Originally published at: John Oliver on the big problem with museums | Boing Boing
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Second, museums claim that the objects in their possession are safer under the care of Western institutions than they would be in their home countries. There is also plenty of evidence that this is wrong, as there are many instances of less-than-ideal caretaking in many Western museums — there are numerous examples of objects being damaged by water leaks, destructive cleaning, and more.
Red herring though. Even if true, it doesn’t matter. If the Greeks want to leave the Elgin Marbles out in the rain, next to an artillery range for people who lack depth perception and have too much ammunition, that’s their right. “Less than ideal” or “better than ideal” doesn’t enter into it.
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James Acaster covered this topic in 4 minutes: James Acaster On The Absurdity Of The British Empire - YouTube
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I have to say - I got to spend a day at the British Museum and it was breathtaking the number of artifacts I got to see. The Rosetta Stone was so very cool to see.
That said - yeah - we really should make efforts to repatriate a lot of artifacts. As Oliver pointed out, some could still be shown on loan, and some could be purchased from the original places they were plundered.
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Was that deliberate, because if not, that was a very good guess.
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Indy certainly meant “This belong in a museum in it’s location of origin!”, right?
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Must have been subconscious. I wasn’t thinking about it, but I was aware of it. lol
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Why are the pyramid in Egypt? Because they were too heavy for the British to carry off easily.
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I’m sorry, but I disagree. There is a reason why we have the institution of UNESCO world heritage. Heritage belonging to one country, one people, is an antiquated 19th century view. Heritage belongs to all of us. That doesn’t mean people can take it from where it is without the locals’ consent (or even with the locals’ consent if there is a significant power imbalance), but it also doesn’t mean locals can do whatever they want with the history that belongs to all of us. Who are “the Greeks” anyway? Who speaks for all Greeks and can make this decision for them?
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A famous contemporary example being the Buddhas of Bamiyan, destroyed in 2001 by a culture that had nothing to do with their creation.
They didn’t belong in some Western museum but they really didn’t belong to the Taliban either.
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-ish. They have as much to do with the creators of the Buddhas as modern Greeks have with the makers of the Parthenon.
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Good photo but why is the one guy wearing a shirt with the Norwegian flag? Is that a literal false flag operation?? Dang British looters…
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My contacts with museums tell me that there are museums out there building relationships with people whose cultures connect them to artifacts. In those instances they’ve agreed that the artifacts can remain on display but every now and then someone needs to come in to spiritually charge them.
I don’t know exactly what these agreements look like. Hopefully it’s more mutual than, “We keep the artifact and you can come spend time with it. That’s it.”
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Sure, but who set up UNESCO in the first place? If something is in regular use, but is considered a heritage site, does that mean it should not be in regular use for it’s “own good”? And we should send in UN troops to enforce that (and yes, I know that’s not how UNESCO works… but it’s an extreme example to illustrate my larger point, which is WHO gets to make these decisions - bureacrats in NY and Geneva? Or people in the local community?
Even the UN, which many of us consider to be a world body that is charged with representing everyone, has serious problems with imposing western values and ideas about things like preservation on countries that have a different set of ideas about such things. And we should not dismiss that out of hand. That being said, I think UNESCO could be an effective body for the preservation of world culture, but that doesn’t mean it should come at the expense of what the people who have a direct connection to this culture want. We preserve culture FOR people, all people, and that should be directed by people who are the most impacted.
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From what I can tell from Wikipedia and its link to UNESCO rules, a site needs to be nominated by the country that it’s in before receiving that designation. So if locals really don’t want something to be designated as a World Heritage Site in the first place the UN isn’t going to come in and force the issue.
Also, I believe there are a number of examples of such sites that are still under “regular use,” including a number of major holy sites. Angkor Wat is just one of many such sites that never stopped being used by locals. I don’t think that’s really an issue either.
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For what it’s worth, I’ve been to the Acropolis Museum in Athens and seen the Elgin marbles (or maybe I should say Parthenon marbles since they’re the ones that weren’t taken) on display there. It’s a modern, professional museum, and it’s saddening to see the blank spaces reserved for the missing pieces that the British Museum refuses to give up. So it’s a red herring either way. The British Museum has nothing to gain from possessively clinging to a few marble slabs except continual bad publicity. They have hundreds of thousands of items in storage to take their place, and I don’t buy the “it’s a slippery slope, if we give away one thing we have to give away everything” argument.
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The point I was trying to make is not that UNESCO should step in if Greece decides to blow up the Parthenon (the hypothetical situation that started this sub-thread) but rather I wanted to use them as an illustration for an idea: that world heritage exists. That there is no such thing as a national heritage that nobody else may touch or concern themselves with. That while some groups are the current custodians of a particular heritage in space and in time, they are not the only ones in either of those dimensions, and owe it to the others (i.e. both other people currently alive and their own ancestors and descendants) to take care of it.
I recognise that we are coming from different starting points here: you, John Oliver and many in this thread from the point of view of colonialism, of people deprived of their heritage by others, and I from the point of view of nation states in the 19th century model, of people constructing their identity around an exclusive use of heritage. Because the example was of Greece (a colonised society at the time of the sale of the marbles, but a modern nation state today), my model seems appropriate to me to warn that it is not just about every local culture deciding what to do.
Don’t get me wrong: I am all for the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles, I simply disagreed with the contention that it would be the right of modern Greeks to blow up the Parthenon because it is “their” heritage.
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