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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some of the museums aren’t the right place to keep some of the artifacts, but I also feel that in general they have been good stewards. My counterpoint is wondering how many would have been destroyed by ISIS or civil unrest in some of the less stable regions of the world.
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Nice! I think about this every time i'm in an English museum
I know some of the museums aren’t the right place to keep some of the artifacts, but I also feel that in general they have been good stewards. My counterpoint is wondering how many would have been destroyed by ISIS or civil unrest in some of the less stable regions of the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some of the museums aren’t the right place to keep some of the artifacts, but I also feel that in general they have been good stewards. My counterpoint is wondering how many would have been destroyed by ISIS or civil unrest in some of the less stable regions of the world.
There's 2 separate Hague conventions establishing an international framework for how to protect heritage in conflict regions. They're not perfect (like pretty much any convention), but they address all the basic issues like sheltering artifacts abroad and dedicating military units to prevent destruction. Also, western institutions have not been ideal stewards themselves, historically. The Pergamon kept the Ishtar gat…
Stuff the British Stole is a really good podcast (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) that explores the difficulties of these situations: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/stuff-the-british-sto... Things like: - The current government in power may not allow the artifacts to be returned to the original people, but will accept them and place them in the national museum. In many of these cases; the original people…
The UK government occasionally does give things back on the understanding that they can be returned for a bit when required... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Scone
Stuff the British Stole is a really good podcast (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) that explores the difficulties of these situations: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/stuff-the-british-sto... Things like: - The current government in power may not allow the artifacts to be returned to the original people, but will accept them and place them in the national museum. In many of these cases; the original people…
The UK government occasionally does give things back on the understanding that they can be returned for a bit when required... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Scone
Stuff the British Stole is a really good podcast (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) that explores the difficulties of these situations: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/stuff-the-british-sto... Things like: - The current government in power may not allow the artifacts to be returned to the original people, but will accept them and place them in the national museum. In many of these cases; the original people…
- the artifact is likely to be seen by significantly more people and serves a much greater purpose to expose/educate those people (from other cultures) to/about the culture from which it came
The discussion is important and the history of how these museums came to have the items they do is fraught with depredation but that is't the whole story. I feel like there is nuance around how many of these items that have ended up in the museums of the West and that nuance is paved over by labeling everything as stolen.