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Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

The British Museum was literally asked to help restore it, it's not like they're keeping it forever (only until 2023 it sounds like?)

Asked by Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland, where the cloak is going next. Not Te Papa or elsewhere in NZ.

> A unique example of a Māori cloak or kahu kākāpō (‘cloak of kākāpō feathers’) has been preserved for future generations to enjoy after vital conservation work was conducted in a partnership between Culture Perth and Kinross, the British Museum and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Maybe the article is wrong, or did you just not see the preamble?

That quote doesn't contradict what mkl said, towards the end of the article it does say this thou, "The cloak will be on display in the new museum developed in Perth, set to open in Spring 2024."

As your quote says, the conservation work was a collaboration. The cloak itself has since 1842 been in the possession of organisations in Perth, Scotland, the most recent of which asked the British Museum and Te Papa to help restore it, and it will now be loaned to the British Museum. It has not been in New Zealand in nearly 200 years, so has not ever been in our national museum, Te Papa.

To be fair, the British Museum is literally full of looted artifacts.

Here’s a highly abridged list: https://www.insider.com/british-empire-stole-cultural-artifa...

Most of the British people who looted the planet are dead by now. As a result of tending to their ill-gotten gains, their descendants learned something about preserving priceless cultural artifacts. While it would be preferable that the looting had never occurred in the first place, hard to hate on the current museum keepers.

How elegant for ultimately avoiding criticism to current policies.

I see no criticism of current policies in this thread. Discussion seems to be about history, or states what the current policies are.

A parent comment states that museum is full of looted objects.

The owners have asked for them back and been refused. I don’t see that as a historic issue, I see it as a current one.

> hard to hate on the current museum keepers.

When directly asked to return items they say no.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/...

What’s hard to hate about that?

Sure, but there's no indication that this will become one of them. If the Museum decides to steal it, definitely feel free to come back and say "I told you so!". But I think that is incredibly unlikely in this case.

The provenance principal as it relates to artwork, and cultural artifacts is a pretty well established process for determining ownership. This should really be what governs if artefacts are considered stolen / looted or were gifted / sold in good faith. I bet there is a substantial amount of artefacts in museums around the world that fail a good provenance search, in this cases they should be sent 'home' if a stronger claim can be made. In this case though it's not clear, 'collected' as stated by the article could mean many things.

It's pretty clear that you didn't bother to read the article.

Haha, oh no I did indeed skip it reflexively this time. womp womp. :(

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