National Museum of Finland returned a royal kataklè to the Republic of Benin
14.5.2025
A dignified ceremony was held on Tuesday 13 May in Cotonou, the capital of Benin, where the National Museum of..
Sustainability and Responsibility
Sustainability and Responsibility Are the Foundation of Our Work
Issues of sustainability and responsibility, which help ensure that our cultures endure as a respectful and balanced part of humanity and of life on Earth, are an integral part of the museum’s work and guiding principles.
We are committed to social, environmental, and economic responsibility and expect the same commitment from our partners. These principles are reflected in our collection work, the services provided at our museum sites, and our exhibition and events programme. In recognition of our long-term efforts, the National Museum of Finland was awarded the EcoCompass environmental management certification in 2025.
Promoting cultural sustainability lies at the heart of the National Museum of Finland’s mission. This includes preserving and making visible cultural diversity, safeguarding cultural rights, and strengthening dialogue and tolerance between cultures. We seek to reinforce cultural practices that support environmental, social, and economic sustainability both locally and globally. We actively participate in international cooperation to advance sustainable development and responsibility through museum work.
As a state museum, we contribute to the implementation of international conventions and recommendations that have long supported sustainable development in our field. In particular, these include UNESCO and Council of Europe cultural heritage instruments:
- UNESCO 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property(ulkoinen linkki)
- UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003)(ulkoinen linkki)
- UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural(ulkoinen linkki)
- UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society (2015)(ulkoinen linkki)
- ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums(ulkoinen linkki)
Examples of sustainable and responsible museum practice include the repatriation of collection objects to their communities of origin.
The most extensive of these was the return in 2021 of an historic Sámi collection of more than 2,000 objects to Sápmi and the Sámi Museum Siida, together with the ongoing collaboration associated with the repatriation process to promote Sámi culture and awareness of it.
In recent years, the National Museum of Finland has also carried out the following repatriations in cooperation with source communities:
- In 2025, a royal kataklé stool was returned to the Republic of Benin as part of the cultural heritage of the Kingdom of Dahomey.
- In 2023, fragments of the sacred power stone of the Ondonga Kingdom were returned to Namibia.
In 2020, the museum returned ancestral Pueblo remains from the Mesa Verde region, together with associated funerary objects, to the United States.
Repatriations
The National Museum of Finland launches a repatriation to Benin
4.11.2024
The National Museum of Finland is preparing to return a kataklé, a ceremonial royal stool which was received into the..
The National Museum of Finland repatriated the fragments of the power stone to Namibia
27.4.2023
On Thursday 27 April, the National Museum of Finland handed over two stone fragments of its ethnographic collections to the..
The Homecoming, opening in October, celebrates the repatriation of Sámi artefacts to the Sámi homeland, Sápmi
25.2.2021
Opening in October 2021, the exbition Mäccmõš, maccâm, máhccan – The Homecoming illustrates the vibrant Sámi culture and provokes thoughts..
The National Museum of Finland returned Pueblo Tribes’ ancestral remains from its collection for reburial in Mesa Verde, Colorado
17.9.2020
The ancestors and grave items, which are estimated to date back to the 13th century and were part of the..