Troy (1654), a work initially purchased by Tate from Galerie Jan de Maere, Brussels in 1994.

The Spoliation Advisory Panel resolves claims from people, or their heirs, who lost possession of cultural property during the Nazi era, now held in national collections in the UK.

A press release from the Tate said that the Spoliation Advisory Panel received a claim in May 2024 from the heirs of art collector Samuel Hartveld, through trustees acting for the Sonia Klein Trust, requesting the return of the painting by Gibbs.

“The Spoliation Advisory Panel considered all the evidence and decided that the legal and moral claims to the restitution of the painting were sufficiently compelling for them to advise the Secretary of State that the Sonia Klein Trust is entitled to its return.”

Tate Director Maria Balshaw said in a statement that the provenance of Aeneas and his family fleeing Burning Troy was “extensively investigated” when the institution acquired it in 1994, but “crucial facts concerning previous ownership of the painting were not known.”

The trustees of the Sonia Klein Trust called the staff at Tate Britain “open minded and prompt” in their approval of the Spoilation Advisory Panel’s recommendation to return the painting. The trustees also acknowledged the scholarly efforts of Geert Sels, author of ‘Kunst voor das Reich’ in identifying the plight of Samuel Hartveld and his family because of Nazi persecution in Belgium during World War II.

The news was first reported by The Art Newsapaper.

16 human skulls were repatriated to Papua New Guinea by the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney, Australia last week.

The ancestral remains were returned to six village communities, including Gorendu and Bilibil, in Madang province. The skulls were taken from the Rai Coast by Russian scientist Nickolai N. Miklouho-Maclay in 1876 through 1777 while he was on an expedition. The scientist noted in his journal at the time that the skulls were not exhumed and had been freely given.

Miklouho-Maclay aimed to prove that people of different races and ethnicities were the same as their caucasian counterparts, which was not prominently believed at the time, and wanted to study the anatomy of the skulls to do so.

In 1878, Miklouho-Maclay landed in Sydney, where he started working alongside naturalist William John Macleay. Macleay’s philanthropy lead to the establishment of Sydney University’s Macleay Museum in 1887. The remains were donated to the museum by Miklouho-Maclay’s widow in 1888. The Macleay Museum recently became part of the Chau Chak Wing Museum in 2020.

Miklouho-Maclay’s great-great nephew made the discovery of these remains when visiting the Rai Coast and, after contacting locals, a request was made for their return.

“People are looking at [the repatriation] as a rebirth of their history, in some ways, and to think about those people and the wisdom of that time,” Chau Chak Wing Museum’s senior curator Jude Philp, who formally handed over the skulls, told the Art Newspaper.

The return was commemorated in ceremonies of song and dance, accompanied by roasted pigs, by locals. Philp and other dignitaries arrived in boats carrying the remains in special boxes.

“These ancestors were taken by Nickolai almost 150 years ago, to support his work promoting one shared humanity,” said Jack Simbou, a deputy secretary at Papua New Guinea’s Department for Community Development and Religion. “They departed the Rai Coast aboard a Russian Corvette and returned on a Boeing jet. Their journey spans time and distance and we extend gratitude to the Chau Chak Wing Museum for reuniting us.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office recently announced the recovery of two groups of ancient artifacts which would be returned to Greece and Italy.

A repatriation ceremony took place on February 25 for eleven ancient Greek artifacts, including a votive figurine from 1300-1200 BCE and a marble funerary relief from 4th-3rd century BCE.

Other artifacts being returned include a Hellenistic statuette of the mythical heroine Atalanta, an aryballos depicting a battle scene from 600-500 BCE, and a Dionysian kantharos from the 4th century BCE.

The collection of items were recovered by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and are valued at approximately $1 million, according to a report by the Athens newspaper Kathimerini.

The news followed the announcement from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. on February 18, of 107 objects valued at $1.2 million that would be sent back to Italy. The artifacts had been recovered from multiple ongoing investigations and were connected to several known smugglers of antiquities, including Giacomo Medici, Giovanni Franco Becchina and Robert Hecht.

Some of the recovered pieces were also connected to London-based art dealer Robin Symes, who was convicted of contempt of court for lying about antiquities he held in storage locations around the world in 2005; and Swiss gallery owner Herbert Cahn.

Among the most notable items were a Terracotta Kylix Band-Cup from the middle of the 6th Century BCE, a Apulian Volute Krater from 320-310 BCE, and a Bronze Patera fropm 4th Century BCE.

The press release said the Kylix, a type of drinking cup “was found and illegally excavated from the Etruscan archaeological site of Vulci in the 1960s before it was smuggled out of Italy by the New York and Paris-based dealer Robert Hecht. It was eventually acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017 where it remained until it was seized” by the office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU). The Krater, a terracotta vase from a Greek colony in Southern Italy, was allegedly trafficked by Almagia into New York and sold to a Manhattan based gallery before 1987. The ATU recovered it from a private collection last year. The patera bowl was smuggled out of Italy by convicted antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina, made its way to New York-based antiquities dealer Mathias Komor, and sold to the present owner before it was also seized by the ATU earlier this year.

The announcement also noted that Edoardo Almagià had also been charged and was the subject of an arrest warrant.

On February 24, the Metropolitan Museum of Art also announced it was returning a 7th-century bronze head donated by a former trustee head to Greece following a review internally of it’s provenance records

The museum’s researchers concluded it was likely illegally removed from the Archaeological Museum of Olympia in the 1930s, though details of the removal aren’t known.

Discussions between Greece and the British Museum about the fate of the Parthenon Marbles are gaining momentum, with Greek officials optimistic about the potential for an agreement in 2025, according to a report by the Finanial Times this week.

The conversations between the two governments, which have spanned several years, focus on a possible loan arrangement. Under this plan, portions of the artifacts could be temporarily returned to Athens, while significant Greek antiquities would be showcased in London.

Known as the Elgin Marbles in the UK, the sculptures were removed from the Parthenon in Athens in the early 19th century by Lord Elgin during the Ottoman occupation of Greece. The British Museum has housed the artifacts ever since, asserting their acquisition was legal. However, Greece has long contended that the removal was unauthorized and views their return as vital to its cultural and national identity.

During a meeting this week between UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the matter was reportedly brought up by the Greek side. The UK stated the sculptures were not officially on Starmer’s agenda, but confirmed that the UK government would not obstruct a loan agreement. The British Museum, as an independent institution, has the authority to decide on those arrangements.

A British law enacted in 1963 prohibits the museum from permanently transferring any part of its collection, leaving a long-term loan as the most feasible compromise. George Osborne, chairman of the British Museum, acknowledged the constructive nature of the ongoing talks but noted that an agreement is still a way off.

Since assuming office in 2019, Mitsotakis has made the return of the Parthenon Sculptures a cornerstone of his administration’s cultural policy. To avoid escalating tensions, Athens has focused on fostering collaboration and mutual understanding.

While the British Museum has shown openness to creative solutions, some of its trustees remain cautious about setting a precedent that could affect other contested artifacts.

The Yale Peabody Museum has flagged human remains and eight funerary objects in its collection for repatriation to Native American tribes of the Wabanaki Nations in Maine. These remains and objects were removed from burial sites and shell mounds in Maine and donated to the museum in 1926 and 1969. 

The repatriation follows guidelines in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which mandates the return of human remains and culturally significant objects to Native tribes. The museum is working with tribal partners to ensure respectful and confidential handling of the repatriation process.

According to the New Haven Register, the human remains belong to “at least” one individual connected to the Wabanaki Nations, which include the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi’kmaq Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe, and Penobscot Nation. The remains were taken from a shell mound near Oak Point on Deer Isle in Hancock County, Maine, between 1948 and 1952 by H. Gordon Rowe, whose wife donated them to the museum in 1969. 

The eight funerary objects were removed by archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead around 1915 during his survey of Maine and include items such as spearheads, red ochre, and gouges from burial contexts in Hancock, Knox, and Penobscot Counties. These items were identified as intentionally placed in graves as part of death rites or ceremonies.

The museum has acknowledged its responsibility under NAGPRA and emphasized ongoing consultation with tribes to ensure repatriation efforts are culturally sensitive and respectful. Steven Scarpa, a spokesman for the museum, said in a statement that in filling that responsibility the museum “defer[s] to a confidential process that respects Tribal privacy. We are dedicated to realizing our goals regarding consultation and repatriation through meaningful relationships with our Tribal partners.”

In 2024, the Peabody Museum reported repatriating the remains of 13 individuals and 25 burial items to the Santa Ynez Reservation in California. Despite these efforts, a 2023 investigation by CT Insider revealed that the museum still holds approximately 90 percent of unreturned Native American remains in Connecticut.