Nancy Rosoff '78 Initiates Return of Art from Brooklyn Museum to Costa Rica
One of the many ethical issues society faces today concerns the return of art and artifacts to their countries of origin from museums around the world. Horace Mann School alum Nancy Rosoff '78 advanced this discussion when she initiated the voluntary return of over 2,200 ancient artifacts from the Brooklyn Museum to the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica in San José, Costa Rica. The artifacts were sent to Costa Rica in two separate shipments, one in 2011, and the second in the fall of 2020.
Rosoff, the Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator, Arts of the Americas at the Brooklyn Museum, is responsible for its pre-Columbian and Native American art collections. A curator at the museum since 2001, Rosoff reviewed and catalogued the collection of approximately 2,800 stone sculptures, ceramic vessels, and tools belonging to the many ancient cultures that inhabited the region presently known as Costa Rica. Some items date back more than 2,000 years. "The project took over 12 years," Rosoff explained. "As objects were deaccessioned due to condition issues or redundancy of object types, we initiated conversations with the National Museum of Costa Rica to see if they wanted the deaccessioned items as an unrestricted gift."
The ancient objects were taken in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by American railroad tycoon Minor Cooper Keith as he built a railroad through Costa Rica and cleared land for banana plantations. (Keith was also founder and president of the United Fruit Company.) Approximately 4,000 of his 16,000-object collection were donated and sold to the Brooklyn Museum after Keith's death in 1929, well before Costa Rica passed a law in 1938 restricting the export of cultural heritage items from the country. The rest of his collection was acquired by other museums.
The return of these objects is a highlight in the often contentious conversation over art repatriation, restitution, and deaccession. Museo Nacional de Costa Rica archaeologist Javier Fallas described the Brooklyn Museum's unrestricted gift as "a significant gesture," adding, "We don't know why they did it, but it's something very good and atypical in the world." For Sylvie Durán, Costa Rica's Minister of Culture and Youth, the "recovery of these archaeological pieces means recovering fragments of our past that crossed our borders when we still did not have legislation to prevent it." Costa Rico's National Museum plans to exhibit a selection of the objects in a gallery dedicated to pre-Hispanic art, while specialists from Costa Rica will study other parts of the collection, according to a statement by Museo de Costa Rica director Rocio Fernández.