In defence of the UK’s pre-eminent cultural institution, the theft of 2,000 items shows some vigilance when compared with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France’s loss of 30,000 books and manuscripts two decades ago. The British Museum’s recovery efforts are less impressive. Last October George Osborne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer who now chairs the museum’s trustees, announced that “350 objects have been recovered”. This figure rose to 351 in January, and then “hundreds” in February, according to the museum’s website.
Ten out of the heroic hundreds have been turned into what the museum calls an exhibition but is actually a single display case. Rediscovering gems: small wonders, big impressions is the title. This could be the world’s smallest show, with around 12 square inches of exhibits. The impression will be bigger with the accompanying magnifying glasses.
Osborne’s message was delivered in conjunction with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which gets us closer to the apathy about art and heritage at the heart of Britain’s leadership. What sort of ménage à trois is this ministry? Things used to be even worse. Until last year, these three mismatched entities were joined by a fourth: the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.
This may seem unimportant, but the department in both its manifestations must have been taking less interest in thievery at the nation’s top museum than playing with ampersands and ungrammatical nomenclature. With puppet-masters like this, it’s hard to blame the British Museum for its failings. Instead of the ministry sharing the blame, it was all put on the hapless (and very honourable) Hartwig Fischer, the museum’s director.
Far more significant than the purloined artefacts at the British Museum, however, is its missing mission. The loss of a tiny, neglected part of an eight million-plus collection doesn’t compare with the drift away from the mandate to “ensure the collection is housed in safety, conserved, curated, researched and exhibited”. Fischer, like his predecessor Neil MacGregor, was adept with benefactors. The ability to milk sponsors has become a museum director’s key skill set. Other duties are a distraction, and lack of government funding means that the UK has now turned to the naming of galleries after donors, as has been happening in the US for a long time.
Corporations and loving couples can also buy themselves a museum director. Titles such as “The Margaret and Terry Stent Director”, to take an example from the Smithsonian, are increasingly part of the patronage package. We should be grateful that when the British Museum recently renewed its sponsorship deal with a British company, Sir Mark Jones did not become “Interim BP Director of the British Museum”. It’s a puzzle that with so much bad publicity the trustees would have chosen to continue with this business partner. Is £50 million over 10 years really worth a decade of protests from climate activists? Pondering the Britishness of the British Museum, at least we have an answer with BP plc. Should the museum also drop “British” from its name and become BM plc? The original intention was to be borderless; it was meant to be a “universal museum”.
Expectations of a Catholic approach in any sense would have been low in 1753, with a collection formed by an Ulster Protestant. Sir Hans Sloane turned out to be as open-minded as most of his successors. Not every acquisition would later be controversial, and a large number of them were both Catholic and obtained fairly.
A decade before Lord Elgin offloaded his souvenirs of Athens onto the British public for £35,000 in 1816, another collection of antiquities had been the British Museum’s pride. Charles Townley sold his more diverse collection for around half the price of Elgin’s monocultural marbles. Even after the Parthenon Sculptures were installed, Townley’s assemblage continued to be more widely admired.
This was despite the owner being from a recusant Lancashire family, and Townley overcame discrimination against Catholics to become a British Museum trustee. Opinions on his collection went in the opposite direction. From being the brightest stars in the collection’s firmament, his thousands of acquisitions ended up in the basement, where most of them still moulder. With the latest micro-exhibition, I’m glad to see that it’s Townley gems to the rescue; the thieves also had an eye for quality.
Instead of endless defensive actions against restitution claims, the British Museum could divert attention to other objects. The first step might be to clear out the Duveen Gallery of Parthenon Sculptures and put Townley’s esoterica back in the limelight.
Another obvious diversion for a universal museum would be to present the little Catholic art that is on display as part of a golden tapestry of global interaction. Rather than fighting off Johnny Foreigner, embrace him through the culture that has touched lives on every continent. Even the Benin Bronzes could tell a more nuanced story with their Portuguese-Catholic content, overlooked in favour of handwringing over British theft and revenge.
The same could apply to Latin America and Asia. Where are the sublime ivory crucifixes from Goa, Ceylon and southern China that were so sought after by medieval churches in Europe? Wouldn’t the six billion-plus citizens of all these regions be intrigued to see their creative triumphs in Bloomsbury – even if they are of a different religion?
At present, the 8,000 residents of Easter Island have failed to bring their ancestral statue back home, and yet efforts to appease this small but disgruntled community now extend to a shrine being permitted in front of their Hoa Hakananai’a (abducted by British sailors in 1868).
On the official British Museum map there are a number of “don’t miss” attractions. These include the four Most Wanted: Hoa Hakananai’a, the Parthenon Sculptures, the Benin Bronzes and the Rosetta Stone. Either the management is determined to flaunt its most contentious wares or it’s trying to help troublemakers with a poor sense of direction.
There is only one “don’t miss” Christian item mentioned. The Holy Thorn Reliquary is among the most important and expensive works ever created, an appropriate receptacle for a piece of Christ’s crown. There are no annoying crowds of selfie-enthusiasts in front of this one.
There are many more “please do miss” items that don’t appear on the map. How about the earliest English mosaic image of Christ? The large 4th-century masterpiece is from Dorset rather than Damascus. Harder to spot is another of the most important works in the history of world art: a 5th-century casket features one of the very first images of the Crucifixion, adjacent to Judas hanging himself.
Maybe the latter is semi-hidden in case HRH the Prince of Wales chances upon it. In his days as Duke of Cambridge he declared that he wanted anything made of ivory in the Royal Collection destroyed.
The future king would be more approving of a recent gift to the British Museum: a “Lampedusa Cross”. These were crafted by a Sicilian carpenter from the wrecks of refugee boats and given to survivors. After a brief showing, it was swiftly removed and sent on a tour of England. According to the museum inventory it is now “not on display”.
At least we should be grateful that the British Museum has maintained the BC/AD format, and even uses AD correctly, putting it before the date. But the galleries at the British Museum are a disappointment for those who want to understand how central Christianity has been to 2,000 years of global history, and littered with lost opportunities.
Meanwhile, the museum’s latest exhibition, Legion: Life in the Roman Army, opened last month and looks like another evasive manoeuvre. Crucifixion is covered, but not the one that changed the world – and especially the Roman world – forever. There’s more missing at the British Museum than stolen artefacts.
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