It was on a tour of the British Museum years ago that Mohegan theater artist Madeline Sayet (Where We Belong) discovered a collection of Native American skulls—objects the museum classified as artifacts, but which she understood as ancestors, alive with the yearning to return home. In Gabriela Wiener’s irreverently witty novel, Undiscovered (tr. Julia Sanches), the Peruvian writer is confronted by her complicated family colonial heritage in a museum in Paris when she discovers the man responsible for pillaging these pre-Columbian artifacts was her own great-great-grandfather. Joining them is Meghan Bill, Coordinator of Provenance Research at the Brooklyn Museum, where she investigates the histories of works in the museum’s permanent collection and advises on issues of repatriation, restitution, and acquisitions due diligence.
In a conversation moderated by Executive Director of Artists at Risk Connection, Julie Trébault, these writers ask: what do the journeys of human remains, cultural artifacts, and iconic artworks reveal about our history? What makes the violence and asymmetries that have shaped their extraction, preservation, and return both collective and deeply personal experiences?
