In October 1860, during the Second Opium War, British and French forces attacked the Summer Palace near what was then Peking. Built of jade and marble and filled with treasures crafted exclusively for the imperial family, it had been described as a “dazzling cavern of human fantasy”. Three days of looting left it a smoking ruin. Eyewitnesses told of soldiers carrying off strings of pearls and pencil cases set with diamonds. The empress’s pekinese was also taken and, tactlessly renamed “Looty”, presented to Queen Victoria.
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Keeping Their Marbles – ‘an outstanding achievement… wide-ranging and incisive.’
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“Courageous and well argued.” Henrik Bering reviews Keeping Their Marbles
But what concerns Ms. Jenkins is not so much the legal arguments but something deeper: From the early days of private curio cabinets and onward, the underlying idea of a museum was a desire to understand the world, an ambition to tell a common story. Thus the Enlightenment espoused the notion of a common civilization of mankind— Voltaire saw man as being “always what he is now.” It is this idea of universalism, the museum as a place of shared experience, that has come under attack.
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Who Owns Culture? Start the Week, BBC Radio 4
On Start the Week, Tom Sutcliffe discusses who owns culture. The writer Tiffany Jenkins tells the story of how western museums have come to acquire treasures from around the world, but dismisses the idea of righting the …
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Does one ethnic group own its cultural artefacts?
Objects that once adorned display cases in museums around the world are disappearing from view. In recent decades, dramatic wooden Iroquois face masks, crafted by the nations and tribes of indigenous people of North America, have been taken off the shelves. Article on Aeon.
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Historical apologists should beware bloody history of Benin Bronzes
‘Benin is a city of blood, its pits full of dead and dying; human sacrifices were strewn about on every hand, hardly a thing was without a red stain.’ That was how the Illustrated London News recorded the destruction of Benin City – in what is modern-day southern Nigeria – when, in 1897, a British naval expedition was raised to avenge the deaths of nine officers killed during a trade dispute between the king of Benin and Britain. That dispute was, in turn, part of the wider 19th-century struggle between the European powers as they competed to carve up the riches of the African continent. Britain sent a force of 500 men to destroy the city, with one eye-witness describing how the British troops turned their newly manufactured Maxim machine guns on the local defenders, who fell from the trees ‘like nuts’. After ten days of fierce fighting, the British burnt down the palace and looted the royal treasures: delicate ivory carvings and magnificent copper alloy sculptures and plaques – now known as the Benin Bronzes.
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Obsessing about past ‘wrongs’ is to miss the power of culture
Two bark etchings and an emu figure made in south-eastern Australia in the mid 19th century are the subject of a dispute between the British Museum and indigenous activists. Only three bark drawings from this area, …
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The Western production & disposition of knowledge is the best way to research history & culture
Museums’ quest for knowledge is today under strain, amid angry debates over who owns culture.
