Oh, Look! A bandwagon I can jump on!
Over the past several months, we have been seeing more and more discussion about the artifacts in museums, who the rightful owners are, and where those artifacts should be: in their current locations or returned to their home countries.
We’re going to just scratch the surface of this discussion today.
Museums offer a great way to interact with history. Seeing everyday objects that look very similar to what we use today that are hundreds of years old can make history seem a little less distant. But there are a few things to think about when you visit a museum.
Visiting Lucy
First, a little backstory.
In 2008 I had the opportunity to go to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to see the Lucy exhibition, called Lucy’s Legacy. Lucy was found in 1974 in Ethiopia. At the time, her skeleton was the oldest and most complete example of an early human ancestor ever found. The exhibition also included dozens of artifacts from Ethiopia.
At the time, my only real knowledge of Ethiopia was that they had endured a terrible famine in the 1990s. As it turns out, Ethiopia has a long and rich history. References to Ethiopia are made in the Bible and classic Greek Literature (Adejumobi, 2007). It was home to a Jewish population for hundreds of years. Ethiopia is also the only African country not to be colonized (though Italy did occupy the country from 1936-1941).
Having the opportunity to see Lucy was amazing. Getting to see the cultural artifacts of Ethiopia was great.
But one thing bothered me.
I saw the same phrase again and again on various pieces of artwork. “Provenance unknown.”
What does provenance mean and why does it matter?
Each piece in a museum has some sort of signage by it telling you what the item is and its estimated age. The sign will also have something showing the item’s provenance, AKA where it was found or discovered.
Provenance is the history of ownership of a specific item. Depending on your background, you may think of it as the object’s origin story or like its chain of custody. You know where an item was found, and everyone who has owned it since. This proof can be an original gallery sales receipt, dealer records or come from galleries or donors. You should be able to trace who has owned an item from its creation or discovery. This isn’t always possible due to war, natural disaster, and sometimes things just get lost over time.
While gaps happen, if the provenance is completely unknown that probably means that we don’t know who found the item or where they found it. There is a decent chance the artifact was looted or stolen.
So now we are getting into what prompted me to write this post.
What’s John Oliver Got To Do With This?
John Oliver’s Last week tonight did an episode on this topic in October 2022. He does an excellent job of introducing what provenance is, going over where most items in a museum are kept (spoiler alert: they are not on display), and making sure we understand that what is a pretty piece of artwork to us may actually be an important part of a country’s history.
Museums: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Oliver most importantly discusses how several museums throughout the world, but especially the British Museum and other western museums, have cultural artifacts obtained through outright theft or other questionable means.
Why Do I Have an Opinion on This?
Okay. So, is there another reason why I am jumping on this bandwagon? Some ulterior motive to this discussion?
Yes.
To address the elephant in the room (hi, Bob), on my home page, you can see a picture of the Parthenon Marbles that I took while visiting the British Museum. In my first post, I have included another picture I took at the British Museum. And I will probably continue to put pictures from the British Museum on my blog. However, I think that including these pictures from that institution without acknowledging the controversy around the Parthenon Marbles and provenance in general would go counter to what I am trying to achieve here.
I love the fact that I had the opportunity to see the Parthenon Marbles. I love that I got to see Lucy. Going to museums and getting a closer view of the rest of the world and their history really brightens my day.
It Doesn’t Belong to Me
But I don’t want to ignore or gloss over the fact that western greed has robbed many countries of not only cultural artifacts, but also important religious items that should still be in use (jump to minute 26:10 of the above video for more details). We also make it much more difficult for the people these artifacts came from to learn about and experience their own cultural history (start at minutes 9:35 and 14:50 of the above video).
I do think the Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Greece. Greece has had the appropriate space prepared for the Marbles for well over a decade at this point. The British Museum’s arguments smack of arrogance and bigotry (jump to 1:50 of the above video).
Handle with Care
We should also consider the risks museums take when moving fragile items thousands of miles to new exhibitions. While the Ethiopian government and the Houston Museum of Natural History agreed to this exhibition, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and several other institutions declined to host Lucy over concerns for keeping Lucy’s bones safe.
The Houston Museum of Natural History countered with several examples of other fragile artifacts that have been moved around the world to be put on display. Everything has risk, and the Ethiopian government and Houston Museum were okay with accepting the level of risk associated with this exhibition. And at least the Ethiopian government okayed the movement of the artifacts for the exhibition.
The same cannot be said for hundreds of other items currently housed in museums across the world.
We don’t get to keep another culture’s historical artifacts just because we think they are neat and don’t want to share.
Please let me know if you would like me to write a post about the Parthenon Marbles and how a large chunk of them ended up in England.
Please see the Works Cited page for a full list of references and articles linked in this post.
