The argument about whether contested collections should return home has largely been settled in public. What remains is a slower, more technical process.
Practical questions dominate: who conserves fragile objects, who insures transport, and which institution holds title once an object arrives.
Several agreements have settled on shared custody or long-term loans, arrangements that satisfy neither purists nor sceptics but move objects.
Curators describe the shift as a change of profession. The job is now negotiation and provenance research as much as display.
