The dispute watch — twelve loans currently satisfying one or more dispute criteria.
A loan enters the dispute watch when one or more of four documented criteria is satisfied: twelve months past contractual return without a published extension, a published permanent-transfer request without EAA acceptance within ninety days, a public statement by either party questioning the loan's continuation, or a continuous three-month inability of the receiving museum to verify the artefact's current physical location. As of 15 June 2026 the watch lists twelve loans. The watch takes no position on the merits of each dispute; we publish what the public record shows.
The twelve loans currently on the dispute watch.
| Inv. ID | Object | Receiving | Original return | Criterion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EAA-2018-243 | Rosetta-style stela fragment | British Museum | 22 Sep 2023 | 33 months past return |
| EAA-2019-117 | Bust of Nefertiti replica frame | Neues Museum, Berlin | 14 Aug 2024 | 22 months past return |
| EAA-2020-088 | Painted Coptic icon group (4) | Vatican Museums | 30 Dec 2023 | 30 months past return |
| EAA-2019-204 | Statue base, Ramses II | Louvre Museum | 06 Apr 2024 | 26 months past return |
| EAA-2020-156 | Coptic textile fragment group | Brooklyn Museum | 14 Nov 2024 | 19 months past return |
| EAA-2018-389 | Old Kingdom funerary stela | Smithsonian Institution | 22 Oct 2022 | 44 months past return; permanent-transfer request pending |
| EAA-2021-088 | Predynastic flint blade (3) | Ashmolean Museum, Oxford | 14 Mar 2025 | 15 months past return |
| EAA-2020-289 | Roman provincial coin hoard (12) | Metropolitan Museum, NY | 11 Jan 2025 | 17 months past return |
| EAA-2019-345 | Ptolemaic gold ring group (2) | Munich State Museum | 03 Sep 2024 | 21 months past return |
| EAA-2018-117 | Wooden coffin lid fragment | Tokyo National Museum | 14 Jun 2023 | 36 months past return |
| EAA-2021-201 | Faience necklace, Late Period | Penn Museum, Philadelphia | 18 May 2025 | 13 months past return |
| EAA-2020-076 | Bronze figurine of Bastet | Royal Museums, Brussels | 30 Apr 2024 | 26 months past return; receiving museum reports location-verification gap |
The detailed cases.
EAA-2018-243 — Rosetta-style stela fragment at the British Museum. Dispatched September 2018 for a five-year scholarly loan to the British Museum's Egypt and Sudan department. Original return date 22 September 2023. The British Museum has published one extension request (filed October 2022) to which the EAA has not yet formally replied. The desk's correspondence with both parties indicates that the extension was tentatively agreed in private negotiation but has not been published; the watch's criterion is "no published extension agreement", which this case satisfies. Thirty-three months past the original return date. The desk takes no position on whether the extension is reasonable; we publish the published-record gap.
EAA-2018-389 — Old Kingdom funerary stela at the Smithsonian Institution. Dispatched October 2017, original return October 2022. The Smithsonian filed a permanent-transfer request (acquisition request) in February 2024, which under the dispute-watch criteria triggers the ninety-day evaluation window. The EAA has not formally responded to the request as of the 15 June 2026 update; the desk's working understanding from public sources is that the EAA's position is "no acquisition while transfer of cultural property is under broader policy review". The loan therefore satisfies two criteria simultaneously: twelve months past return AND pending permanent-transfer request. The case is among the desk's longest-running entries on the dispute watch.
EAA-2020-076 — Bronze figurine of Bastet at the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels. The most unusual case in the current watch. The Brussels registrar's office reported in January 2026 that the figurine had been moved from its original gallery for conservation work in November 2025 and that the conservator was on extended leave; subsequent verification of the figurine's location took four months to complete (the figurine was found in the conservation workshop, untouched, in March 2026). The case satisfies the watch's three-month location-verification gap criterion. The figurine is now back on public display and the case is expected to leave the dispute watch at the next quarterly update.
Loans that have left the dispute watch since 2015.
Twenty-eight loans have moved out of the dispute watch since the desk's first quarterly publication in 2015. Sixteen moved out through formal extension agreements being published (the most common resolution). Eight returned to Cairo, settling the case. Two were converted to permanent transfer agreements with the EAA's published consent (the 2017 Aga Khan Cairo agreement covering a small Coptic textile group, and the 2019 Bavarian Egyptology Institute agreement covering one Old Kingdom funerary cone). Two cases concluded with the public closure of legal proceedings (the 2018 Berlin Nefertiti question and the 2020 Geneva storage-locker case, neither of which involved loaned material under the standard definition).
Methodology recap for this page.
The four dispute criteria are documented in detail on the services page. The receiving museums named on this page have all been notified that their loans appear on the dispute watch and have been offered the opportunity to publish an explanatory note that the watch would link from each case (none of the twelve has taken up the offer in the current quarter). Submitting a correction or a receiving-museum dispute notification is described on the contact page; the desk holds publication of any contested reading for up to fourteen days while the dispute is reviewed.
The full quarterly dispute-watch bulletin (twelve to sixteen pages, with the detailed source citations) is sent to subscribers as part of the quarterly cycle. The active-loans roster shows the wider context. The lender museums list includes loan-policy summaries for each receiving institution.