How Technology Is Rewriting Restitution, Replacing Proximity with Pixels.

Alice Ardern-Norris

A reliance on images highlights the tension between digital visibility and the irreplaceable experience of the physical object. Jewellery specialist Kristian Spofforth reflects on this tension, and an optimistic future for art and technology.

In an age when the internet too often feeds into vanity, misinformation and endless distraction, UNESCO’s new Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects offers a glimpse of what our digital world can be when thought, intention and time are dedicated to a proactive cause.

UNESCO has transformed the web into a space of cultural restitution and collective memory, cataloguing artefacts lost to looting, colonial plunder and illicit trafficking. More than a digital exhibition, it is an act of moral repair. Each object is rendered in 3D and accompanied by testimonies from its community of origin, regaining a fragment of the context it was stripped of. The museum’s ultimate ambition is paradoxical yet hopeful, that its Gallery of Stolen Objects will one day shrink, while its Return and Restitution Room continues to grow.

Using 3D modelling and Virtual Reality users can immerse themselves into this digital space. Screenshot of the UNESCO Virtual Museum homepage. Image: Alice Ardern-Norris.

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré, the museum takes its conceptual form from the baobab tree—a symbol of resilience and gathering across many African cultures. Like the tree’s vast roots, the project grounds itself in memory and community, connecting the tangible and intangible threads of heritage that theft and trafficking have severed. Nations upload their digitisations of lost artefacts, with accompanying stories enabling us to encounter not just what was stolen but also what was lost; the practises, traditions and identities intertwined with each object. Prioritising accessibility and education, particularly for younger generations, UNESCO is actively reframing the internet as a shared site of cultural ethics and education, rather than endless consumption.

Yet this museum is also, unavoidably, a museum of images. Its promise of ‘virtual restitution’ rests on high-resolution photography and 3D modelling standing in for objects that are lost. That dependence on the screen exposes both the power and the limits of digital representation. Roland Barthes wrote that ‘meaning is a form,’ reminding us that how something that is shown to us is inseparable from what it says. The Virtual Museum seems to play on this principle: reframing stolen objects, not as static evidence of a loss but as signs in motion which are still capable of generating meaning, even in absence. In Barthesian terms, the

museum performs a sort of second-order signification. So, the artefact, once torn from its context becomes myth; through digital restitution it is remythologised in the service of awareness and justice. Yet this transformation raises its own contradictions. The screen can restore visibility but it flattens experience, and the aura of these objects, replacing proximity with pixels.

Objects violently torn from their contexts, now hover in digital suspension. Screenshot of the UNESCO Virtual Museum display. Image: Alice Ardern-Norris.

This is where the perspective of someone like Kristian Spofforth, the former Head of Jewellery at Sotheby’s London who’s accustomed to handling pieces such as the Bourbon-Parma jewels, becomes instructive. Asked about the difference between seeing such pieces digitally and handling them, he says:

‘Honestly, the gap between holding something like the Bourbon-Parma jewels and seeing them on a screen is a chasm. It really is. When you hold that Marie Antoinette pearl, you're feeling the weight of history in your hand. You feel the coolness of the nacre, you see how the light is absorbed and then catches it—it’s a dynamic, physical experience. A digital image? It's a postcard. It’s lovely, it’s informative, but it's fundamentally flat. Digital images are crucial; they are the necessary introduction, the fantastic advertisement. But they are a lie of convenience. The way a diamond, say, the Farnese Blue, actually plays with light as you turn it. No, they can't come close to that actual, thrilling presence.’

‘A digital image? It's a postcard. It’s lovely, it’s informative, but it's fundamentally flat.’ Marie Antoinette’s Pearl and Diamond Pendant. Sold at Sotheby’s in 2018. Image: Sothebys.

The Virtual Museum depends on these ‘necessary introductions,’ as images and models that circulate globally attach to these objects testimonies, and sustain claims for restitution. But we certainly can’t skim over the fact that Kristian raises: ‘A computer render, no matter how clever, is an imitation. It's a trick of the eye, not the real physical spectacle.’ Perhaps the museum's achievement therefore is also its tension: as it restores visibility and context, it also stands to prove that some dimensions of presence captured through a lens cannot render the physicalities of these objects to the screen. But still in the tension between image and object, myth and matter, the museum reclaims narrative control through its understanding that authenticity does not rely entirely on possession, but through conversation, interpretation and continued representation.

Just under a month after the launch of the Virtual Museum, news broke of the audacious robbery of the Louvre. The thieves escaped with a cache of jewels of inestimable cultural and heritage value. This incident echoes a long lineage of art thefts which underscore the urgency of UNESCO’s project, and questions of loss and representation have felt particularly charged in the wake of this. However, in the media coverage that followed, emphasis fell quickly onto the narrative of the scandal. Here again, Kristian recognises a familiar dynamic from the auction room: ‘With things that have royal or scandalous provenances, the story becomes the commodity, and the physical gem is almost secondary. You're selling the Marie Antoinette connection, not just a pearl. My job is to anchor the myth in the material. You have to balance it. The material must validate the story, and the story must elevate the material. We ensure the stone is worthy of the legend it carries, otherwise, it just feels like marketing fluff.’

‘An object designed to declare imperial presence becomes newly fragile, as viewed now only through its digital image.’ Empress Eugénie’s diamond bow brooch, created by François Kramer in 1855 and stolen in the recent Louvre heist. Image: Christies.

The Louvre heist threatens precisely that balance. If the stolen pieces are broken up, their stones recut and their gold melted down, the ‘material’ survives in a purely monetary sense, but the specific form that grounded the story does not. Kristian calls this ‘the central philosophical problem with restitution’: ‘When you re-cut the stone or melt the gold, you lose the craftsmanship and the historical form. The materials (...) are just inert assets. What is lost is the unique language of the culture that created it: the artistry, the technology, the specific way that culture decided to interpret beauty and status. Restitution should be about restoring cultural identity, not just balancing a ledger sheet. If all that is returned is a pile of loose stones, you’ve returned the intrinsic monetary value, but the irreplaceable historical value of the object—the vessel of memory—is gone forever.’ The robbery is unsettling not only because of what has vanished, but because of what may now be impossible to give back. In this sense, it sits in uneasy dialogue with UNESCO’s Virtual Museum, as one event shows how quickly jewels can be reduced to myth once their forms are destroyed; the other works to hold myth and material together, even when only images and testimonies remain.

With these ideas in mind, it felt relevant to ask Kristian about whether the art and jewellery world is using digital tools in the best possible ways, or if we are still at the beginning of using technologies in these industries. He says, ‘We're only just scratching the surface, I think. We're very good at using the internet as a catalogue and a sales floor—high-res photos, 360-degree views, online bidding. That's using it for commerce. Using it as a space for cultural memory—which means deep, interactive, ethical education—that's the new frontier. We've mastered the 'show,' but we're only just starting on the 'teach.’’

The UNESCO Virtual Museum can be read as an early attempt to inhabit this ‘new frontier’: an effort to redirect the infrastructures perfected for selling into infrastructures for remembering. Kristian’s own speculative answer to the problem of aura gestures in the same direction. Asked what an ideal digital experience of a historic jewel might look like, he imagines a platform organised not around static imagery but around relations of light, body and environment. ‘I would love to design a digital image platform focused on light and the wearer. It would be an advanced 3D model, but its core feature would be an interactive lighting simulator. You could select historical lighting conditions—say, "eighteenth century Parisian Ballroom, Candlestick Light," or "Midday Indian Sun"—and see precisely how the gem would have looked and moved in that environment. This recreates the context and the dynamics of the stone. Additionally, I'd want a "Wearer Mode" using AR or VR. The user could digitally place the jewel on a historically accurate figure or a digital representation of themselves, seeing the scale, the drape, and the impact, which bring the human, historical element back into the experience.’ Read alongside UNESCO’s project, this imagined simulator suggests a possible future in which digital restitution does not rely solely on cataloguing, but on modelling the conditions under which objects once appeared and were worn. Context could become not merely something narrated in text, but something sensorially reconstructed through simulations of illumination, embodiment and spatial setting, transforming restitution from an archival operation into a form of historical media reenactment.

Finally, Kristian’s work with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and the British Museum redirects this article to the ongoing labour of heritage protection on the ground. ‘Given my work with the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the British Museum, I'd want readers to understand that the protection of cultural heritage isn't just about safeguarding famous, royal jewels—it’s just as much about celebrating and protecting the small, unexpected discoveries that redefine our history. The PAS system isn't just about recording what’s found; it’s a brilliant, ethical model for transforming a piece of material into public cultural memory. The integrity of a small Roman brooch found in the English mud is just as crucial to our historical understanding as the grandest crown jewel. The PAS model proves that we can successfully balance the interests of the public, the finder, and the object's history, turning a potential loss into a national gain. That’s a fantastic story that needs telling. It's the ultimate ethical provenance.’

If UNESCO’s Virtual Museum constructs a digital archive of dispossession and claim, PAS demonstrates how future losses might be pre-empted, and how even the most modest object can be folded into a shared narrative rather than disappearing into private profit or oblivion. Between the Louvre heist, the Virtual Museum, and Kristian’s practice, a common thread emerges: technology, markets, and museums will not, on their own, guarantee justice for stolen objects. But they can, when reoriented, become tools for what we might call cultural repair: holding together the fragile relation between matter and memory.