‘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?

Compare the state of the caryatid in the BM with the ones that stood on the Erechtheion for longer and suffered from the Athenian air pollution (now safe in the excellent climate controlled museum in Athens) though. It’s just not that simple.

So if someone was throwing a sofa away and you rescued it... they should just be able to take it back from you?

By being gifted the item, buy conducting business all legit at the time of the acquisitions.

Back in history differerent times, different agreements.

Plus ask your selves. If the British m. Had not acquired these items, how many would be looted, how many in private collections, etc.

That's the thing, we helped to save the items for future generations and we acquired them legally at the time, why then should we now return the items just because they have new leaders ?

But what if someone breaks into your house and throws your sofa away? And in the course of you kicking him out of your house your other furniture gets trashed.
It’s so complicated.
I used to read and write a lot about this back when I was an academic- I have been interviewed on national radio about it- but I still can’t work out what I think about restitution. Both sides make a mixture of reasonable and unreasonable arguments imo.

I don't think Elgin saved anything for anyone other than himself. The only thing I think should be done is to remove his name from the Marbles.

People have always done this.

Anyone been to the bloody Vatican recently? The entire place is full of plundered shit. Gold, marble, the lot. In Venice they spent centuries robbing everyone they went near, and each time they came back home they had random bits of priceless treasures to stick all over the Doge's Palace.

This is the part that bemuses me. Imagine going to the police.
We've had some stuff stolen
What is missing Sir?
We're not sure, as we don't know what we have in the first place. 😅

If these national institutions can't catalogue & account for their collections then they should return items to countries of origin. You can't justify hanging on to them for research, or safeguarding, or for loaning to other institutions if you don't know what you have. It blows a huge hole in the argument that they are trustworthy custodians of material history & culture. I can see it is probably a funding issue but to some extent it must be due to a culture of complacency too.

But the stuff they can’t account for isn’t the same as the stuff that is wanted back. They won’t have lost bits of Parthenon frieze, it will be smaller less exciting objects that they have in multiples, and I assure you that UK museums aren’t unique in having funding crises, overloaded and inadequate storage, documentation backlogs, not to mention security problems.

It is terrible PR for the British Museum but it doesn’t really mean that the collection would be better off dispersed and looked after elsewhere.

I think for some items that if they had to be returned or potentially is how secure the items would be, how long before they potentially end up in a private collection etc.

Yes not all countries would be like that.

Many are not on display as they were destroyed.
Some are on display.
Some of the Elgin Marbles were being destroyed as he saved them. Some of them may have been Taken by more illicit means. But lets not pretend that they were being looked after at the time.

and I do believe that they should go back especially as they would be going to a specially designed museum for them.

👏

Nobody is claiming they were being looked after. Greece was under Turkish occupation and I imagine they had other worries... But times have moved on, and their rightful place is back in Athens - where they were taken from.

Continuing to call them the Elgin Marbles also irks.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel but my point is that they use their world class stewardship & scholarship as a justification for hanging on to the big important stuff. If they can't keep track of their collections (no matter how fragmented & insignificant artefacts may seem) then they can't claim this superior status. It's hypocritical.

So if someone was throwing a sofa away and you rescued it... they should just be able to take it back from you?

Nobody was "throwing away" the Parthenon marbles though.

Museums and art galleries throughout the world contain paintings, statues, coins, swords, etc, from other countries. That's kind of the definition of a museum. There are many, many paintings and objects produced in this country that I'd love to see, but I can't because rich Americans have bought them and taken them to the USA. That includes several paintings by Turner, Leighton, Waterhouse and the Pre-Raphaelites – all of them British. Tolkien said that he wrote Lord of the Rings as a dedication "to England, my country." Yet so many things connected with him (including the desk at which he wrote his books) are now in the USA.

No museum has a complete catalogue of everything they own - it's simply impossible given the scale of the collections, the backlog of undocumented objects and the levels of resource that museums struggle to make do with. Documentation is carried out on a rolling basis but it's a constant balance with lower and lower levels of funding to keep the buildings secure and operating as visitor attractions. That said, the BM has some particular cultural issues which hopefully this incident will shine a light on.

My experience is in local authority museums but management are far more interested in spending resources on public facing events than cataloging. Proper documentation is specialised and slow work, there’s no way round it. To management though it’s a waste of time or should just happen magically without putting resources into it. The job creation schemes in the 1980s were utilised and made a massive mess of things.
someone mentioned auditing and I would say it’s an impossible task and would take years. In LA we were audited but it would be a random selection of a few items every year.

and I do believe that they should go back especially as they would be going to a specially designed museum for them.

I have to say I was really surprised the first time I saw them at the BM as I thought for such famous pieces they were quite poorly displayed. The Acropolis Museum is very well designed.

Because it's the right thing to do.

But if we acquired them legally etc at the time and there is a risk that returning said items could mean either theft, destroyed or sold for profit to a private collector, then it could also be the right and more moral thing to do, is keep them in the British museum for future generations.

There are many, many paintings and objects produced in this country that I'd love to see, but I can't because rich Americans have bought them and taken them to the USA. That includes several paintings by Turner, Leighton, Waterhouse and the Pre-Raphaelites – all of them British.

Indeed. But people do have the right to sell their own property. If a legitimate Greek government had chosen to sell off various statues that would be a different issue (although I'm sure modern Greeks would not be happy about it.)

However not only did the occupying Turks sell off someone else's heritage Elgin didn't buy freestanding statues, he caused immense criminal damage and there is also a dispute as to whether or not he actually had the permission to do that since the original plan was to make casts and drawings of the frieze, not physically rip it off. This is why it's so controversial and it can't be compared to a property owner selling off their own possessions.

As it is I'd be shocked if the BM relinquished possession, even though I think they should.

But if we acquired them legally etc at the time

But as I said upthread, it's not generally considered "legal" to keep stuff sold by WW2 occupying powers so why is this legal? Is it because it was longer ago, or because the occupation lasted much longer? Or because it's us?

Excellent casting choice!