BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A city-owned museum in Alabama will return works of art to Southeast Alaska Native tribes that requested the pieces four years ago, decades after the museum had purchased the items for its collection.
A vote by the Birmingham City Council cleared the way for the Birmingham Museum of Art to return the items to the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.
The groups requested return of the art under a 1990 law that requires institutions which receive federal funds to return Native American cultural items to the respective tribes. The director of the museum, Graham C. Boettcher, told the council the museum no longer had a “a moral, ethical or legal claim under federal law”to the art.
“We want to be able to operate ethically and in accordance with all laws,”he said.
The museum, founded in 1951, has extensive collections of Asian, European, American, African, pre-Columbian, and Native American art, according to its website.
The museum has several Tlingit items as part of its collection including several spoons, baskets and bentwood boxes. Nearly all of them were purchased by the museum in 1956.
The museum also lists three works by Haida artists, including two screen-prints by Freida Deising and a Reg Davidson totem pole, all of which were acquired in 1994.
The Juneau-based Central Council of the Haida and Tlingit Indian Tribes of Alaska represents more than 32,000 members, according to is website.
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