A gobsmacking amount of stolen Indian treasures in the stunning Ancient India exhibit at the British Museum. Many have a caption saying effectively ‘stolen by the East India Company and transferred to the BM when their museum closed down’. And yet they feature this quote without irony…
If the label text provides that kind of provenance information it is presumably intended to prompt such reflection? I'm not sure I see the irony
It provides the information, but no reflection I could find in the exhibition. For me, the irony lies in the juxtaposition of the quote with the BM’s refusal to reflect/repatriate.
It may be the quote you photographed is the prompt for reflection. Exhibitions have very little text to play with (I haven't seen this one, so can't really comment). BM curators do plenty of reflection even if the institutional/national problems around repatriation remain
I don’t disagree. But this was particularly striking, given the proportion of the objects stolen during empire. And they had really quite a lot of text to play with: long captions for each object, plus discursive sections. Given they mentioned the colonial archaeology, I still think it striking.
I’m obviously well used to seeing these sorts of issues, especially with the BM (with their history of refusing even to repatriate human remains) but so many sacred and stolen objects (eg the first depiction of a human Buddha) was striking enough that even my elderly in-laws commented.
A lot of museum visitors are now primed to notice these issues and interpretation has to find a line between admitting, informing, telling people what they know, making others feel they're being hit over the head with messaging etc. The lack of discussion/action at the top is a problem, of course
Too many ‘strikings’, but I was very struck ;-)
I’ve noticed a few museums embracing the rhetorical strategy of “wow isn’t it interesting how racist we used to be???” and I’m not sure that’s the move lol
It would be a problem if it were not being acknowledged and shared with audiences. The question of 'so what next' is another thing. It's always worth remembering that museums are not monoliths but made up of a range of people, dealing with a lot of different stakeholders, with too little money
I’ve worked for museums & libraries throughout my career, across a spectrum of funded-ness, so I’m well aware.
Seen a similar issue at Tower, in box titled ‘India’s Bounty.’ I suspect when the interpretation is updated the wording will change.
I wonder how many British national treasures are displayed in the museums of India? Or Belize? Or Palestine? Or Egypt? Or Nigeria?