David Abulafia in the Spector asks: Is the tide turning on restitution? 

"When passions are aroused, all of us are liable to overstate our case. Dan Hicks, a curator at Oxford’s extraordinary Aladdin’s Cave of anthropology, the Pitt-Rivers Museum, is perhaps a case in point. A Swedish academic, Staffan Lunden, has convincingly argued that Hicks is guilty of ‘distortion’ when writing about the British raid on Benin in 1897, which brought several thousand objects, including finely wrought brass statuettes, to museums across the world. Hicks published his uncompromising views in 2020 in a prize-winning book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. His opinions about the Benin bronzes – which have been instrumental in the restitution movement – are only part of his wider programme that would leave thousands of gaps in the cabinets of the world’s finest museums."

Calling the key texts of the pro-restitution movement into question is what Professor Abulafia continues to do in this article as he also highlights that "Historians, in a democratic society, do not exist to pass judgment, but to identify the truth." 

From explaining the usefulness of the universal museum and lamenting the lack of more universal museums, Professor Abulafia arrives at the Parthenon Marbles. 

"The Elgin Marbles may well be sent to Athens in a reverse exercise to that of the Horniman Museum: the British Museum would claim ownership, but they would be on permanent loan to the Acropolis Museum. And, we are told, the British Museum can, at great expense, make exact replicas out of the Pentelic marble from which they were carved, and put them on show in London – as if its millions of visitors prefer fakes to the objects lovingly carved by the hand of the greatest Athenian sculptors." 

If the truth matters, we must also point out that it isn't millions that see the Parthenon Marbles in Room 18, albeit millions do visit the British Museum. Plus 'ownership' of these sculptures has been questioned for centuries, and to this day. 

Then Professor Abulafia refences Tiffany Jenkins’s Keeping Their Marbles (2016) and Justin Jacobs’s Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures (2024) as the books that cast serious doubt on the argument that our museums are stuffed with loot. 

Does that matter? Surely what matters is how objects are exhibited, the context and meaning they have for visitors and scholars.

In the last paragraph, Professor Abulafia writes: "Restitution is virtue-signalling of an irresponsible sort, threatening the integrity of great collections by pretending to apologise for past sins, often connected to empire building." To read the article in full, follow the link to the Spectator.

We'd like to add that restitution isn't just about giving artefact back it is also about expanding our understanding of the cultures of others. Already in the article Professor Abulafia acknowledges that the Horniman agreed to repatriate a number of Benin Bronzes and yet many have been left in that museum on loan. Cultural co-operation is alive and well, plus it also seeks to improve on what was the norm in the past.

Here's to truth, hope, empathy and understanding, not least restitution. There are artefacts whose county of origin have been asking for their return not to empty a museum but because they hold a specific significance and in the case of the sculptures, to the Parthenon, which still stands. Time to show our collective respect for this peerless collection of sculptures. Time to reunite them with their other halves in Athens. 

p.s letter sent to from BCRPM the editor of the Spectator but not published:

“Historians, in a democratic society, do not exist to pass judgment, but to identify the truth” David Abulafia

We agree!

The British Museum holds 108,184 Greek artefacts, of which only 6,493 are even on display.

The first request for the return of the sculptures in the British Museum was made shortly after Greece’s independence in 1832 and continues. Greece is not asking for anything more than the Parthenon Marbles/Sculptures. Amongst the ‘Elgin Marbles’ in the British Museum there is more than what constitutes the pieces removed from the Parthenon and displayed in Room 18.

Half of the sculptures that survived Lord Elgin’s removal (when Greece had no voice) are today displayed the right way round in the Acropolis Museum, which opened in June 2009. The Parthenon Gallery in the Acropolis Museum is aligned with the Parthenon, which d can be seen through the glass panelled walls. This gallery is the one place on earth where it is possible to have a single and aesthetic experience simultaneously of the Parthenon and its sculptures. The Parthenon still stands and crowns the city of Athens despite millennia of history, which included many wars and plenty of destruction.

Cultural co-operation and understanding is the cornerstone of UNESCO’s ICPRCP decisions and recommendation. A bold, imaginative British Museum and UK government taking centre stage for preserving  the world’s cultural heritage would make a magnanimous gesture to return these sculptures, part of a peerless collection that deserve our collective respect. In this case restitution is not ‘irresponsible virtue-signalling’, nor  will it ‘threaten the integrity of great collections by pretending to apologise for past sins’. It is signalling that sometimes there is a right place to exhibit and curate for all of humanity to have better understanding.  The British Museum will continue to tell its stories across many cultures including those of ancient Greece long after the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. We continue to look forward to that special day.

"As restitutions slow across Europe, UK may be poised for progress. Political turmoil across the continent is hampering plans for national structures to return colonial-era heritage. But the UK, once a laggard, appears to be preparing to review laws." The headline of Gareth Harris' article in The Art Newspaper.

Lisa Nandy, the UK culture secretary, faces mounting calls to review current legislation preventing museums from restituting or deaccessioning works, and is holding talks with museum directors. In an interview with The Guardian last year, Nandy said ministers are already holding discussions with institutions including the British Museum, after its chair, the former chancellor George Osborne, approached her. Views across the museum sector vary, but Nandy wants the government’s approach to be consistent, the report said. 

“It’s exciting that Nandy has publicly spoken about it,” says Amy Shakespeare, an academic at Exeter University and the founder of the organisation Routes to Return. Shakespeare published a policy briefing paper last November arguing that UK national museums and galleries should be given powers to act independently regarding restitution.

Amy is also a member of BCRPM.

“I’m taking that as a positive indication,” she contnues in her interview with TAN . “This is difficult to do without changing the historic legislation for the British Museum. There is a nervousness about undoing that. We have a lot of experience compared to other countries and could be in a strong position internationally. The next piece in the puzzle is making this a priority.”

Amy Shakespeare says that the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport should partly fund provenance research, training and skills programmes. National museums should be “included in Sections 15 and 16 of the 2022 Charities Act, enabling them to repatriate cultural items on moral grounds”, she adds.

Early last year, the former Conservative government excluded national museums and galleries from Sections 15 and 16 legislation. Hunt says that in view of the change of government, an update to the Charities Act might be a way to allow restitutions, “but rightly, ministers want to have an open and public debate about such a change”.

Kathimeri's article by Costis P. Papadiochos is wrapped in optimism.

"Greece and the British Museum are reportedly nearing a crucial agreement for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. Confidential negotiations have yielded significant progress, though a formal deal has yet to be sealed. Key discussions centre on permanently housing the sculptures at Athens’ Acropolis Museum while offering major Greek artefacts for extended exhibitions in London. However, the discussions do not include all that Lord Elgin removed."

And indeed BCRPM members have spent decades explaining that Greece's the request for the reunification of Parthenon Marbles is specific and does not include all that Lord Elgin removed from the Acropolis.

Plus the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles in the Acropolis Museum's Parthenon Gallery would reinstate the Parthenon's artistic and historical narrative. The marble sculptures that are being asked for include: fragments of the frieze (56 fragments are missing from the frieze depicting the Panathenaic Procession-about 75 meters out of a total of 160), 17 pedimental figures and 15 metopes.

The critical challenge, navigating the UK’s 1963 law that prohibits deaccession. The Kathimerini article however suggests that the "British Museum officials are pursuing a creative legal framework to comply with the restriction while satisfying Greece’s firm resistance to loans. This legal compromise is seen as crucial in shielding the agreement from anticipated court challenges."

"Negotiators are cautiously optimistic that, after decades of contention, both sides can align on a sustainable and mutually respectful solution. With cultural heritage and international diplomacy at stake, the final steps in this process may hold significant implications for global artefact restitution debates." Concludes Costis Papadiochos. 

In the British Museum's re-opened Reading Room there are five 'new visions' with models and respective outline of thoughts put together by five internationally acclaimed architectural teams.

The five shortlisted teams are: David Chipperfield, Lina Ghotmeh, Eric Parry Architects and Jamie Fobert Architects, OMA and 6a Architects. They will be considered by a jury panel and the winning team will be announced this Spring.

The ideas are displayed in the domed Reading Room, now mainly used for the museum's archives and available for students and researchers to access. There is by the architectural models displayed in this space, a desk or feedback station with pencils and a blank cards, an opportunity for visitors to also have their say.

The British Museum explains that the ideas of the architects are part of the bold transformation of the Western Galleries. That these galleries exhibit over a third of the museum's displays and include the Rosetta Stone, the Assyrian lion hunt and the Parthenon sculptures.

The architectural team that is selected will have the task of "developing a complex project, balancing the Museum's architectural heritage with a forward-looking, visitor-focused experience."

'The British Museum reopened its Reading Room for general visitors on 01 July following the introduction of ticketed tours last year' , article in the Museums Journal.

The Western Range will be redeveloped in phases

Meanwhile in December last year, London-based Studio Weave won the competition to revamp British Museum entrance paving the way for an improved visitor experience at both entrances on Great Russell Street and Montague Place. More on this by Gareth Harris in The Art Newspaper.

Are museums as trusted places on the line?

Many have written about who controls the narrative in the museum, and have also questioned the authenticity of the material evidence on which those narratives are based. Museums are, after all, highly selective repositories of such evidence.

Facts, as one sage observed, are like tesserae, capable of being assembled into any number of patterns. But when the authenticity of the coloured piece of ceramic is itself open to question, it ceases to be a ‘fact’ and any narrative edifice topples.

Can museums move fast enough and with enough assurance, to turn this splintering world of truth relativism to their advantage, by majoring on a USP of authenticity?

Tristram Besterman