[Crimson Dynamo]

Jesus College is set to return a controversial bronze cockerel that was looted
from Africa in the 19th century, following a successful campaign from students
to reject the “spoils of war”.

The sculpture, known as the Benin bronze, was stolen by Victorian explorers
and has resided in Jesus College since 1905.

It was removed from public view in March 2016 after protests from students
that it celebrated a “colonial narrative”. The protests came fin the wake of
the "Rhodes Must Fall" campaign to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes, the
19th century colonialist, from Oxford's Oriel College.

For the past three years since removing the sculpture from public view,
university dons have been deliberating over whether to repatriate it to its
native Nigeria.

However today Jesus College confirmed that the sculpture will be returned
home.

The College said that there is no doubt that the statue was looted directly
from the Court of Benin as part of the punitive expedition of 1897 and given
to the College in 1905 by the father of a Jesus College student.


Sonita Alleyne was elected Master of Jesus College, a role which she took up in October

Almost 1,000 bronzes were taken after Benin City, in present-day Nigeria, was
occupied by imperial troops in 1897, according to the British Museum.


About 900 of those artefacts are housed in museums and collections around
the world, including the British Museum.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...rel-following/


a good idea?

[Niamh.]

Yes of course it's a good, it was stolen

[The Slim Reaper]

British Museums will be empty if we start giving back all the things we've stolen, but yeah, it's the right thing to do.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by The Slim Reaper

British Museums will be empty if we start giving back all the things we've stolen, but yeah, it's the right thing to do.

I mean the clue is in the name, isn't it? Why not fill it with British stuff

[arista]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

I mean the clue is in the name, isn't it? Why not fill it with British stuff

Because years ago we had
the British Empire
so we were in Control of loads of nations
even if they were our Slaves.


They were the old days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire
[The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms.
In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal
in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route
to Asia via the North Atlantic.
Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the European discovery of America,
but he made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland,
and, mistakenly believing (like Christopher Columbus)
that he had reached Asia, there was no attempt to found a colony.
Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year
but nothing was ever heard of his ships again]

[Livia]

Send it back, ugly thing...

Quite a lot of stuff in British museums wouldn't exist now if it hadn't been brought here.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by arista

Because years ago we had
the British Empire
so we were in Control of loads of nations
even if they were our Slaves.


They were the old days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire

Yes and now you know it's wrong to steal from people so give it back

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Send it back, ugly thing...

Quite a lot of stuff in British museums wouldn't exist now if it hadn't been brought here.

How do you know that? Odd justification for stealing from people but whatever

[arista]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Yes and now you know it's wrong to steal from people so give it back

Some that can be Given back


But not Everything in Museums

[Crimson Dynamo]

i wonder if they want it back?

[Liam-]

Something that is stolen should be returned to the place it was stolen from, good move

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

How do you know that? Odd justification for stealing from people but whatever

Wow, that's quite a flippant response.

How do I know that? LOL.... I Googled it.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Wow, that's quite a flippant response.

How do I know that? LOL.... I Googled it.

A flippant response to a flippant and disrespectful post, indeed.

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

A flippant response to a flippant and disrespectful post, indeed.

Disrespectful to whom, exactly, you? Because your reply to my original post was pretty abrupt.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Disrespectful to whom, exactly, you? Because your reply to my original post was pretty abrupt.

Disrespectful to the countries you pillaged so I guess indirectly me yes

[The Slim Reaper]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

I mean the clue is in the name, isn't it? Why not fill it with British stuff

You'll get no argument from meon this. It's time to start doing the right thing and giving back all the stolen plunder.

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Disrespectful to the countries you pillaged so I guess indirectly me yes

Countries that I pillaged? LOL.... Half my family was in a completely different country until the 1940s.

You quoted me. You were rude. Now I'm responsible for the rape of Europe.

[The Slim Reaper]

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...t-repatriation

Museums are in crisis. In the past, their social role has been taken for granted – they’re spaces for preserving objects and educating the deferential public that comes to admire them. It’s a tidy, completist dream: wouldn’t it be nice to see the whole of human history, free and open to all?

Except that history is nasty and ugly. It’s full of violence: every moment, every event, takes place within a power dynamic – there’s always a hierarchy in play. The whole concept of The Museum is a colonialist, imperialist fantasy, born from the fallacy that somehow the whole world can be neatly catalogued, contained in a single building, mapped out for easy digestion. There’s no such thing as a free object, and every piece in a museum has been moved from its original context. It’s uncomfortable and rude to look too closely at what that move involved.

But people are tired of not looking too closely. Last weekend, at least 300 people occupied the British Museum to protest against their continuing partnership with BP. They’re all tired of museums being unquestionable, unethically funded pleasure houses where dirty money gets made to look like shiny civic pride. In the past year, nearly 2,000 people have attended my Uncomfortable Art Tours and taken part in a conversation about power and national identities in these spaces. They’re all tired of repatriation being an untouchable subject, something museums only comment on when they’re forced to.

I run these unauthorised events in an attempt to fill in the gaps the museums refuse to acknowledge: when they don’t address the theft and imperial legacies that created their collections, someone has to step up and provide that information. We’re tired of selective histories and half-truths. We’re tired of institutions holding all the cards, setting impossible targets of proving “cultural continuity” before they’ll consider a repatriation request, of insisting that illegally acquired and largely ignored ancestral remains must be kept in case they suddenly come in handy for a hypothetical research project.

Earlier this week, the Guardian published the responses of some major museums to requests for repatriation. These freedom of information requests reveal anxious institutions, paranoid to the point of hostility, totally unable to see that by continually refusing to take repatriation seriously they’re becoming ridiculous. I’m sick of the idea that if a museum returns one item to its community of origin, their collection will empty overnight, and the only alternative to destroying all museums forever is to keep them exactly as they are, beyond all reproach. It’s a false binary, one that ignores cultural nuances and lumps all First Nations and post-imperial communities together into some kind of greedy horde clawing at the door.

Not everyone is asking for their property back: there are plenty of artefacts that weren’t stolen or illegally acquired. Those unreturned collections can still tell the story of human history – it might be a bit more locally focused, but there will still be stories of trade and networks of power. It’s fine. You’ll still have museums.

First, though, those museums have to change. They can’t be these cold, possessive spaces any more. We need a new type of museum: one that’s not afraid to admit it doesn’t have all the answers and actually welcomes critique and dissent, that will let in a multiplicity of responses and voices without defensiveness. We need a different script on acquisition, possession and repatriation: it’s not enough to insist that finders are keepers, or to hide behind outdated acts that don’t actually prevent the disposal of objects.

So of course museums are on the defensive, it’s hard when people don’t trust you. The individuals who work in these collections might be trying their best to represent the histories they contain as well and as fairly as possible. I want to believe that. But as long as the we-know-best-don’t-ask-questions tone continues, good intentions are nowhere near enough.

What would it take to get us to the point of real transparency? Give us a reason to trust you: show us your records (and not in some labyrinthine catalogue), show us what you have and where it comes from. Let us look at these objects you so desperately don’t want to let go of, and show us your case for keeping them. Let people respond, and actually hear the hurt and harm that your collections perpetuate. Admit what’s being contested instead of just pretending it’s all OK.

Provenance is part of the story, and audiences are hungry to hear it. We’re in a decisive moment, as pressure mounts from campaigners, governments and visitors. The “repatriation issue” isn’t going away. This isn’t a cute new trend – eventually there will be a transformation, like it or not. This atmosphere of awkward denial and compromise can’t last much longer. It’s well past time for museums to tell the whole story.

[James]

It's not a simple as just sending things back to the country they came from. The British Museum must have millions of objects from abroad.

The dinosaur skeletons in museums didn't come from this country.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by James

It's not a simple as just sending things back to the country they came from. The British Museum must have millions of objects from abroad.

The dinosaur skeletons in museums didn't come from this country.

I suppose Dinosaur skeletons while technically "stolen" from other countries are a bit different though because they're not heritage of a different culture or group, but remains of extinct animals buried long before humans were even around

[Shaun]

There've been multiple disputes with Egypt recently over artifacts from their civilisation, haven't there? Wasn't the Rosetta Stone subject of one last year?

I'm on the fence, really. The sheer importance of objects collected by British museums is incalculable, and we owe a great debt of knowledge and historical awareness to their collections, but obviously many things were collected in less than honest or charitable ways.

I suppose it's a case of countries catching up with what we perceive to be the "civilized world" and wanting to reclaim their own artifacts... and it's hard to really argue against it without sounding like a colonialist dick.

[Oliver_W]

It's a shame that museums are at risk, our future generations deserve to see the wonders of the world

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

It's a shame that museums are at risk, our future generations deserve to see the wonders of the world

Yes, in their own countries............

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Yes, in their own countries............

No-one who's currently alive has ever owned them, so the museums have as much right to keep them as anyone.

I bet most of the people advocating countries being allowed to steal stuff back also think that borders are "just lines randomly drawn on a map", so it shouldn't matter where they are

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

No-one who's currently alive has ever owned them, so the museums have as much right to keep them as anyone.

I bet most of the people advocating countries being allowed to steal stuff back also think that borders are "just lines randomly drawn on a map", so it shouldn't matter where they are

Would you say that about someone stealing your inheritance that everybody who owned it is dead so it doesn't matter about the rightful owner of that heritage?