Toledo Museum’s Ethiopia Pact Starts With Five Returns

The Toledo Museum of Art and the Ethiopian Heritage Authority have entered a partnership intended to last more than 20 years, with five works from Robert McCarthy Jr.’s private collection assigned for return to Ethiopia. The important distinction is that only two of the five have a publicly described post-1970 provenance finding; the other three are not presented as proven cases of illegal export.

 
 

Five Returns, but Two Different Provenance Findings

The Toledo Museum of Art announced the agreement on September 2, 2026. The New York Times reported the plan on September 1, before the announcement, and The Art Newspaper published its account on September 4. Those are publication dates; the museum’s September 2 announcement is the dated institutional event.

A Toledo Museum of Art press release says the arrangement centers on approximately 380 Ethiopian artworks made across more than 500 years, beginning in the 13th century. The collection will enter the museum gradually. Five works from it have already been identified for return: two 15th-century religious manuscripts and, according to Sophie Ong, the museum official leading the project, three crosses.

The sources use materially different language about the manuscripts. The press release says provenance research identified them as illegally removed from Ethiopia after 1970 and quotes Ethiopian Heritage Authority director general Abebaw Ayalew Gella calling them illegally looted. In The Art Newspaper’s September 4 report, however, Ong says the manuscripts were known to be in Ethiopia after 1970 and “likely” removed from the country.

That difference does not make the two accounts irreconcilable, but it does set two levels of certainty. A documented presence in Ethiopia after 1970 establishes a later departure window; without the underlying provenance report, it does not publicly show the route, export paperwork or legal analysis behind the official conclusion. For the three crosses, the available announcement identifies no comparable evidence of illegal removal. Ong told The Art Newspaper that McCarthy transferred them to the Ethiopian authority.

The objects are not interchangeable examples of “antiquities.” Illuminated books and metal crosses belong to distinct devotional and artistic practices within the longer history of Ethiopian art. Keeping those forms visible matters because provenance research concerns specific objects, not a generic national category.

 

Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio. Photograph by Ɱ, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International; cropped.

 
 

Why 1970 Is a Benchmark, Not a Verdict

The 1970 date performs two different jobs in this story. UNESCO’s Convention on illicit traffic in cultural property was adopted on November 14, 1970, and entered into force on April 24, 1972. It sets obligations for participating states, including export certification and measures concerning objects illegally exported after the convention entered into force for the states concerned. It does not turn every undocumented post-1970 object into proven loot.

For American museums, 1970 also became a professional provenance marker. The American Alliance of Museums’ guideline for archaeological material and ancient art, approved in July 2008, recommends documentation that an object was outside its probable country of modern discovery by November 17, 1970, or documentation of legal export and US import after that date.

The same guideline contains an important qualification: a museum may accept an object with substantial but incomplete documentation when doing so serves the public interest, provided the institution explains the decision transparently and follows its collections policy and ethical codes. The Toledo plan creates a jointly governed route for acquiring and researching thinly documented works with Ethiopian officials.

Ethiopia adopted Antiquities Proclamation No. 229 in 1966, requiring a permit to export antiquities; Toledo nevertheless uses 1970 as its provenance cutoff. The 1970 cutoff is later than Ethiopia’s 1966 antiquities law, but a missing pre-1970 trail still does not by itself prove illegal export. Missing documentation creates a question; it does not supply the answer.

An Ethiopian illuminated manuscript at the Monastery of Na’akuto La’ab near Lalibela. This is a contextual example, not one of the manuscripts in the Toledo agreement. Photo: A. Davey, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

 
 

How the Two-Decade Arrangement Is Supposed to Work

For the roughly 375 works not included in the initial return, the museum will become the collection’s institutional entry point. The New York Times reported that McCarthy will donate about two-thirds and that Toledo will purchase about one-third at prices set by an independent appraiser. Neither the museum’s announcement nor the published reports disclose the purchase value.

Acquisition and restitution are not opposites in museum vocabulary: a gift and a purchase are both acquisitions. What distinguishes this plan is what follows. Objects found to have left Ethiopia illegally are to be returned; works shown to have moved lawfully may remain in Toledo; and indeterminate cases are to be decided jointly by the museum and Ethiopian officials. The New York Times attributed to museum officials an estimate that perhaps hundreds of objects may eventually go to Ethiopia, but that is a projection, not a completed provenance finding.

The press release says the collection will arrive over several years and lists joint research, conservation, documentation, loans, professional development and phased repatriation. The Art Newspaper adds a more precise timetable: the first decade is intended to emphasize research, capacity building and restitution, while the second addresses long-term disposition.

That structure makes curating part of the restitution process. Ethiopian officials are not merely receiving whatever Toledo rejects; they are partners in research, loans, display and decisions about future stewardship. The relationship also predates the new agreement. Toledo was one of the organizers and the final US venue for the 2023–24 exhibition Ethiopia at the Crossroads, which brought manuscripts, icons, crosses, metalwork and contemporary art together in a nearly 2,000-year account of Ethiopian visual culture.

 
 

What the First Five Returns Establish

The agreement establishes a collaborative process, but its first objects already show why the evidence must remain object-specific.

• Five works are assigned to Ethiopia: two 15th-century religious manuscripts and three crosses; the public sources do not give a single completed handover date for all five.
• The museum and Ethiopian authority officially classify the manuscripts as illegally removed, while the curator’s published account describes their removal as likely; the underlying provenance findings have not been released.
• The museum’s announcement does not label the three crosses illegal exports, so their transfer should not be described as proof of trafficking.
• The remaining works face research, not a presumption of guilt: lawful export, unlawful export and unresolved provenance lead to different outcomes under the plan.

The public announcement does not disclose object-by-object identities or ownership histories for the approximately 375 works still awaiting research. The Ethiopian Heritage Authority, not Toledo, will decide where the two manuscripts are ultimately kept and displayed.