alt Hacker NewsWhile these discussions are always loaded with sentimental intepretation, and complex questions of what "rightful owner" after hundreds or thousands of years even means, I think more of an emphasis should be put on impact for the population.
After all, the British Museum, the main example for restitutions, is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation. The global cultural value it adds is much larger than individual museums all over the would could provide.
> Marieke van Bommel, director general of the National Museum of World Cultures, tells the New York Times’ Lynsey Chutel that “the thief cannot tell the rightful owners what to do with their property.”
And in the meantime the academic establishment seem to ignore doing what's best for the artefacts or the public. Abused children are taken away from their parents, but artefact are to simply be given back to whatever state has jurisdiction over some area they were in way back?
There seems to not be a simple answer on when things should be given back or not, but at least some effort should be put into figuring out some triage criteria.
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This assumes global cultural value matters more than the native cultural value of the people to whom the artifacts belong.
I think the default should be to return to the native country wherever possible. Although it does beg the question of what to do if the native countries have changed significantly due to imperialism/colonization, idk.
But I do appreciate the value of cross cultural sharing so perhaps museums could have a rotating selection that they can borrow for some time from the native country, as long as the transport does not have negative impacts on the artifacts.
> British Museum, […], is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation.
It grants free access to British citizens and those few who can afford to travel to the UK. The grand majority of the world’s population cannot afford this.
Most important, the locals living in cities that were pillaged by the British can’t access cultural items at all. Sure, the museum entry might be free, but they can’t afford to travel to an island far far away.
> After all, the British Museum, the main example for restitutions, is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation. The global cultural value it adds is much larger than individual museums all over the would could provide.
Most of the collection of the British Museum is not on display at any given moment (if ever). They could lose 90% of their inventory and the display would be exactly the same.
But that's beside the point. Museum entry may be free, but London is pretty expensive to go to, especially if you are from a place where the items in question were plundered (ie poor third world countries). In some cases it may even be illegal. Most of the people whose cultures those items belong to cannot afford to go visit the museum.
I agree with the sentiment, however in some ways it should be something that is permitted to move.
The UK has been very stable for a long time, however they are profiting indirectly from the museums, since it s a driver of tourism.
Should the UK become less stable, we should have a hard look at ensuring the continuity of the collection. As others have mentioned, a lot of these things would have been destroyed or forgotten had the British not decided it was important to keep it - and as time goes on, those things become even more irreplaceable.
Looting and pillaging is fine, as long as you build an entire economic / social system around it? Because that is the only semblance of logic I can take away from your statements. These museums didn't just pop into place for the artifacts to reside in; they were built to show off their spoils.
It would be sort of interesting, maybe if there was some sort of right to visit these artifacts, the idea that the UK was preserving their cultures for these countries would be a little more defensible. What percentage of a country’s population should be given a museum-funded trip to the UK, before we can say the museum is actually living up to that promise, I wonder? Half or so?
> Abused children are taken away from their parents, but artefact are to simply be given back to whatever state has jurisdiction over some area they were in way back?
The reason why children are protected from abusive parents, is because they are protected by human right laws. A child is legally entitled to an upbringing safe from abuse, so a state is obligated to remove children from abusive housrholds.
Of course antiquities aren't people so they don't have any human rights. That is why it's stupid to compare artifacts to abused children.
> complex questions of what "rightful owner" after hundreds or thousands of years even means
I think that's besides the point.
To me this means a goodhearted effort to right past wrongs.
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@rygorous/113219189748801451
> art project idea: "The British Museum", which is housed somewhere outside the UK and will accept and display any donations from anonymous donors into its collection that were provably stolen from Great Britain
> After all, the British Museum, the main example for restitutions, is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation. The global cultural value it adds is much larger than individual museums all over the would could provide.
Firstly, as others have pointed out, the British Museum is not freely accessible to the vast majority of the world population. The world is larger than WEIRD countries and the richer sections of formerly colonised countries countries
Secondly, it is not the British Museum's decision to make about whether the cultural artifacts of other people is more valuable to "global culture" than it is to the culture it originated from. Let's take an example: India and China both have a population more than double that of the EU. Which means a museum located in either country provides visa-free access to billions of people with relatively cheap travel.
Would that be an argument to move the Girl With the Pearl Earring from The Hague's Mauritshuis to New Delhi or Beijing? Would it be an argument to move the painting to the British Museum? Indeed why not move the entire Mauritshuis to the British Museum? After all London receives far more visitors than The Hague does. Surely the global cultural value of those artifacts is greater than the value that the Dutch place on it.
Consider that you apply this logic to extract all Dutch artwork from that country and place it in a second country. Consider that the second country was largely responsible for such extraction, which included not only cultural artifacts but also wealth. Consider that the second country now places visa restrictions that make it harder for Dutch people to visit the country and even if they did, the cost of actually doing so would largely exclude most Dutch people. What effect would this extraction of cultural heritage have on the Dutch?
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While London is indeed a global city, access is very much not equal.
Immigration/tourism requirements are always the strictest against the very countries who were plundered during colonial times, in comparison to rich countries with an imperial past/present.
Most of the world will never visit the UK. Most of the value that the British museum supplies goes back to the UK in the form of tourism and to close allies of the UK in terms of exposure to these artifacts.