COLLECTION OF OVER 500 ARTIFACTS REPATRIATED TO ECUADOR

According to a report by Victoria Stapley-Brown in the Art Newspaper, Argentina and Spain have returned 567 heritage objects to Ecuador. The country’s minister of culture and heritage, Guillaume Long, announced the transference at a press conference on February 3 and the official handover took place in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, in the presence of Argentina’s ambassador to the country and the Cultural Counselor of the Spanish Embassy in Ecuador.

The objects returned include colonial-era works, archaeological artifacts from indigenous cultures, and two maps. Spain provided seventy-one works of art from the Quito school and fifty-eight other objects,while most of the 438 objects returned by Argentina were ceramics. The restitution was supervised by the National Commission for the Fight Against Illicit Traffic of Cultural Property, and some works will now be shown at national museums.