alt Hacker NewsThe labeling of things in museums as "stolen" is lacking, IMO. In some cases, yes... straight up looted items are in museums. In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil) if they had not been taken and put in museums outside of the places where they originated. Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day.
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.
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>The labeling of things in museums as "stolen" is lacking, IMO. In some cases, yes... straight up looted items are in museums.
If the best place to hide a lie is between two truths then the best place to hide a stolen item is between two that were legitimately acquired. This debate always seems to acknowledge that there are items completely illigitmately acquired but then shrug shoulders that nothing can be done because there are other items that were legitmatley acquired and somehow that's supposed to be convicing.
It's an idictment against the British Museum and by extension the UK that these items we do agree are stolen simply aren't returned.
> Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day.
This is a bad argument, because it's irrelevant.
Imagine getting your car stolen, and the thief says it's justified because he is rich (partly due to stealing a lot of cars) and he can afford to send the car to the shop for maintenance more often.
The object belongs to the original owner. Even if that original owner would choose to destroy or damage their object on purpose that would be up to them.
And in some cases, the items were lost because they were put in museums. Europe was not exactly a stable place in the 20th century. Many things were destroyed in the wars, and many items were stolen from museums by conquerors, individual soldiers, and looters.
I like how museums in Berlin look at this problem. Once I visited an exhibition that was fully dedicated to provenance research and it did label some items, although with less straightforward language (I don’t remember seeing the word „stolen“). https://www.smb.museum/en/research/provenance-research/
And of course this has happened: https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/ethnologische...
> political, economic, social turmoil
I can see a happy medium, where (ex)colonizers return artifacts to neutral safe harbor near the home country.
If Indonesia is unstable or if museums don't meet standards, then let artifacts be held in Australia. If Egypt is too unstable, then have the artifacts returned to Dubai. With the frequency of 'just stop oil' vandalism, I'm not sure if the west is the safest place for these artifacts anyway.
Alternatively, national embassies also make for great safe harbor. This way the artifacts are nominally returned to the home country, without needing to cross borders or jeopardizing the artifact's safety.
>In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil) if they had not been taken and put in museums outside of the places where they originated. Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day.
You don't seem to be disputing that the items were stolen but rather claiming that some of the theft was justified.
> In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil)
That's a hard sell when the country that winds up with the artifacts was also the primary agitator of political, social and economic turmoil (you know, the usual colonial stuff). An arsonist shouldn't get to keep victims' heirlooms to "save them from the conflagration".