Should the British Museum be broken up?

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Is it time to return all treasures and other objects to the countries that they came from. Some were looted and some were bought or genuinely donated but do they belong in London? The ones that are on loan return to the families that have donated and they can be in private collections or go back to the country of origin.

Ive heard the argument that it means visitors can see things from all over the world in one place. I presume that could be achieved by some of them becoming part of travelling exhibitions. Some are very fragile so will need to be moved carefully, but ultimately they are not from the UK.

Ever heard of Ebla? You’re lucky if you have. Lucky to be at this end of history where we cared enough to find their remains and piece their story together. I read about its rediscovery in some paper of my dad’s back when I was a kid in the 80s. What about Catal Huyuk? Do you know what is significant about the place? The Cucuteni - Trypolia culture? Gobekli Tepe? You’ll be lucky with that one as its significance and meaning is under debate now, it was discovered relatively recently. We know to look for tells now.

I have entirely run out of patience with political correctness. Britain has no culture? We have the respect to preserve ancient monuments and the curiosity to investigate history. Other cultures do it because they copied us, because we gave these things value (and the French, but come on, we are British and the French come second).

We now have the respect to preserve ancient monuments ...

The Victorians sold little hammers for tourists to chip keepsakes off Stonehenge ....

Not just for our nation. The BM is usually full of tourists from all over the globe.

It would be to everyone’s disadvantage if you could only see Greek vases or Buddhist statues by travelling to specific countries. It would be even worse if objects were returned to private collections as the OP suggested.

While there is definitely a case for some artefacts to be returned think how much would have been lost if left in the path of Isis or other such iconoclasts. Much better that the treasures of the world are at least to some extent distributed for safekeeping.

In some cases it should nowadays be possible to make excellent replicas - looking at the V&A casts galleries I don’t know why the copies of the ‘Elgin’ marbles which are in the Parthenon museum are so poor. That’s a specific case in which surely an excellent complete set of copies could be made for the BM and the original subset returned to Athens. Win-win.

Maybe Stonehenge is what sparked curiosity. It is still there, in the main, after 2500 years, along with many other megalithic structures in Western Europe, and has sparked many myths and stories. The fabled walls of Uruk on the other hand… completely ignored.

OP, highly recommend this episode of Freakonomics, it made some cut-and-dry views feel a bit more complicated – not in terms of the ultimate "right" thing to do, but partly the "how" freakonomics.com/podcast/can-a-museum-be-the-conscience-of-a-nation/

( errata : Stonehenge is usually said to have attained its present form in maybe 2500 BC of course, not merely 2500 years ago. 😳 It’s been used as a sacred space since maybe 8-9 kyears ago).

A lot of the artefacts would have been destroyed if left in their own countries.

I've got a bit of the acropolis if you're interested ?

This is true of every major museum worldwide- why have you singled out the British Museum, why not the Louve or the Metropolitan Museum- why should the British museum in particular be broken up?

Isn’t your position the closer analogy to apartheid?

You want all artifacts separated out and send back to where they came from. You see culture not as something shared and evolving, but tied to blood and soil.

You go way beyond saying “give back anything looted”. The results of historical free exchange and cultural mixing are offensive to you too and must be undone.

In the analogy you set up, you aren’t the anti-apartheid campaigner here. You are the forced remigration campaigner.

I think it’s all ours and we keep it. You can’t endlessly rewrite history.

I think the pieces where there is a clear argument for returning them should be returned. Eg the Elgin marbles or Egyptian mummies an either remains. Very high quality replicas can be made and kept in the BM.
There are also pieces that are complicated because the exact place they should be "returned to" isn't clear. In some cases they were "stolen" multiple times (the British were not the only people to loot) so multiple countries have a claim to them. Or the way those countries have broken up/changed borders makes it very complicated and probably politically more bother to return them than not
However there are many pieces that weren't stolen or acquired in a dodgy way (when I say acquired in a dodgy way that's to cover examples like the Elgin Marbles who were retrieved with the permission of the authorities at the time it's just that the authorities at the time were the Ottomans who were themselves colonisers so it's reasonable for the Greeks to argue this was unfair).