Why two looted Asante instruments in Los Angeles are testing the limits of restitution
At the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles, a drum and an ivory trumpet taken from Kumasi in the late 19th century are waiting for return to Ghana. Their path back is complicated by an unsettling detail: both objects have human skulls attached to them, turning a straightforward repatriation into a far more difficult ethical and historical question.
The instruments were seized by British troops during military operations in the Asante capital, then sold in London — the trumpet in 1919 and the drum in 1930. Both were later acquired by Henry Wellcome and entered the Fowler in 1965, when the Wellcome collection was dispersed. Since then, they have remained out of public view, and the museum has not permitted publication of images, even with the skulls obscured.
Research by Fowler senior curator of African arts Erica Jones and her former colleague Carlee Forbes has begun to clarify what is attached to each object. The trumpet’s skull appears to have belonged to a man around 40 years old who died from a sharp-force injury, with no sign of healing. The drum’s cranium, meanwhile, is believed to have belonged to a woman around 50. That finding complicates any simple reading of the objects as Asante war trophies.
One possibility is that the skull on the trumpet was added later to increase its appeal to a buyer with macabre tastes. Another is that the instruments were transformed over time into hybrid historical objects whose components can no longer be neatly separated. Returning the instruments to the present Asante king may be appropriate, but returning the remains of people from neighboring communities would be widely seen as unethical.
The Fowler already restituted seven other Asante objects in 2024, and those works are now on display at Kumasi’s Manhyia Palace Museum. These two pieces, however, remain in limbo — a reminder that restitution is not always a matter of simply moving an object from one collection to another. Sometimes the object itself carries a second, unresolved history.
The case also underscores how colonial-era plunder continues to unsettle museum practice. In this instance, the question is not only who owns the instruments, but what should happen when the human remains attached to them may belong to people who were themselves victims of violence.
