5 ms·

Hopefully he's not just selling artifacts on the black market I understand your point, but why not? Isn't the British Museum basically loot from all over the

Hopefully he's not just selling artifacts on the black market I understand your point, but why not? Isn't the British Museum basically loot from all over the world? Wikipedia claims it has "8 million works". So maybe less than 1% is on display? And Britain isn't about to give any of that stuff back. So when an empire steals it's OK, but when "the little people" try to make a few bucks to cover costs, that's bad? Anyway, I'm just saying that it might be "better" in some sense to allow these artifacts out to collectors than to have them stored away in boxes in the locked storage areas of a museum.

adrianhon 12y ago
I think the British Museum's response would be that their objects are on display for the world for free, rather than hidden away in a private collection; and that researchers can also get free access to the works not on display. They'd also say that they are better placed to conserve their collection over the next few centuries than other collectors.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  How many significant figures do you need before the proportion of the world population that has seen any object in the British Museum rises above zero?
  - adrianhon 12y ago
    At those scales, everything is zero. But the important thing is the potential to see an object. If the Rosetta Stone is sold to an anonymous private collector, I have practically zero chance of ever seeing it, no matter who I am, what I earn, or where I live. But if it's in a public museum, then my access is much greater.
- vacri 12y ago
  The counter-response is the Elgin Marbles issue. The Greeks want them back, to put on public display in their native location, the Acropolis. The Acropolis is important enough in Greek culture that during their war of independence, they supplied the enemy with ammunition so it wouldn't be destroyed. The Turkish garrison was low on ammunition, so started pulling apart the columns of the Acropolis to get at the lead joinery. The Greeks supplied them with enough lead to stop that from happening. http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com/revolution.htm http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com/revolution.htm What better place to see ancient Greek sculptures than the very temple they were built for, curated by people who honour that location? It's not like the British Museum doesn't have other items to put on display...
Mvandenbergh 12y ago
Because when they're sold on the black market, they don't usually maintain an accurate archaeological context. To give an example, a particular Roman coin might be only moderately rare and valuable but finding it in a context where you can determine the date and place it was dropped and who might have owned it is valuable information that doesn't usually follow black market artefacts around (because it's proof of a crime). If private collectors wanted to buy these things after they've been dug up and catalogued and somehow that tracking data could follow the object so that we still have it 100 years from now nobody would care.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  > finding it in a context where you can determine the date and place it was dropped and who might have owned it is valuable information that doesn't usually follow black market artefacts around (because it's proof of a crime) Is it? I'd guess that that sort of information doesn't follow black market artifacts around because the black market is just generally shady. I'd expect that any evidence of crime would quickly wash out, for the following reason: I recall reading a post on Language Log (here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4120 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4120 ) about finding a cuneiform tablet at an "estate sale" in Seattle. The author brought it to an expert on the ancient near east and was surprised to have it confirmed as genuine. There were indignant comments on the post, to the effect that obviously nobody in the US could legitimately own a cuneiform tablet from ancient Mesopotamia. So why wasn't this guy violating the law? And the very sensible answer was that a law prohibiting the ownership of old objects would mainly have the effect that people fearing discovery would destroy their antiquities, simultaneously removing all evidence of any putative crime and preventing anyone from ever learning anything from what used to be a (semi-)valuable artifact. It's harder to destroy a metal coin than a block of clay, but most artifacts, like bones, statues, and inscriptions, don't pose such difficulties. Is it really illegal to own an old coin while not being illegal to own an old document? edit: rereading the comments, it seems that owning these old things frequently is illegal, although interestingly owning the same item might or might not be illegal depending on the details of how you obtained it (not the details of where it came from). But I'll leave my comment up because I think the ideas expressed have some merit, although they don't entirely source to the comment thread that I "remembered" them from, and are a little more hypothetical and less factual than I originally thought.
ghostberry 12y ago
The British Museum does a lot of work cataloguing artefacts so they're available for scientific study, as well as doing their doing their own research into techniques to date objects, preserve them or to figure out how they were made. Private collectors would be unlikely to do the same.
golergka 12y ago
Money is an excellent system to determine what things are really important to us as a society and what are not. If we are not willing to pay enough taxes, and allocate these taxes in such a way so that museums can outbid private collectors on black market, doesn't it mean that we, as a society, don't care about these artefacts as much as private collectors? I'm not saying that this is how it should be, I'm just trying to get to a real reason of this status-quo. And if private collectors care more (= willing to spend more money on it), it is just fitting that they're getting the most of it.
- vidarh 12y ago
  It does not mean we don't care, but that there other competing interests we care more about that private collectors does not need to worry about, and that most governments can't compete on disposable income with the combined fortunes of private collectors.
toyg 12y ago
Apart from what was already discussed, regarding the role of museums in preservation etc, we also have to be realistic: historical context is important. It's not like the UK government is still tasking diplomats with buying random artifacts for the glory of the British Empire. There was a time when acceptable practices were different. We're not going to punish people for "crimes" committed 200 years ago, are we? We might as well disband the Catholic Church outright and pillage the Vatican, built on "ill-gotten gains" throughout the centuries (well, isn't that an appealing prospect, now that I think of it...). Once you go down that route, could all museums in the world please send back their Italian Renaissance paintings, we better throw them in a dark closet at the Uffizi so nobody can see them, it's not like Italy has so many of them that they can afford to exhibit and preserve less than 10% of them at any given time, right? In most cases, these "ownership disputes" are just instruments of foreign policy. I'd argue that preservation and availability should trump "ownership" pretty much all the time. Going back to the preservation aspect: think of what's happening in Iraq and Syria at the moment. Historical artifacts of immense value are being lost to contemporary squabbles. Would it have been so bad to store those in a basement of the British Museum, away from the madness of humanity?
- lsaferite 12y ago
  Well, the US is still being held responsible for slavery even though that was outlawed 150 years ago, right? Just because it happened long ago doesn't mean that the current government can abdicate any responsibility for reparation. The UK government should at least attempt to return the relics it has warehoused to their origins if they are under stable rule.
  - toyg 12y ago
    > US is still being held responsible for slavery Should an African-American individual petition the US government to be resettled to Africa and compensated for the trouble, would the US government agree to pay? I don't think so. The US government is responsible for the enduring consequences of segregation, which ended less than 50 years ago in most of the country and is a separate issue from slavery, albeit strongly related. In the same way, the current UK government is responsible for preserving the artifacts it inherited so long ago and (theoretically) work towards a world where the Greek people will never be forced to sell their belongings because of economic hardship. > The UK government should at least attempt to return the relics Why this obsession with the British Museum, when the Louvre and other institutions are as full of less-documented loot as the BM? Are we holding the British responsible for keeping better records than others? There are tons of US and European museums with similarly-acquired catalog that are never really criticized for it. The Nike of Samothrace is so much more beautiful and powerful than anything the BM holds, but its location has never been much criticized. Could that be because modern Greek governments have had better relationships with France than with the UK? It's all just foreign policy by other means, usually by people who won't care about these relics the minute they've had their way. I personally think the best location for artifacts is among people who will cherish them and help the world see them and understand them. As an Italian, I think half of the relics we currently mis-preserve should probably be sold to people who would do a better job. The recently-located Imperial Port of Rome will likely never be fully excavated because we wouldn't have any money to preserve it as it would deserve, and the same happens every day for magnificent stuff all over Rome. I think that's a much more pressing issue than bickering about stuff we've already studied to death.
joshuaheard 12y ago
The Louvre museum: the world's largest collection of Napoleon's captured loot.

adrianhon 12y ago

I think the British Museum's response would be that their objects are on display for the world for free, rather than hidden away in a private collection; and that researchers can also get free access to the works not on display. They'd also say that they are better placed to conserve their collection over the next few centuries than other collectors.

thaumasiotes 12y ago
How many significant figures do you need before the proportion of the world population that has seen any object in the British Museum rises above zero?
- adrianhon 12y ago
  At those scales, everything is zero. But the important thing is the potential to see an object. If the Rosetta Stone is sold to an anonymous private collector, I have practically zero chance of ever seeing it, no matter who I am, what I earn, or where I live. But if it's in a public museum, then my access is much greater.
vacri 12y ago
The counter-response is the Elgin Marbles issue. The Greeks want them back, to put on public display in their native location, the Acropolis. The Acropolis is important enough in Greek culture that during their war of independence, they supplied the enemy with ammunition so it wouldn't be destroyed. The Turkish garrison was low on ammunition, so started pulling apart the columns of the Acropolis to get at the lead joinery. The Greeks supplied them with enough lead to stop that from happening. http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com/revolution.htm http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com/revolution.htm What better place to see ancient Greek sculptures than the very temple they were built for, curated by people who honour that location? It's not like the British Museum doesn't have other items to put on display...

Mvandenbergh 12y ago

Because when they're sold on the black market, they don't usually maintain an accurate archaeological context. To give an example, a particular Roman coin might be only moderately rare and valuable but finding it in a context where you can determine the date and place it was dropped and who might have owned it is valuable information that doesn't usually follow black market artefacts around (because it's proof of a crime). If private collectors wanted to buy these things after they've been dug up and catalogued and somehow that tracking data could follow the object so that we still have it 100 years from now nobody would care.

thaumasiotes 12y ago
> finding it in a context where you can determine the date and place it was dropped and who might have owned it is valuable information that doesn't usually follow black market artefacts around (because it's proof of a crime) Is it? I'd guess that that sort of information doesn't follow black market artifacts around because the black market is just generally shady. I'd expect that any evidence of crime would quickly wash out, for the following reason: I recall reading a post on Language Log (here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4120 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4120 ) about finding a cuneiform tablet at an "estate sale" in Seattle. The author brought it to an expert on the ancient near east and was surprised to have it confirmed as genuine. There were indignant comments on the post, to the effect that obviously nobody in the US could legitimately own a cuneiform tablet from ancient Mesopotamia. So why wasn't this guy violating the law? And the very sensible answer was that a law prohibiting the ownership of old objects would mainly have the effect that people fearing discovery would destroy their antiquities, simultaneously removing all evidence of any putative crime and preventing anyone from ever learning anything from what used to be a (semi-)valuable artifact. It's harder to destroy a metal coin than a block of clay, but most artifacts, like bones, statues, and inscriptions, don't pose such difficulties. Is it really illegal to own an old coin while not being illegal to own an old document? edit: rereading the comments, it seems that owning these old things frequently is illegal, although interestingly owning the same item might or might not be illegal depending on the details of how you obtained it (not the details of where it came from). But I'll leave my comment up because I think the ideas expressed have some merit, although they don't entirely source to the comment thread that I "remembered" them from, and are a little more hypothetical and less factual than I originally thought.

ghostberry 12y ago

The British Museum does a lot of work cataloguing artefacts so they're available for scientific study, as well as doing their doing their own research into techniques to date objects, preserve them or to figure out how they were made. Private collectors would be unlikely to do the same.

golergka 12y ago

Money is an excellent system to determine what things are really important to us as a society and what are not. If we are not willing to pay enough taxes, and allocate these taxes in such a way so that museums can outbid private collectors on black market, doesn't it mean that we, as a society, don't care about these artefacts as much as private collectors? I'm not saying that this is how it should be, I'm just trying to get to a real reason of this status-quo. And if private collectors care more (= willing to spend more money on it), it is just fitting that they're getting the most of it.

vidarh 12y ago
It does not mean we don't care, but that there other competing interests we care more about that private collectors does not need to worry about, and that most governments can't compete on disposable income with the combined fortunes of private collectors.

toyg 12y ago

Apart from what was already discussed, regarding the role of museums in preservation etc, we also have to be realistic: historical context is important. It's not like the UK government is still tasking diplomats with buying random artifacts for the glory of the British Empire. There was a time when acceptable practices were different. We're not going to punish people for "crimes" committed 200 years ago, are we? We might as well disband the Catholic Church outright and pillage the Vatican, built on "ill-gotten gains" throughout the centuries (well, isn't that an appealing prospect, now that I think of it...). Once you go down that route, could all museums in the world please send back their Italian Renaissance paintings, we better throw them in a dark closet at the Uffizi so nobody can see them, it's not like Italy has so many of them that they can afford to exhibit and preserve less than 10% of them at any given time, right? In most cases, these "ownership disputes" are just instruments of foreign policy. I'd argue that preservation and availability should trump "ownership" pretty much all the time. Going back to the preservation aspect: think of what's happening in Iraq and Syria at the moment. Historical artifacts of immense value are being lost to contemporary squabbles. Would it have been so bad to store those in a basement of the British Museum, away from the madness of humanity?

lsaferite 12y ago
Well, the US is still being held responsible for slavery even though that was outlawed 150 years ago, right? Just because it happened long ago doesn't mean that the current government can abdicate any responsibility for reparation. The UK government should at least attempt to return the relics it has warehoused to their origins if they are under stable rule.
- toyg 12y ago
  > US is still being held responsible for slavery Should an African-American individual petition the US government to be resettled to Africa and compensated for the trouble, would the US government agree to pay? I don't think so. The US government is responsible for the enduring consequences of segregation, which ended less than 50 years ago in most of the country and is a separate issue from slavery, albeit strongly related. In the same way, the current UK government is responsible for preserving the artifacts it inherited so long ago and (theoretically) work towards a world where the Greek people will never be forced to sell their belongings because of economic hardship. > The UK government should at least attempt to return the relics Why this obsession with the British Museum, when the Louvre and other institutions are as full of less-documented loot as the BM? Are we holding the British responsible for keeping better records than others? There are tons of US and European museums with similarly-acquired catalog that are never really criticized for it. The Nike of Samothrace is so much more beautiful and powerful than anything the BM holds, but its location has never been much criticized. Could that be because modern Greek governments have had better relationships with France than with the UK? It's all just foreign policy by other means, usually by people who won't care about these relics the minute they've had their way. I personally think the best location for artifacts is among people who will cherish them and help the world see them and understand them. As an Italian, I think half of the relics we currently mis-preserve should probably be sold to people who would do a better job. The recently-located Imperial Port of Rome will likely never be fully excavated because we wouldn't have any money to preserve it as it would deserve, and the same happens every day for magnificent stuff all over Rome. I think that's a much more pressing issue than bickering about stuff we've already studied to death.

joshuaheard 12y ago

The Louvre museum: the world's largest collection of Napoleon's captured loot.