UNESCO to showcase stolen artifacts in virtual museum

LONDON: UNESCO has announced a new virtual museum that will showcase stolen cultural artifacts from around the world.

The initiative, which is supported by Saudi Arabia, aims to raise awareness of illegal trafficking of cultural property and help recover stolen objects.

“Behind every stolen work or fragment lies a piece of history, identity, and humanity that has been wrenched from its custodians, rendered inaccessible to research, and now risks falling into oblivion,” said UNESCO’s Director General Audrey Azoulay at a meeting of national representatives in Paris.

“Our objective with this is to place these works back in the spotlight, and to restore the right of societies to access their heritage, experience it, and recognize themselves in it.”

The virtual exhibition, which is being developed in collaboration with Interpol and other technical partners and local communities, will use Interpol’s database of more than 52,000 stolen artifacts from around the world.

Those visiting will be able to navigate a series of virtual spaces containing detailed 3D images of the items, each accompanied by materials explaining their unique cultural significance, including stories and testimonies from local communities.

Ernesto Ottone, UNESCO’s assistant director general for culture, said that the museum will tell the stories of missing objects while helping to recover them, and promote the repatriation of cultural property.

The museum’s ultimate aim should be its own disappearance, he added.

“It’s the opposite of a regular museum, whose collection will continue to expand. With this one, we hope its collection will shrink, as items are recovered one by one,” he explained.

The virtual museum is scheduled to open in 2025, but UNESCO does not expect to name items in the collection until shortly before its opening.

Ottone said that designing and building the virtual museum was a lengthy and complex task, but the most challenging issue was creating 3D replicas of artifacts, many of which had only a small black-and-white photograph as reference.

Azoulay said: “No one has imagined a museum like this. The works’ presentation is enhanced by a deep dive into their universe, into the cultural and social movements from which they were born, linking the material and the immaterial.”