Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Let's all have tickets to the universal museum

Times Online (Ben Mcintyre)

The visitors pouring through the doors of the British Museum represent the triumph of an idea born in the white intellectual heat of the Enlightenment - as valuable today as it was 250 years ago when the museum first opened, but now under attack, despite its fabulous success, as never before.

The British Museum is the greatest universal museum in the world. On my first visit there, as a teenager, I remember feeling physically overwhelmed by the sheer scale and variety of the artefacts, art and ideas on display: Mesopotamian relics, Roman statuary, pharaonic carvings, Viking burial treasures.

I wandered, blinking, from room to room. The museum was not trying to tell me something; it seemed to be offering to tell me everything.

That, of course, is why six million people visited the museum last year, from all over the world, free. We flock to the blockbuster exhibitions; but we also come to explore, to fall into unexpected conversations with distant, ancient, foreign peoples.

And that, of course, was exactly what the museum's creators imagined when it was founded by Act of Parliament in 1753: a great cornucopia of different civilisations, an encyclopaedic storehouse of universal knowledge, displaying the great cultures side by side, with equal veneration, to enlighten not just an elite, but the world.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The criticism now frequently, and erroneously, levelled against those who call for certain antiquities to be returned to the country of origin is that such arguments are emotive and political. And of course when it comes to the past in the present, all one has to do is accuse someone of using the past for political ends and the spectre of the Nazi’s abuse of the past looms - still today, and that person’s claim is immediately discredited. But what Macintyre and others, James Cuno and Neil MacGregor included, fail to acknowledge is that the notion of the British Museum being ‘a museum of the world, for the world’ is as much a political statement as any call for the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures in Athens.

In these grand encyclopaedic museums we do not actually “discover and understand other peoples” in some objective way, as Macintyre suggests. Rather we encounter collections of objects that previous collectors and curators have selected for us to discover and understand, and only part of that collection. For a simple and very obvious example one only has to compare the space given to Africa versus that given to Ancient Europe in the British Museum. The blatant inequality is underwritten not by curatorial constraints, but by politics and ideology. It is an ideology in which Africa is inferior to (western) Europe, an ideology that is reinforced not challenged in the British Museum. As scholars and social commentators have remarked for decades now, a history of the West is often offered up as a history of humanity. In fact, what we have in Bloomsbury then is more a collection of the world, for the West.

3:51 pm
Anonymous said...

TICKETS FOR ALL TO THE “UNIVERSAL MUSEUM” BUT WITHOUT THE AFRICANS?


Ben Macintyre’s article Let's all have tickets to the universal museum, in Timesonline, July 10, 2008, is one of those articles appearing regularly in European newspapers and Western media generally, appearing to espouse an internationalism and a universalism that, at first sight would appeal to many persons. However, on reflection, one realizes that, perhaps without consciously desiring to do so, they propagate a very narrow vision of the world and are generally oblivious of the needs and feelings of other peoples and cultures in the world. They are conveying what their education and environment, intellectual and physical, enable them to comprehend and to appreciate.

Macintyre mentions that Egypt is requesting the return of objects taken away from Egypt by European States but does not explain how some of these objects reached Europe. He does not seem to understand that many persons in Egypt and elsewhere have deep resentments against Europe for the way their cultural objects were confiscated during the colonialist and imperialist age. The humiliation that colonial domination implied is a factor that seems quite incomprehensible to many Europeans. One of the visible demonstrations of power was the carrying away of the political, religious and cultural symbols of the defeated. Maybe it is difficult for Europeans to understand that these cultural symbols mean a lot more to the defeated and humiliated countries and that they were not intended to be kept in museums, “universal” or otherwise. These objects had functions in their cultures and their importance extends far beyond the glass cases of museums. The full exercise of sovereignty and independence requires the recovery of these objects which should have been returned to the African countries on the eve of independence. How can a State plan its cultural development when its best cultural objects are hijacked by foreign States? How would the Europeans feel if the major symbols of their culture were in the hands of African States who refused to return them?

Macintyre, following James Cuno, whom he cites later on, repeats the untenable argument that “Many of the demands for restitution are bound up with narrow nationalism and a political agenda, an attempt to lend historical credibility to modern states that did not exist when the objects were created. Some nations asserting cultural property rights are culturally, religiously and even ethnically distinct from the civilisations whose artefacts they now claim.”
It is remarkable that having stolen cultural artefacts from Egypt and other countries, when they request the return of the objects, they are told “you are guided by narrow nationalism and you have a political agenda that is why you want your cultural objects back.” What kind of world are we in that the illegitimate holder of property can without shame and embarrassment even refer to the motives of the owner for requesting restoration of the property? Is it really for those holding stolen cultural objects to examine the state of mind of those who demand their return? Are the British, French, Germans and Americans, “culturally, religiously and even ethnically” the same as the peoples of those civilisations the cultural objects of which they are holding on to? Is the British culture now the same as it was in 1200? Such questions are never asked with regard to those holding stolen objects but are asked with regard to those claiming their return. Those holding stolen objects set themselves up as judges and feel obliged to question the motives of the demanders. They cannot imagine that the demanders are simply asking for the return of their stolen property. The demanders must have an ideology but the retainers need not have one! But since when are questions of restitution of property predicated on the absence of ideology? For all the history of mankind, property owners have always fought back to regain stolen property without any such discussion. All of a sudden, in the beginning of the 21st Century, some clever persons are trying to confuse questions of the right of owners with the examination of their ideologies. Are nationalists the only once interested in claiming their cultural goods? What about communists, capitalists, socialists, liberals, fascists and conservatives?
When Britain, France, Germany and the United States were busy collecting, seizing and carrying away the cultural and religious objects of others, were they being internationalists? The colonialist and imperialist ideologies supported by some writers are the very factors that lead to nationalism. A look at our modern history will confirm that without nationalism, wide or narrow; there is no way of ending colonial and imperialist rule. Recent European history gives ample examples. So why are people worried at all by the idea that Africans who demand the return of stolen cultural objects may be motivated by nationalism? Are there any States in our modern world which are entirely devoid of nationalism? Take the USA, Great Britain, Germany and France. Are they not more nationalistic than Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt and Senegal?
Macintyre should stop presenting the European Enlightenment as a blessing for all mankind. He should look at the writings of the philosophers of the European Enlightenment, Hume, Hegel and Kant who clearly did not consider Africans and other peoples as being fully human. Kant wrote that the fact that a person was black was evidence that he was stupid. Is this enlightenment? One should examine the history of the museums, including the British Museum, to realise that the mantle of Enlightenment which they are trying to wear is extremely thin and would not stand serious examination. The museums have been used to bolster racist ideas of European supremacy and dubious theories of evolution which place the European at the top of the ladder. Is this what Macintyre and others are inviting us to admire and support?
It is remarkable that Macintyre could write about restitution in an English or British media without mentioning the case of Benin which is a classic case of imperialist aggression, plunder and incendiary frenzy. The British in 1897 invaded Benin, ransacked the Oba’s Palace taking away thousands of Benin cultural artefacts and in accordance with the tradition of British Punitive Expeditions, set Benin City on fire, after having executed the King’s advisers and sending the Oba into exile. Now when the people of Benin and Nigeria ask for the return of these objects, some have the audacity and impudence to say that they are nationalist with an ideology that is why they are making the request.
Macintyre does not for once mention Africa or the Africans, except the Egyptians. European and American museums have thousands of stolen African objects, the best of which are displayed with pride by the holders who are not always respectful of the dispossessed owners. Many Europeans are not even aware of the existence of African claims for restitution since their writers do not mention this fact. So the invitation to the “universal museum” does not extend to the African peoples. But even such an invitation would be very theoretical since the Europeans are not willing to grant visas to many Africans. No European State would grant a visa to an African solely for the purpose of visiting a “universal museum”. On the contrary, Europe has established an army which is intended to hold Africans back from entering Europe. Frontex is basically aimed at Africans illegally arriving by sea or land to Europe. Europeans may have crossed the seas to Africa in a spirit of adventure and later were honoured by their kings. Young Africans should not assume they can also, in a free world, in a spirit of adventure, try to discover Europe by sea. Such adventures are reserved for Europeans who can travel all over the world!
We can agree with Macintyre that “A shared heritage implies greater sharing, a new sort of philosophy in which individual museums do not merely gather, preserve and display artefacts from across the world, but borrow, lend and swap in a global exchange of objects and ideas. Putting the Terracotta Warriors on display in London demonstrates one kind of cultural exchange, but to display the Elgin Marbles in, say, Beijing, would be a sign that the concept of a pooled cultural legacy has superseded that of national cultural property.”
A new policy by which museums would share objects will certainly be welcome. But when you look at experience in this matter, it is clear that the Europeans are not yet ready to embrace such a change of policy. They are not ready to share their own cultural objects - Picasso, Rembrandt, Goya, Monet, and Turner - with Africans and Asians. They may be prepared to share with Africans some of their stolen African cultural objects but not European objects. It seems to be a fixed European idea that whatever exists in this world, they must have their share, gold, diamonds, oil, timber etc but they are not prepared to share with the rest of the world what exists in Europe. I am ready to share your lunch with you but do not expect to get some of my lunch.
The Germans have shown that they are not prepared to return or lend to the Egyptians the stolen bust of Nefertiti. The British have insulted Nigerians and Africans by refusing to lend the stolen Idia hip mask which is the symbol of FESTAC, the African festival. The Egyptians have once again asked the British Museum to lend the Rosetta Stone.We will have to wait and see whether there will be any change in British Museum policy on this matter.
If Europeans do not see how ridiculous it is to have to discuss with Africans the return of undoubtedly stolen African cultural objects now in European museums, they should stop all this talk about a shared heritage or heritage of mankind. A heritage of mankind in which one group hijacks the cultural icons of the other group by force and violence is not worth talking about. We are all better served by keeping dead silent on a shameful aspect of human history.
Kwame Opoku, 10 July, 2008.

7:45 pm

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