Enter the term “repatriation” or—less esoterically—“Kim Kardashian golden coffin” into a search engine and you will soon learn that the ownership, provenance, and display of certain artifacts at museums and elsewhere is a topic of much discussion. In recent years, legislators, journalists, activists, and even the movie Black Panther have questioned how museums acquire artifacts and whether those objects should be repatriated.1 Superheroes and Kardashians notwithstanding, these questions also touch on Utah.
This issue of Utah Historical Quarterly opens with James Aton and Jerry Spangler's account of the Utah State Museum Association (USMA), a group of well-connected men in the 1930s who wanted to build a state museum of natural history.2 The USMA, led by Charles N. Strevell, worked with people whose activities would now be described as looting and pothunting. Strevell and his associates were trying to preserve Utah's heritage and spread an appreciation for it; they...
