You will never be able to get everyone to agree on anything and you can’t hold a referendum for every artifact.

So as far as responsibility goes, barring edge cases, it should be left upto the government to decide, as they represent the people.

There’s no clear ‘owner’ in many cases.

Just return it to the country where it was taken from. And I don’t think there are many cases where ownership is vague, most are pretty plain and clear.

then we should prioritize saving the artifacts over the ones that seek to destroy them.

That’s not on you, that’s on their original keepers. Otherwise you are propagating colonial era crimes and justifying them by arguing in bad faith.

P.s.

• Museums are notorious record when it comes to maintaining artifacts, especially the British museum.
• They also do less than what’s needed to discourage artifact smuggling.