AIBU to wonder why the British Museum gets singled out?

[BluesandClues]

I am forever seeing posts on social media about how the British Museum stole everything, and they should give things back. It always someone just ranting at the camera as well, with lots of bad guy/good guy vibes. There’s never a discussion of the various facts of the matter.

I never see posts about other museums, why is it always the British museum?

James Acaster sums it up pretty well

It’s just one of many woke bandwagons to jump on for the hard-of-thinking. Everyone has heard of the BM so it gets more clicks and attention, that’s all these idiots want.

It get's the half-wits who make such posts the maximum publicity.

Anyone with even the briefest knowledge of the British Museum Act knows it would take an Act of Parliament to allow the Museum to dispose of anything in its collection.

It does; I believe Greece wants (among other items), the Winged Victory of Samothrace back from the Louvre.

How would you feel if the Crown Jewels, the Sutton Hoo mask, 6 or 7 stones from Stonehenge, Shakespeare's original manuscripts, the Lewis Chessmen and the skeleton of Richard III were all in a Museum called The American Museum?

Taken there by people who just arrived, picked them up and took them away without permission?

The British museum is supposed to be the biggest and bestest* in the world, proud collector, so it has become a symbol of this.
Plus, many museums around the world work with local objects and copies/models of other stuff.

@CorporalJohn which is irrelevant for the debate

* this is intentional

Ignorance of world history.

Realistically, because it’s a big museum with a lot of collections from other parts of the world. We have some local museums near us, but they’re filled with Bronze Age stuff from the moorland like 10 minutes away. Other countries have similar debates though. I used to live in New York and the Met faced similar critiques 20 years ago. This is nothing new or woke, but the average person who only reads the Daily Mail clearly doesn’t follow what’s going on in the art world.

Because it is one of the most prolific collections, and also because there is an act of law which specifically prohibits the restitution or disposal of these items.
Some other museums etc have adopted different policies or stances on contested history, including seeking restitution or other grants / loans.

What ‘various facts of the matter’ do you want to see? Maybe get off social media and watch a documentary like ‘Stuff the British Stole.’

So long as it was a reputable scholastic institution, I would be totally indifferent. In the same way as I am about the large number of British authors' papers held in US university libraries, the huge number of British medieval manuscripts held in the Pierpont Morgan Collection and the fact that the 4th side of the "Franks Casket" (Google it) is in Florence.

Similarly, I am not bothered that the largest collection of English Tudor and Jacobean silverware in the world is held in Russia.

It is the credentials and validity of the holder of these items that matters. Not their geographical location.

Other museums are similarly discussed. Why would you hear about the debates about the Louvre or the Met in NYC in the UK press? Have you even looked into it or just assumed it’s only because we’re British?

On top of that, no other museum has collections as vast as the British Museum, so there is more to discuss and debate.

Because the BM contains lots of artefacts that were taken from other countries without permission of the locals. Most controversially the frontages of the parthenon in Athens, which were nicked by the then British ambassador under the pretext of taking plaster casts of them, and then sold to the museum.

And not just the BM. Any British National Museum. The V&A have developed an interesting model with their 19th C African looted art. They have permanently lent part of the collection back to the country, and there will be revolving loans. Seems an excellent partnership model.

Accessibility is important.

I disagree. Cultural treasures should be accessible to the cultures (or descendants thereof) of the cultures who made them.

My personal opinion is that the British Museum should hold British artefacts.
The artefacts and various exhibitions which have been appropriated (stolen) from other countries should be returned to their countries of origin.
Great Britain,including all its name changes, has a varied past, let's celebrate it.

Honestly, I’d probably feel the same way.

That being said, it doesn’t take away my individual desire to want more factual information instead of just ranting at a camera.

I follow one archeologist on TikTok who got so much flack for just being excited about seeing Zendaya wearing those historical earrings at Odyssey premiere. A decision she had nothing to do with at all.

I think that is a respectable pov in many cases.

But in general it seems that many items came from countries from which it is harder (expense wise) for the population / members of that country to visit the BM than it would be for us to see the artefacts in their place of origin. I think this fuels some of the resentment.

I saw the Parthenon marbles last year, and was struck by how it is a frieze that tells a story, and it has been cut in half. It IS a spectacle at the length that is in the BM but it would be so spectacular if it was restored to its whole length and telling the complete story.

As if the French and us were arguing about holding the Bayeux Tapestry that had been cut in half.

Did you see Huw Locke's exhibition at the BM last year?

Sure, the reason people criticise the British Museum for this can't possibly be because of out of all the museums in the UK it holds the largest collection of priceless stolen goods items from around the world.

No, it's because "woke".

Honestly, something which isn’t emotive and dripping with bias.

In the 19th and 20th century, rich Americans bought up all kinds of British cultural treasures and whisked them off to the USA. Some of Turners greatest paintings are in the US, so too many of the best paintings by Constable and Gainsborough. Over half the original first folios of Shakespeare's plays are in the US, so are many of Keats' original letters, the Brontes little hand-made books, and countless precious manuscripts belonging to Milton, Shelley, Wordsworth, Dickens, Jane Austen and Byron. The most important copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, dating from 1400, is held in San Marino, California, ffs. I could go on.

Do people complain?! Of course not!! The British, and especially the English, have no right to an identity. On the contrary, the left are doing all they can to cancel our great writers and demonise our national heroes. We have been taught to hate ourselves and reject our own culture. The left are glad to see the back of such treasures. After all, they're trying to impose a new identity on us, and they don't want any reminders of the past getting in the way.

Now the British Museum is a different matter.

1. People outside of Europe DO have the right to an identity.
2. Pretending to be angry makes you feel warm and good and morally superior
3. It's yet another great opportunity to make British people ashamed.

If stealing an item and purchasing an item were morally equivalent then - ignoring your made-up nonsense about what the "left" want - you'd be approaching something of a point. But as they're not, you don't.

The key word here is "bought", presumably from a seller who owned the artefact and had the right to sell it.

And in any case, many of those exports would not be permitted nowadays.

agree , the Berlin museums are stuffed with things from Egypt , Greece etc . I'd say they've got more of the Parthenon in Berlin than anywhere else including the Acropolis

@Dappy777 The word 'bought' is quite important in your first sentence.

And please provide evidence of Lefty Glee at these treasures being sold.