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One of the saddest stories I ever heard happened in Detroit. Ernie Harwell was the legendary play by play announcer for the Detroit Tigers. He started his announcing career in Georgia and began collecting baseball memorabilia in the forties when no one much was interested in it.
He became the guy to call when a retired player needed money or the one the widow called when a player passed away. He amassed a huge collection, second only to the Baseball Hall of Fame. At the end of his life he faced with what to do with his collection. His favorite nephew worked for the Detroit Public library and convinced him to leave it to them in his will so he did.
At the time he passed away the library had closed most of its branches and was terribly understaffed. They made the collection viewable by appointment only. In the first six months one or more of those viewers walked out the door with the most valuable items and sold them on the black market to willing collectors.
Did the library hire a private detective to try and find out who did the thefts and attempt to recover the items? The answer is no they didn't. The thefts were reported to the even more understaffed Detroit police who took the report and did not conduct any investigation.
There should be a public museum near Tiger stadium that would be a huge tourist attraction but there is not. Currently I do not think you can even get a reservation to view the collection.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/ernie-harwells-memorabili...
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/news/top-news/collectiblesan...
> A former librarian said many boxes of artifacts are stored — but uncatalogued — in the basement, meaning it is difficult to know if items have been removed. [0]
Well, if the donor isn't going to inventory the goods, then expectations should be low. Did his nephew not have a clue?
This is like never checking the data backup. Either it's not that valuable, or you're negligent.
[0] https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2011/06/report_ernie_harw...
I think you're supposed to assume that it's the library that will do the cataloguing.
But at the same time, you're supposed to do your research to make sure the institution you want to donate your collection to has the capability and capacity to properly care for it and make it both secure and accessible.
Just because it's a local library doesn't mean they can.
And it's expensive to catalog a collection much less display it. A lot of people probably assume that their collection of "stuff" that's of historical interest to some community of people will be welcomed by museums/libraries/archives with open arms. But that's often not the case.
They already have too much stuff and never have enough labor as it is. The Smithsonian collection, for example, has 155 million specimens. The major DC museums between them have nearly a billion items, 99.9% of which are in permanent storage and 90% of which have never been studied beyond a quick catalog by an intern. That’s just DC. European collections are 10-100x larger per capita.
Humans have created an absurd number of artifacts and what’s valuable isn’t the items but the time spent studying them. Just dumping a collection on someone isn’t doing them any favors, just handing them an obligation.
> I think you're supposed to assume that it's the library that will do the cataloguing.
Bad premise.
How many municipal LIBRARIES have you been to that displayed sports memorabilia?
We're not talking about a museum, sports or otherwise.
Well, the one where I grew up. It has rotating exhibits of local historical and civic artifacts. It basically has a small wing that functions as a mini museum.
A lot of towns have one or more mini-museums of that sort. They might be attached to a library, to city hall, to a school, or even a volunteer organization or something.
Donating it to a library can make perfect sense in that case. It really depends on the library.
I mean the vast majority of book donations to my town library presumably end up at the annual book sale along with culls from the library itself. And, based on how many books are left near the end of the sale, I assume the majority probably ends up pulped.
The article isn’t really about how museum items go missing - There’s only a brief mention of one curator who stole objects. That anecdote is used as a bridge to the author’s real motivation, which is arguing that museums shouldn’t hold items from other countries or cultures or locations. It’s a concept similar to “cultural appropriation” applied to the existence of museums based on their location.
The author thinks the story of a single museum staff thief undermines the entire concept of museums holding items from other countries or cultures:
> The irony here is palpable: An institution infamous for displaying looted colonial artifacts had objects stolen by a staff member.
> One of the principal justifications museums often give for denying the restitution and repatriation of cultural objects is the purported need to safeguard the material within the institutions. The recent thefts contradict this argument
I have some friends with history degrees who have spent their careers in museums and museum curation. There is a lot of consensus that museum items with obvious history such as art stolen by Nazis should be returned to right those historical wrongs. That’s not a hard argument to make.
However, some people take the argument much further like this author hints at, believing that museums need to return everything that doesn’t match the historic and cultural heritage of their location. The only items allowed to remain would be perfectly documented acquisitions that nobody could find issue with.
So dismantle the Louvre and other museums and send everything back to countries it came from, preferring to right some historical injustice over preserving history in a museum. If someone wants to see the history of that country, they’d have to go there themselves and travel to each museum (assuming it exists).
It’s not a realistic goal, which has created a stalemate where the proponents of this idea are more about discussing these injustices and making them the central issue of museums, often equating high profile cases like art stolen by Nazis as morally equivalent to a display of 1000 year old pottery fragments. It’s tiring and detracts from the real work that museum staff do.
There’s an interesting one of these brewing regarding a gold-laden shipwreck:
> A US salvage company argue they first found the wreck in 1981 and made a deal with the Colombia government so they could have half of the treasure when it was recovered. But there have been other claims to the treasure including Spain and Bolivia's indigenous Qhara Qhara nation, which say the Spanish took the wealth from their people.
Which also enable people like ISIS to complete destroy the artifacts of entire cultures.
The Catacombs of Paris has/had a bag at the exit on the exterior with a modest guilt suggestion to return the bones of people rather than absconding with some unfortunate long-dead person's remains.
Sometimes I fantasize about breaking into the fancy UK and US museums just to give it back to counties it was stolen from.
Are you also going to give back all the iron we bought that was originally dug up in another country?
I said stolen artifacs. How is that the same as buying iron from another country.
There's a game just for you: "It belongs in an ancient ruin"
https://games.digipen.edu/games/it-belongs-in-an-ancient-rui...
The protagonist must break into museums (guarded by robots and alarms), steal artifacts, and return them to ancient ruins (protected by monsters and traps).
I think, as others have mentioned, there is an implicit ethnonationalism here in linking various governments, specifically post-colonial states (say Nigeria) with the tribes that live in them. Now, its important to note two things here. 1) many of these tribes, before colonialism, before the establishment of the contemporary west-african states, were in fact slave empires, and the reason they had such rich cultural products was for the same reason that western nations, at the time, did. So the moral status of those objects is ambiguous at best, which leads to point 2) that these objects should be stored in whatever facility can host them best. We all admit Nigeria is not as wealthy as the UK, so its entirely possible that the UK after returning perhaps, thousands of precious artifacts, worth an uncountable sum, a desperate government might, given the right circumstances, sell them, whereas the UK probably will not (at least not in the near future).
Call me conservative if you like, but culturally important objects are often only designated as such the moment they are placed in a museum. Who knows if the former slave empire tribes of west Africa would've valued all the pieces so highly had they not been put on display. By "getting them back," these ethnic groups are merely reproducing the same order that they oppose, in fact they have completed, in a way, the colonial circuit, by becoming a mirror of the power that created them.
This is an absurd argument. It reads as a self serving rationalization of cultural appropriation. They didn’t value what they had and can’t be trusted with it today. As if the only option is to give objects back to poor or corrupt governments. Even if true that doesn’t mean people are undeserving of their past. How about strengthening local non-governmental institutions to care for these objects?
>As if the only option is to give objects back to poor or corrupt governments. Even if true that doesn’t mean people are undeserving of their past. How about strengthening local non-governmental institutions to care for these objects?
Right, and if that doesn't work, or until that works, is it morally objectionable to hold on to those objects? Is it truly the right thing to return items to governments that can't guarantee their safety or don't hold those items to the same values? What's the better choice here? Preserving anthropological history of mankind or respecting the wishes of hereditary descendants? What if they don't give a shit about their past? Does the rest of the world need to be deprived of the history of humanity because the current, local, inhabitants don't care for their own? Your solution is to teach them to care, which is hilariously just as colonialist and culturally "appropriatiative" as the person you're replying to.
>Your solution is to teach them to care, which is hilariously just as colonialist and culturally "appropriatiative" as the person you're replying to.
Don’t put words in my mouth. There is an obvious difference between imposing one’s views and capacity building.
EDIT: As in financial support, advising governance structures, conservation training. Supporting institutions who already deeply care.
>What if they don't give a shit about their past?
Is that really the case?
Last time I checked Greece was keenly interested it’s past and wanted their antiquities back. While Rishi was saying they were a “huge asset” to the UK. Please :eyeroll:
Who does the past belong to?
Does it belong to specific groups of people alive today, or does it belong to humanity as a whole?
If I’m interested in Chinese history should I be forced to go to communist China? If I’m interested in Assyrian history should I be forced to risk my life and head to Iraq?
The custodians of historical objects have a moral obligation to ensure that they are displayed for the benefit of as many humans as possible, and that is certainly something that could be improved.
The enforcement of inter-civilization property rights across time is in my opinion a not a moral obligation.
>Who does the past belong to?
This is the ultimate question. Who owns an object that is so old that the chain of ownership can't be easily reconstructed? Is it the country that controls the land where it was created? Is it the country that owns the land where it was last legally held? Do we apply modern laws or the laws of the time when determining this?
Or is it the descendants of the culture that created it? Is this the cultural descendants? Is it the literal descendants of the people living in the area where it was created, at the time it was created?
There are almost certainly more people of British descent living in the United States today than there are living in Great Britain. Should the United States demand a larger share of our cultural history from Great Britain?
At some point we have to realize that any method we pick is going to, in large part, be arbitrary.
> I think, as others have mentioned, there is an implicit ethnonationalism here in linking various governments, specifically post-colonial states (say Nigeria) with the tribes that live in them.
Saying that a government/colonial construct where most of those tribes were forced into, doesn't/shouldn't represent them is beyond absurd. London represents them then? Or they are considered lost?
>Now, its important to note two things here. 1) many of these tribes, before colonialism, before the establishment of the contemporary west-african states, were in fact slave empires, and the reason they had such rich cultural products was for the same reason that western nations, at the time, did.
You are forgetting that most of those items can be traced to their indigenous owners. You prefer calling them tribes but they were in fact nations/kingdoms of their own that were forced into colonial constructs like Nigeria, so don't lie yourself that Nigeria is somehow trying to act like colonial Britain.
>2) that these objects should be stored in whatever facility can host them best. We all admit Nigeria is not as wealthy as the UK, so its entirely possible that the UK after returning perhaps, thousands of precious artifacts, worth an uncountable sum, a desperate government might, given the right circumstances, sell them, whereas the UK probably will not (at least not in the near future).
This would be amusing if it wasn't some sort of gaslighting. Yes Africa is poor, most states corrupt. But saying that UK should help them store those items, without their consent, items that they took by force. Wow
> Call me conservative if you like, but culturally important objects are often only designated as such the moment they are placed in a museum.
What does conservative even mean in this case? Aren't you just mixing neocolonialism with conservatism?
So why did the colonial plunderers think they are worth a trip from rural Nigeria, Benin, deep India to the Empire's capital if they were values at the time in their owners poor huts, shambas and valleys?
>Who knows if the former slave empire tribes of west Africa would've valued all the pieces so highly had they not been put on display.
You are really something.
Someone sits in India, creates a paint on their own without force. Thieves still it. After 200 years, you sit in your house to tell us that they didn't know what they created?
By the way, how do you think the plunderers discovered them? Or why do you think the owners at the time put in their time to create/preserve them until they were found? Is your talk of former slave empire tribes of West Africa aimed at a negating European colonial crimes?
>By "getting them back," these ethnic groups are merely reproducing the same order that they oppose, in fact they have completed, in a way, the colonial circuit, by becoming a mirror of the power that created them.
As I said above, the owners of those items can be traced.
History happened. The British Empire was. In the historical context of the time, the objects were legitimate acquisitions.
It's much like the historical fact of nations going to war and conquering and enslaving each other. If someone wants to return parts of the US to the Cherokee, then we should also return much of Europe to the Picts. How far back do you go? Somehow, though, we only have this existential anguish about the last couple of rounds of conquest.
History happened. Let it be. If conquest doesn't match our modern values, then we can choose to avoid starting any new wars of conquest. Sadly, human nature doesn't seem to have actually changed: Wikipedia currently lists 56 ongoing armed conflicts.
> If someone wants to return parts of the US to the Cherokee, then we should also return much of Europe to the Picts
1. Land is not an object held in a museum
2. There are over 300,000 enrolled tribal members of the Cherokee Nation (per Wikipedia). There are ~0 Picts, as far as I know.
Obviously the effects of more recent rounds of conquest are more apparent and felt more keenly by those suffering as a result.
> History happened. Let it be.
Sure, but if someone wants to let it be, how long before we let the present turn into history? It's just raising the same question you dismissed!
>2. There are over 300,000 enrolled tribal members of the Cherokee Nation (per Wikipedia). There are ~0 Picts, as far as I know.
Be careful with that logic! If we agree as a species that surviving conquered people have a right to reclaim their land and assets, but extinct ones don't, then the obvious course of action for the conquering force is to simply exterminate every native mercilessly.
.. and that has happened more times than we talk about
> If we agree as a species that surviving conquered people have a right to reclaim their land and assets, but extinct ones don't
If?
>There are over 300,000 enrolled tribal members of the Cherokee Nation (per Wikipedia). There are ~0 Picts, as far as I know.
So what part of the US do we return to the Cherokee? The parts the US gave them when they forced them out of the South East? Or their original territory? My hometown was originally populated by a separate tribe. The Cherokee came later. How do we split the land between the Eastern and Western bands of Cherokee?
To a large extent, the borders of the various tribes that are still existent today are a result of their interactions with the European colonial powers. So the "political map" of the US in 1794, looks vastly different than it did in 1720. The current map is entirely arbitrary and unfairly benefits some groups over others. But picking any other historical map is also entirely arbitrary. There's no way to go back and pick the "correct" one.
> In the historical context of the time, the objects were legitimate acquisitions.
Nonsense.
Many of the historic aquisitions by "collectors" were as sketchy AF in the context of the times.
The Elgin marbles, for example, were removed from Greece by an English lord and an Italian painter while Greece was under Ottoman rule ..
The legality of this was questionable at best and a House of Commons Select Committee held public hearings on whether Elgin had acted within the law - many considered he had not. Given this hearing ocuurred well after the fact, the damage was done, and the booty was now in England being sold for a song it was all rather swept under the carpet.
A thief is a thief ... unless they are a Lord.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles#Acquisition
The Benin Bronzes and other related artifacts were straight up targeted theft as a by product of war - if might makes right then they were legitimate, otherwise they're on the same footing as objects stolen by armed invaders that kill half your family and set your house on fire.
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2022/09/benin-br...
Greece had been under Ottoman rule for about 400 years, when the marbles were taken you'd have to go back 13 generations before you get to greek owned Greece.
If you do make that 13 generation jump, the Greeks who owned it at that time period were themselves descendants of conquerors — none of the people in this story are the owners of the marbles, if we choose to tar everyone with this brush equally.
Additionally, the Ottoman empire made documentation legitimising Elgin's movements of the marbles, the fact that the original receipt is missing and they had a hearing for that is moot in light of the rest. The ottomans issued orders to the city to allow his movements and they issued notice to the docks that he'd be moving marbles out via boat.
"When they wish to take away some pieces of stone with old inscriptions and figures, no opposition be made."
> Many of the historic aquisitions by "collectors" were as sketchy AF in the context of the times.
This is the slippery slope that makes most of these cases hard to take seriously. Aside from obvious cases of wartime looting, a lot of the objections are just that the legal approval at the time doesn’t meet modern standards imposed anachronistically on history, or more frequently that the provenance just isn’t known to the degree expected by modern standards.
Some people, like the author of this article, want us to think that everything should be returned unless it’s perfectly documented without any possible objections. Scrap the Louvre and send all those pottery scraps and fragments back to the country they came from because we can’t be perfectly sure it’s all perfectly handled under modern standards that weren’t the historical norm.
It’s tiring. Aside from obvious cases of theft like the Benin Bronzes, the blanket argument that museums shouldn’t be allowed to hold artifacts from other locations and cultures without perfect documentation isn’t really practical.
There was no such country as "Greece" in 1801. Athens was a city in the Ottoman Empire and "Greece" referred to a country that hadn't existed for nearly 2000 years.
"Greece" stopped existing as a country in 146 BC, when the Romans defeated its last city state, Corinth. The former country was then merely a region of the Roman Empire, followed by the Byzantine Empire, followed by the Ottoman Empire.
If you want to give the marbles back, which is a popular sentiment these days, you should give them back to the legal successor of the Ottoman Empire, which is Turkey. The marbles have never belonged to the modern Greek state established in 1821. Once Turkey gets their marbles back, they could put them in the Acropolis museum if they think it appropriate.
According to the Wikipedia article, he did get approval from state officials although it is hard to interpret if he went beyond the approval. However, the Committee you mentioned
> cleared Elgin of all allegations that he had acquired the marbles illegally or had misused his powers as ambassador
One of my ancestors was involved with the “acquisition” of the Elgin marbles, I believe he might have been a secretary to Elgin.
Amusingly, he was also involved in the restoration of artefacts looted by Napoleon during his conquests. So much so that the sculptor, Antonio Canova gifted him with one of 4 Ideal Heads as a thanks for returning works to the Vatican. The bust remained in our family until the mid 90’s and can now be seen in the Ashmolean in Oxford.
> The Benin Bronzes and other related artifacts were straight up targeted theft as a by product of war
"Looted". Make no bones about it, the word is looted. But they were created off the back of slavery, so... choose your poison.
This is an interesting link that pulls aside the curtain a little on trade, art and Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/benin-bronzes-...
Personally I think we should focus on the repatriation of human remains. Once we've got that sorted out, we can start worrying about mere stuff.
The Benin Bronzes are a bit different. Returning them to Benin means returning them to the heirs of an extremely nasty and oppressive state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey#Slavery
One of the purposes of the expedition was the abolition of slavery in Benin, and objective it achieved.
>> Thief is a thief ... unless they are a Lord.
So he wasnt a thief. The laws of the time ebbed and flowed based on the social standing of the alleged perpetrators. That was the then accepted rule. It is less true today but not absolutely. Who are we to ignore the actions of a past select committee? Are we to revisit every not-guilty decisison on the basis that a modern investigation would have acted differently? By way of example, women were in the past treated very badly. Revisiting every historic legal determination that stripped a woman of her propery would render all modern property rights suspect.
This is not about land ownership, but historical artifacts. Acts of good will can go a long way towards strengthening the friendly relationships between two peoples.
Also, should protestant countries return "stolen" goods back to the Catholic church? Art, churches, monasteries, land, cathedrals, relics, ...
I think you're missing the point - the reasons to return stuff like these are not practical but symbolic
Should ISIS not give back all the historical Christian artifacts that they looted?
ISIS largely destroyed artifacts with explosives and bulldozers and the Christian sites were almost the least of it;
In 2014, media reported destruction of multiple religious buildings belonging to both Sunni and Shia sects throughout areas captured by IS.
Among them were the tomb of Ibn al-Athir, Imam Abbas Mosque in Mosul, the Sheikh Jawad Al-Sadiq Mosque, Tomb of Sayyid Ar-Mamut Baba, Qaddo Mosque, Martyrs' Mosque, Saad Ibn Aqeel Shrine in Tal Afar, the Sufi Ahmed al-Rifai Shrine and Sheikh Ibrahim's shrine in Mahlabiya District.
In May 2014, IS members smashed a 3,000-year-old neo-Assyrian statue from Tel Ajaja. Later reports indicated that over 40% of the artifacts at Tel Ajaja (Saddikanni) were looted by IS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita...
the group released photos of militants rigging the 1,900-year-old Temple of Baalshamin with explosives and blowing it up. It was one of Palmyra’s best-preserved buildings, originally dedicated to a Phoenician storm god. Now it is nothing but rubble.