Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

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Apart from what was already discussed, regarding the role of museums in preservation etc, we also have to be realistic: historical context is important.

It's not like the UK government is still tasking diplomats with buying random artifacts for the glory of the British Empire. There was a time when acceptable practices were different. We're not going to punish people for "crimes" committed 200 years ago, are we? We might as well disband the Catholic Church outright and pillage the Vatican, built on "ill-gotten gains" throughout the centuries (well, isn't that an appealing prospect, now that I think of it...).

Once you go down that route, could all museums in the world please send back their Italian Renaissance paintings, we better throw them in a dark closet at the Uffizi so nobody can see them, it's not like Italy has so many of them that they can afford to exhibit and preserve less than 10% of them at any given time, right?

In most cases, these "ownership disputes" are just instruments of foreign policy. I'd argue that preservation and availability should trump "ownership" pretty much all the time.

Going back to the preservation aspect: think of what's happening in Iraq and Syria at the moment. Historical artifacts of immense value are being lost to contemporary squabbles. Would it have been so bad to store those in a basement of the British Museum, away from the madness of humanity?

Well, the US is still being held responsible for slavery even though that was outlawed 150 years ago, right?

Just because it happened long ago doesn't mean that the current government can abdicate any responsibility for reparation. The UK government should at least attempt to return the relics it has warehoused to their origins if they are under stable rule.

> US is still being held responsible for slavery

Should an African-American individual petition the US government to be resettled to Africa and compensated for the trouble, would the US government agree to pay? I don't think so. The US government is responsible for the enduring consequences of segregation, which ended less than 50 years ago in most of the country and is a separate issue from slavery, albeit strongly related. In the same way, the current UK government is responsible for preserving the artifacts it inherited so long ago and (theoretically) work towards a world where the Greek people will never be forced to sell their belongings because of economic hardship.

> The UK government should at least attempt to return the relics

Why this obsession with the British Museum, when the Louvre and other institutions are as full of less-documented loot as the BM? Are we holding the British responsible for keeping better records than others? There are tons of US and European museums with similarly-acquired catalog that are never really criticized for it. The Nike of Samothrace is so much more beautiful and powerful than anything the BM holds, but its location has never been much criticized. Could that be because modern Greek governments have had better relationships with France than with the UK? It's all just foreign policy by other means, usually by people who won't care about these relics the minute they've had their way.

I personally think the best location for artifacts is among people who will cherish them and help the world see them and understand them. As an Italian, I think half of the relics we currently mis-preserve should probably be sold to people who would do a better job. The recently-located Imperial Port of Rome will likely never be fully excavated because we wouldn't have any money to preserve it as it would deserve, and the same happens every day for magnificent stuff all over Rome. I think that's a much more pressing issue than bickering about stuff we've already studied to death.

To your second point there has always been a contingent in the museum community who opposed the reparation of artifacts. This is not to say they may lament the means of acquisition but feel that the artifacts would be better protected in a more stable or better funded place.

This group has been given more attention as of late. Especially with the rate of destruction currently occurring in parts of the middle east (re: ISIS). But even in other areas of the world this a concern. I've herd it said by some that artifacts returned to Peru cannot be fully accounted for. Admittedly, this was second hand, but it seems quite logical knowing a thing or two about the backlog of even the most funded museums.

Logic of a rich pirate: my stomach is full so now onwards piracy is banned.

"Would it have been so bad to store those in a basement of the British Museum"

Well that made me think. The looting of the Iraq Museum always made me sad. Much of it is the common heritage of all people on earth.

You do realize that a great deal of the Vatican museum collection is art sponsored (patronized) by churchmen, right? From money generally voluntarily donated to the Church?

So not quite so ill-gotten as you imagine?

It depends on your definition of "money generally voluntarily donated to the Church". Catholic history is full of shenanigans, from selling access to Paradise to taxing peasants for working the land to "tweaking" inheritance laws all the way to waging wars (since the Church was a real Nation State for hundreds of years, committing its fair share of nation-state-scale atrocities). The Sistine Chapel wasn't paid with Sunday hats, if you know what I mean.

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