Is history catching up with The British Museum?
Tacita Quinn
There is loot in the British Museum.
In the last few years, discussions about loot and contested objects at the British Museum have mounted, becoming a source of public conjecture, scholarly debate and even the grounds for diplomatic spats.
In what is an interesting approach from the British Museum, a new exhibition has been staged in the Great Court Gallery that addresses the impact of British imperialism on the collection.
British and Guyanese artist Hew Locke’s exhibition what have we here? aims to interrogate how the British empire and colonialism created, maintained and sustains the museum’s collection. It is the first new artistic intervention at the British Museum since Grayson Perry’s 2011 show The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman.
Locke’s exhibition, which opened in October and runs until February 2025, has come at an important time, as the reputation of the museum has become precarious. Calls for the museum to return culturally significant items to other nations have mounted, as it has suffered from internal thefts and an increasingly villainous public persona.
As Dr Eva Miller, who teaches a module on universal museums at University College London, pointed out: “A big part of their public image is as this museum that steals stuff, that has stolen stuff.
“The British Museum, in particular, has become the villain of all museums.”
With a new Director, Nicholas Cullinan, at its helm, the museum faces a new future as it attempts to grapple with its own history. But why is this important?
The Collection:
The collection at the British Museum was initially based on the private collection of Sir Hans Sloane, a British physician and botanist, who left his collection to the British people in his will. This is his legacy.
Sloane’s reputation as a physician and a naturalist helped to establish three of the UK’s major cultural institutions and is part of his legacy. However, establishing this reputation meant complicity with the slave trade.
The British Museum’s collection grew through a number of different means with the expansion of the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Some artefacts were acquired through private donations that have links to the empire (like Sloane’s) but others were amassed by means that depended directly on colonialism.
The British Museum is not the only museum whose collection amassed with the expansion of an empire, and in recent years questions over whether museums do more harm than good have proliferated.
Miller said: “One of the things that we do in my course is to query why museums are important - are museums a good thing?
“Or are museums actually tainted in a way that we can never get over?”
“Sloane was noted for his learning, his consistent benevolence, his modesty and being very ‘attentive to Matters of Fact’. He conveyed the Chelsea Physick Garden, which he owned, to the care of the Society of Apothecaries. It flourishes beautifully to this day”
2020:
In 2020, Sloane’s bust at the British Museum was removed from a pedestal in the Enlightenment Gallery, and placed in a protective glass box, amongst other objects that contextualised his legacy.
This was just one of many of the curatorial decisions that were made in museums, galleries and public spaces in the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2020.
The movement began after 46-year-old George Floyd was murdered in police custody, but came to highlight racism and discrimination across all areas of life. This included prompting museums and institutions to think more carefully about their history and how it is displayed.
Black Lives Matter helped push curatorial questions into the public space, as Miller explained: “I think it spurred institutions to develop threads that were already being developed in the 2010s.
“It also encouraged a lot of institutions to think about the fact that they had to talk about histories that related to empire and slave holding exploitation.”
Photo by Liam Edwards on Unsplash
Photo by Liam Edwards on Unsplash
“No matter how much we are asked to look only at his talents as a physician and his passion for botany and collecting, the fact remains that much of the money Sloane used to purchase the objects that today lie within our national museum came from the murderous exploitation of African men, women and children.”
Where are we now?
Despite questions being raised over what the future of the British Museum might look like, it is undeniable that museums remain culturally significant.
Miller said: “Museums are important because they are one of the main spaces for public history and public education. They're very influential in how the wider public understands learning and understands knowledge.”
Visitors clearly agree as, despite dips over the pandemic, The British Museum has regained its place as the most visited attraction in the UK last year, according to data from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.
Despite the British Museum climbing back to the top of the leaderboard, controversy has still affected its reputation in the last few years. In August last year, the news of a staff member stealing and damaging over 1,800 artefacts made headlines across the world.
In an official statement at the time, the then director of the British Museum Hartwig Fisher said: “This is a highly unusual incident.
“I know I speak for all colleagues when I say that we take the safeguarding of all the items in our care extremely seriously.
“The Museum apologises for what has happened, but we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right.”
Although the museum has reportedly recovered 626 of the stolen items, the thefts have had a negative impact on the museum’s reputation.
Miller said: “This was particularly bad because it undercut this justification that the British Museum has been using for decades when other controversies arise, which is that they protect and steward the heritage of the world.
“So, it's quite obvious that they weren't actually protecting the heritage of the world very well.”
This is one of many justifications the British Museum has used for keeping artefacts that are contested by other countries.
The most famous repatriation request was made in 1983 from the Greek government for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles that reside in one of the British Museum’s permanent galleries. A recent YouGov poll has suggested that almost half of Britons support their return.
Despite this, the museum is subject to The British Museum Act of 1963 which prohibits the ‘disposal’ of any object unless it falls into a small array of exceptional circumstances. None of the contested objects currently part of the British Museum collection satisfy the conditions of the law.
In the last ten years countries mounting restitution claims against the British museum has risen substantially. Here are some of the collections that have come under contestation. None of them have been returned.
Australia:
The return of an Aboriginal shield made from wood was requested by Rodney Kelly, an aboriginal man with ancestors in the Sydney region. This request was made after the shield was displayed in Australia in 2015. It is probably the oldest shield from Australia in any collection in the world. There is no record of how it came to belong to the British Museum.
Ethiopia:
Requests for the return of objects from the site of Maqdala in northern Ethiopia have been in discussion for the last five years. British forces invaded the Maqdala fortress in 1868, which was followed by the widespread looting of the city. These objects were then auctioned nearby, with a sizeable number being bought by Richard Rivington Holmes, an assistant in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. Holmes was sent in an official capacity as an archaeologist with the military campaign, a decision approved by the government and aided by a Treasury grant of £1000.
Rapa Nui (Easter Island):
In 2018, the return of two monolithic Moai were requested by the council of elders on behalf of the people of Rapa Nui, which is off the coast of Chile. In 1868, the crew of the HMS Topaze unearthed two of the Moai with the plan to bring them back to Britain. One of the Rapa Nui was gifted to Queen Victoria before she donated it to the British Museum.
Nigeria:
In 2021 the Benin Bronzes were officially requested back by Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, Nigeria. The occupation of Benin by British forces in 1897 witnessed the widespread looting of the city and the deaths of many of its people. Many of the items in the British Museum belonging to the city of Benin were taken as ‘spoils of war’. The collection of bronzes at the British Museum were mainly donated from private collections.
“Is there a problem at the Museum? Well, obviously there is a problem. Hence this discussion is taking place. It’s a call for dialogue, serious dialogue”
Hew Locke: what have we here?
Hew Locke is a British Guyanese artist who is famous for his life-size sculptural work that often confronts legacies of British colonialism.
In his artistic practice Locke has often positioned himself as a satirist. From the inside out, his work has poked and prodded at the edges of British establishments to gradually reveal dark truths about the empire, colonialism and enslavement.
Locke’s modus operandi is on full display in what have we here?
In what is a ground breaking approach from the British Museum, Locke exhibition tackles the tangled legacies of imperialism within the collection, actively describing some of the artefacts as 'loot'.
The exhibition is the culmination of a two-year collaboration between Locke and the British Museum, which enabled him to have unrestricted access to the museum’s archives. The display is not driven by a particular narrative, but is split thematically, encouraging visitors to draw connections between objects from around the world.
Some of the objects on display are from famous repatriation requests, like ornamental disks from Benin, and a plate, made in Britain, encasing a gold pendant that was part of the Asante Gold Regalia. Between 1873 and 1901, objects in the regalia were looted by British Troops during three conflicts in Asante, now modern-day Ghana.
Locke even includes his own OBE medal, writing next to it he said: “I accepted the title, so the medal - my own treasure, really - is here to acknowledge that I’m embedded in a certain culture, I’m not looking down and judging.”
The collection of objects in what have we here? are accompanied by Locke’s own creations, a series of watchers acting like a Greek chorus, passing judgement on the exhibits and visitors alike.
Locke’s own voice can be heard throughout the exhibition in audio clips, but his thoughts are also peppered throughout the exhibition in yellow cardboard notes, questioning preconceived historical narratives.
Commenting on the exhibition for her blog, the cultural historian, consultant and curator Dr Debbie Challis said: “What this exhibition does so well is draw attention to the people behind the objects.
“The people affected by economic and military conquest, whether the dispossessed children of royalty from African and Indian Kingdoms or those enslaved and brutally murdered when fighting back, or those whose lands are suddenly taken.”
Speaking to the Londoners sites, Challis added: “It was really interesting content to actually have those objects on display. I never thought I'd see that in the British Museum, quite frankly.”
Reflecting on whether the museum is facing up to its past, Challis said: “It's obviously a conversation that they have started to have in the museum and I think this is the start of a public conversation.
“I suspect they've been having it internally for some time.”
The British Museum’s history and ethos is under sharp scrutiny in Hew Locke’s exhibition, but will it learn from its previous mistakes?
Artist Hew Locke, with curators Indra Khanna and Isabel Seligman - Photograph© Richard Cannon
Artist Hew Locke, with curators Indra Khanna and Isabel Seligman - Photograph© Richard Cannon
Silver-gilt dish set with Asante gold pendant © The Trustees of the British Museum
Silver-gilt dish set with Asante gold pendant © The Trustees of the British Museum
The Watchers, 2024 © Hew Locke
The Watchers, 2024 © Hew Locke
Past, present and future:
Some say the future of the British Museum is uncertain, but it is clear that the new Director Nicholas Cullinan is carving out a new approach, one that is coinciding with a gigantic restoration of its Bloomsbury site dubbed as the Masterplan.
In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Cullinan said that the museum needed: “A complete holistic transformation, top to bottom, inside out, buildings, collection, visual identity.”
For those on the outside of the museum, however, Hew Locke’s exhibition what have we here? is only a step forward if the museum internalises its message. When asked whether this exhibition was a turning point, Challis said: “It depends what they do next.
“Is it a nice exhibition that came out of Black Lives Matter and feeling a need to do something?
“Obviously, there is a team at the British Museum who took that on and really worked hard get these objects out and look at them in a different way, but how much of the whole institution buy into it?”
Miller agreed: “Does this lead to changes and how they display things, and how they talk about things? Are there going to be permanent changes that come out of letting Hew Locke bring a new perspective to their history?”
Online too, some have requested the museum learn from the collaboration, while others have praised the exhibition’s novel approach.
Just last month, The Guardian reported that 53% of Britons support a permanent exhibition on Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade within the British Museum. A museum spokesperson said: “Our current exhibition created by the contemporary artist Hew Locke looks fully and critically at the issue of the transatlantic slave trade, and the Enlightenment Gallery has a permanent dedicated display.
"We also have a Collecting and Empire trail, which explores how the collection was shaped by this period of history.”
Earlier this year, before the Hew Locke exhibition opened, Tobey Ahamed-Barke in History Workshop argued: “It is one thing to state that Britain had an empire, as the various trails do.
“It is quite another to explain how violent British imperialism contributed to the holdings of British museums.”
Hew Locke’s what have we here? has been unique in its largescale analysis of the British Museum, colonialism and the empire.
Will the British Museum use Hew Locke’s artistic intervention as an example of how they have revolutionised their approach to histories of colonialism and the empire? Or will the museum look very different after the Masterplan, indicating that it has done this work for itself?
Only time will tell.
The British Museum have been approached for comment.
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