British Museum Scandal: A Wake-Up Call for Historical Accountability and Cultural Repatriation

TARA RUSSELL

Last summer, the British Museum found itself at the centre of a major scandal, firing staff after roughly 2,000 treasures were reported "missing, stolen, or damaged". Police had been investigating the theft of items including gold, jewellery, and gems of semi-precious stones, some of which had been sold on websites including Ebay.

The scandal began on 16 August 2023, when the British Museum released a statement substantiating that it had identified objects missing from its collection. Ten days later, former Chancellor, George Osborne - chair of the British Museum since June 2021 - confirmed to the BBC that around 2,000 objects were missing. He accepted that the British Museum’s reputation had been damaged but declared that some of the objects had started to be recovered. In a further statement to the BBC, Osborne confessed that the British Museum believed it had been the victim of thefts over a long period of time and frankly, as an institution, could have done more to prevent them.

Established by an Act of Parliament in 1753, the British Museum is governed by the British Museum Act 1963. Its principal regulator is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), which also sponsors it. A non-departmental public body, the museum operates at arm's length from the government but is accountable to parliament.

When the British Museum opened its doors to the public in 1759, it was described as a “museum of the world, for the world”. The Museum is driven by an insatiable curiosity for the world, with a deep belief in objects as reliable witnesses and documents of human history and the desire to expand and share knowledge. This is a beautiful trait within humanity; education and curiosity allow us all to learn and develop society in a positive way. However, the historic racism and violence associated with the power of the British Empire and consequently the British Museum must be repatriated. The British Museum was initially set up as an ethnographic museum to study "the other," with the Western ideal as the centre and the subject and other cultures objectified. Once we start embracing different approaches to heritage, that is when we will truly begin to have an encyclopaedic museum.

The Museum is following modern technology and digitising the 2.4 million records through uploads that will take over five years to complete. The beauty of digitisation, according to Sir Mark, is that “when it is finished, it will mean that everyone, no matter where in the world they live, will be able to see everything we have and use this amazing resource in myriad ways.” This leaves one crucial question: when the Museum becomes digitised and those interested can look at and learn about the history virtually, what is the need for the artefacts to remain in a basement in London? Surely that means that all these countries can have their artefacts back?

For decades, the Museum has been under increasing pressure to return items in its collection to their countries of origin. The demands by Greece for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, still often referred to as the Elgin Marbles, remains a high profile example in this contested debate. They were removed by the diplomat and soldier, Lord Elgin in the 19th Century and later bought by the British government and placed in the British Museum. The British Museum claims Lord Elgin received a firman (permit) enabling the removal of the marbles however the document has never been found. This act of pilfering was conducted not only by British elites but across European empires, determined to assert their dominance. In March 2023, the Vatican returned three fragments of the Athens’ Parthenon temple it had kept for centuries.

Unsurprisingly, the 2023 scandal has led to renewed calls in Greece for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures. The thefts from the British Museum have been high on the news agenda in Greece. Greek culture minister Lina Mendoni told the BBC the scandal raised questions about the safety and integrity of all the museum’s exhibits, stating that the incident reinforced the fair demand for the definitive return and reunification of the Sculptures in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. However, the chair of the British Museum all-party Parliamentary group, Tim Loughton MP, accused Greece of “blatant opportunism”, acknowledging that it was a serious matter before downplaying the thefts as “not exactly the heist of the Mona Lisa.” Here, Loughton fails to acknowledge that the Mona Lisa is in the hands of its country of origin, and possesses far higher security. The Mona Lisa is logged in an archive in the Louvre, and if it did go missing, it would not take the museum decades to realise.

In Italy, digital archaeologist Roger Michel and his team are using state-of-the-art technology to recreate the hotly contested Parthenon marbles. The idea behind it is simple: make 3D replicas of the marbles and donate them to the British Museum in exchange for the return of the original sculptures to Greece. Roger argues the replacement sculptures would also allow the museum to show people what they originally looked like. "These things were brightly painted with skin tones and garish colours," he says. However, when the British Museum shut down an official request to retrieve the 3D scans, Roger’s team decided to find them anyway, using a loophole in the museum’s own regulations. “Visitors may use 3D scanning equipment in the museum and they may use the product of those 3D scans for any non-commercial purpose.” So, Roger and his team visited and scanned all the Parthenon sculptures.

As well as support from Greeks at home and abroad who want their sculptures returned, the plan has A-list support from British actor and long-time advocate for the return of the marbles, Stephen Fry. Fry agrees that it is important in a museum to have the legitimate object but we live in an age where exact digital replication is possible, enabling the museum to display the marbles synonymously with Athenians regaining their sacred marbles.

In 2022, when Roger and his team first floated the idea, the British Museum made clear it was not on board. Since then, it has flagged a desire to develop a "Parthenon partnership" with Greece that could see the marbles displayed in both Athens - enabling the Greeks to repossess their sacred marbles - and at the museum in London.

The British Museum holds no excuse for keeping these artefacts, if digitisation is good enough for the rest of the world, then British academics can follow suit. Most of the artefacts do not rightfully belong to The British Museum, and returning them could allow the museum to develop internationally. This process would aim to tell the story of all humanity and make an argument for itself by opening its galleries to as much of humanity as possible. This could be in the form of multiple museums across the world, allowing individual states to tell their own stories and explain collections using their voice and positionality.

We need a new way to tell the story of humanity. The British Museum is an institution of the past that glorifies The British Empire and tells history from an exclusively Western lens, rather than showing the full picture. The concept of keeping the collection together, in a digital hub, allows The British Museum to retain their vast collection but also leaves no excuse not to return all stolen artefacts to their countries and cultures of origin. These objects may be “fascinating” but their displacement holds centuries of pain.

We need to apologise through the act of returning stolen objects that we couldn’t even look after.