stealing culture

[MrCurious]

Has a museum any legal or moral right to ancient artifacts taken from countries without permission or bought on the black market. After visiting many museums,I had an overwhelming feeling that many, though not all artifacts would be far better off in there place of origin.

[Lil O'lady]

Good point, well made. In the last 15 - 20 years UK museums entered into national and international agreements to ensure they acquired artefatcs through legitimate and traceable means. This was not always the case in the past.

So now a museum in the UK can't just get a new leopard to stuff, for the heck of it - it has a set of rules to follow. Similarly, if buying a work of art, they are duty bound especially if using public money to ensure the seller has title to it and it didn't fall off the back of a Nazi lorry.

Many countries have shown great interest in getting their cultural material back - North American and Australian groups have recently had artefacts and human remains returned to them.

Problems arise where a museum has based a huge part of its displays around a particular artefact - the Elgin Marbles is a case in point. Giving them back leaves a gaping hole - and this is where UK museums argue that the country asking for return of goods is not yet capable of caring for them.
Egypt has become very touchy in recent years about the quantity of cultural heritage kept abroad.

On the other hand, it can be argued that many of these objects were bought and paid for, fair and square.....they were the luxury souvenirs of their day and the inhabitants of their countries of origin were often only too pleased to flog them.

And some major collections still turn as blind an eye as they dare to the origins of their purchases.

[jake-the-peg]

Rather depends on timescales.

Does the Egyptian museum have the right to retain artifacts that might have been plundered by a Pharoh thosands of years ago and found in his tomb?

What about the jewels in the Crown jewels that might have come into British posession 150 years ago via our taking over a country by military force?

How about the recovered art treasures looted by the Nazi's

I think most people would say No to the first yes to the last and um and er about the second.

It's not always an easy decision and there are doubtlessly many fabulous items that have been saved by their being taken abroad.

Bear in mind the fabulous death mask of Tutenkamun was nearly stolen not that many years ago from the Cairo museum of antiquities and only the chance patrol of a guard and his dog caught the theif in the grounds with the mask.

OK that's now got a much better security system but if you start returning things you'll have to start making judgements as to who is and who is not capable of keeping them safe and that's a real can of worms!

Heaven knows what was lost from Iraqi museums

In principle you're right in practice it's a potential political nightmare.

[MrCurious]

thanx for you answers, good points well made .Though i did say some artifacts not all,the safety of course must be paramount .
I still think that if the museums of the world returned say all the stonework , statues etc from the temple at Karnak .It would make a great building even more of a wonder. Or don't you think the Elgin Marbles would look so much better on the parthanon than stuck on a wall of a room in London . Maybe i'm not being practicle ,but these treasure's placed in the wrong context are surly diminished

[Tichfield]

Whether the Elgin Marbles would be better displayed in Athens is open to deabte, but thew were not "plundered". They were bought and paid for.

If I buy a painting by an Italian master should I not be allowed to put it on my wall in the UK if I want to?