‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’ The British Museum; the writhing …

[SurpriseSparDay]

I can’t be the only person utterly fascinated by the level of distraught handwringing disbelief the British Museum is experiencing right now.

Theft, eh?

How, pray, did this great institution acquire the artefacts contained therein? How?

George Osborne is the chairman. With no experience in running any cultural institutions, and a poor track record at dealing with fraud, blackmail of a sort (think HSBC when he was Chancellor) or money laundering.

It's not just the director who should go.

@AppleBlossomTimeNow, I was extremely surprised to hear on the Today programme this morning the the museum has no central catalogue of exhibits and stored holdings.

So odd …

What were the British and other Europeans doing in China that caused the emperor to take such violent action against them?

Another example of those in charge refusing to listen to concerns. Dr Ittai Gradel, the curator who looked closely into the thefts and had proof of what was happening was, according to him, treated like ‘the village idiot’.
Since there is, apparently, no proper catalogued archive the actual extent of thefts will never be discovered.

There is a real problem with the provenance of antiquities.

Going slightly off topic (so sue me) but I reserve a special place in Hell for criminals who rip objects out of the ground with no thought for the scientific and historical context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seuso_Treasure

I was at the BM yesterday for their interesting exhibition about nineteenth century China. The place was heaving, and from the range of languages overheard, the majority of visitors were from overseas. All had free entry. I have been too many museums abroad, and it is usual to have to pay. Sometimes as a foreigner, you have to pay a lot more than the locals. I’m quite happy with the restitution of artefacts which can be proven to be acquired illegally, or even inappropriately by today’s standards. The Benin bronzes are a much more blatant case of this than the Parthenon frieze. However, if the museum ceases to be a world museum, and houses only British exhibits (of which it has many), there seems to me to be no argument for free entry to non locals.

I find this mentality fascinating. You're viewing conquest as a kind of divine right or the spoils of war rather than stealing. It reminds me of British people who spout stuff like 'we built the railways in India' as a justification for what happened to India. British exceptionalism at work - when we do it, it's OK. It's not OK and many countries are dealing with the massive fallout still. Elizabeth the first sent settlers over to take Irish land. Of course it was stealing. That's what taking stuff that never belonged to you is generally called.

??

What about the Louvre with Napoleon's "contributions"?

"We're so lucky that apparently the only museum in the world which has artefacts from all around the world, seems to be the British Museum in London, proud to be British...."

Seriously untrue.

I was being sarcastic, because it only ever seems to be a problem that us British have large collections of worldly treasures and artefacts yet you can view a whole heap of similar items in other 1st world nations selection of museums.

You're viewing conquest as a kind of divine right or the spoils of war rather than stealing.

Well to be fair, for all of recorded human history, Might has always been Right. Or to put it another way, who writes history ?

I seem to recall T H White was quite taken with the concept of Might is Right and wove it into "The Once And Future King" which was written in the 50s. (You'd never guess my DM was a leftie).

You can't move for Roman ruins in Rome ...

It is interesting isn’t it as loads of other countries have similar artefacts but without the angst to go with it.
The Pergamon museum in Germany houses the Ishtar gate for example which Iraq officially requested in 2002 but they have just ignored that request and now they won’t even be on display for years due to renovations in the museum.

We hear a lot about the British Museum specifically because we’re in Britain and because there are particular high-profile examples like the Elgin Marbles and Benin bronzes. However, I have recently read about this topic with reference to similar museums in other parts of the world so this does concern them, yes.

One recent piece seemed disapproving of the very concept of ‘museums of everywhere’ and I hope that isn’t the end destination here. I’m not particularly interested in going to see 3D printout replicas as I’ve seen suggested. My hope would be more very long-term loans between collections, as well as the permanent exchange of items between nations.

I'm not saying it's OK I'm saying that things happened in history and trying to divide people into victims and perpetrators is naive. If Germans didn't want their eastern territories taken away they shouldn't have supported a vicious unprovoked war.

If the Manchus didn't want their palaces burned down then they shouldn't have tortured European diplomats. The Manchus had no more right to China than the British had to India. Both were invaders. The Moghuls were invaders too. They came from central Asia and were of Mongol and Turkic descent.

As for the Irish, they invaded western Scotland. Gaelic is not an indigenous language of Scotland, it was introduced by Irish invaders. At the same time Angles were invading south-eastern Scotland and their language became the Scots language.

Where I live Vikings who got kicked out of Ireland asked an English queen if they could settle in Wirral. She gave them permission so you could say that's not stealing. That makes them good guys I guess.

DH works in this area.. And has worked with the BM in the past. It was his experience that an attitude of academe versus everyone else was entrenched and expertise from dealers etc often ignored. What he found most credible about this farce was the Museums lack of action when the issue was raised.
There's no surprise the catalogue is far from complete though, the collection is truly vast. Museums have few resources at the best of times and this work is often not seen as a priority by those higher up. Maybe this will change now... fingers crossed...

Yes.
@Naominumbers as much as it's silly for Britain to pretend that it was 'modernising' other nations it's disingenuous to imply that they were the only ones. Or that all negative effects are their fault.
Anybody with even a passing interest in history knows that empire, war and conquering as concepts have existed since the dawn of humanity.

Museums have few resources at the best of times and this work is often not seen as a priority

Without having given it an enormous amount of thought I had always assumed that every museum contained a back room full of serious experts and eager interns spending all their waking hours cataloguing and researching everything they held. Strange to realise this isn’t actually the case!

I am also unsurprised.
I did the sort of PhD that might have led to me working there but no openings came up at the right time. However I knew a number of people who applied there and it always seemed to be the case that the jobs went to the man whose face fitted rather than the better qualified woman. It therefore doesn’t surprise me that they have ended up with a bit of a boys’ club where they ignore evidence of theft because they all just know the others are jolly good chaps.

Sadly I don’t think the current chair of trustees is going to be much use in changing that culture.

There's a difference between getting something by right of conquest and getting something by stealing.

Isn't the former still stealing but with added bloodshed? I think the point is that it's highly debatable whether "right of conquest" has any legitimacy in this day and age.

By hacking them OFF the Parthenon. They weren't standalone statues you know. That's actually criminal damage. They were also damaged by chemical cleaning at the BM in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Many of those that remained are in the Acropolis Museum. So they too were presumably "saved from destruction" and not by Elgin.

Got to admit I have laughed at the irony of the BM getting het up about stolen artefacts.

Elgin bought the marbles from an occupying power. People generally think it right that items sold on in World War II by occupying powers should be returned to the original owners.

So is it only acceptable if it happened 200 years ago, not 80?

Bravo! I recall being on the Acropolis being harangued by the guide about the Elgin marbles being 'stolen', despite Elgin buying them from the then government. When she was asked what happened to the rest she breezily said Oh they were destroyed by the Turks and others in subsequent invasions, obviously too simple to see the irony of the fact that Elgin's marbles are still whole and can be freely seen! Does anyone ever take Germany to task about the Pergamon Museum or many others on Museum Island in Berlin or Nefertiti in the Neues Museum, both of which charge a lot ?

Many were destroyed by subsequent invaders long before the Greeks cared about them.