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Britsh Museum Collection Search

britishmuseum.org

34 pointsbeckthompson16 comments

It's a shame that they don't make their catalogue filterable by license. A lot of museums have everything available under CC0, but the British Museum only has some stuff under a creative cc BY-NC-SA.

It's ironic too given that it's a museum that's famous for having stored a lot of the world's most important archaeological treasures while destroying the chronology of the most important sites in the process.

Spelling error in the title - Britsh should be British.

I was surprised that I couldn't find Henry Maudslay's thread cutting lathe... Turns out the Science museum isn't a part of the British museum like I had assumed.

919 results for "stolen" items. They should be returned.

It could do with a flag field for "probably stolen from the collection by staff" and another for "ownership contentious"

The first would aide people who stumble over stolen goods and the second would be interesting.

I visited a few days ago while on business in London with a few hours to burn.

There is now an airport-style security channel with staff who open and scan your bags.

For 30 years I've been a casual visitor to the British Museum and have never seen this. It used to be lunch-time detour when I was at UCL to walk through the ground floor simply as a shortcut from Russell Square.

I am not sure what their threat model is; maybe vandalism as protest, but as a security anecdote it's amazing to see all of this security theatre while all along it was the staff (and probably those in high positions) who were sneaking out millions of pounds of treasure.

Through the lens of security thinking I now see it as axiomatic that the consequences for the misdeeds of the privileged and powerful always fall upon the innocent and vulnerable.

This needs incorporating into the root of any formal account of security thinking - because we always seem to be wasting our time scrutinising and inconveniencing the wrong people.

The implementation of airport-level security for visitors is quite astonishing. As you say, it's unfortunate that we are bearing the brunt for what appears to be transgressions by the establishment's personnel.

You can walk out of the building with no checks, the security is on the way in

What's all this talk of staff stealing?

If true, where's the proof?

Now the subject of a Metropolitan police investigation [0]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67144607

Thx!

People have been complaining about security at the British Museum since the white tents went up in 2015 as a space todo bag searches (due to increase in terrorism and vandalism) Isn’t the airport style security an attempt to make that process easier and quicker than the manual bag search?

https://medium.com/@thepublicrealm.uk/the-british-museums-ve...

It could be related to a lot of recent Just Stop Oil protests, where orange paint / powder is thrown on artworks in museums, on pitches and playing surfaces at live sports events, and many other imaginative examples.

- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/14/just-sto...

- https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/just-stop-oil-uk-museu...

I searched my US state, ready for horrors, and the first items shown were Reelect Ronald Reagan buttons. So I've now gone down a rabbit hole of searching US presidents, they have a surprising button collection. I like "Impeach the Cox-sacker" https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1985-1233-... and on the subject of Nixon, why is this $1 bill in https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_2016-4060-...

Also, bizarrely, Nixon is listed as "Richard Nixon," Trump as "Donald Trump," Kennedy as "John F Kennedy," the Bush's as "President George Bush" and "President George W Bush," and for some reason Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama." Are they worried he'll be confused with all the other Barack Obamas? Why are only the Bush's "president?"

Searching "president," lists "President Saddam Hussein" so not only the Bush's. They also have Hussein toilet paper https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_EPH-ME-5

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