Losing our marbles?

Is there anything more divisive and contentious than Brexit that I could write about? Just possibly the question of the rightful resting place of art and nationally sensitive objects, with the added attraction that it is of international rather than just national interest. When I lived in Greece it was very much framed through the debate on the Elgin Marbles/Parthenon Sculptures but I noticed a story in the UK press last week about the shrunken heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. For those who don’t know the Pitt Rivers I would suggest heading to Oxford with due speed for it is one of the most exciting and eclectic collection anywhere in the world and the way in which the displays are laid out make it a museum in itself; an idea of what museums were like at the height of Victorian imperialism. It is full of imperial loot, and any movement to return works to their original location would make the museum an empty shell, which is why I would expect the museum to resist returning anything, for fear of the precedent. The era of ‘Rhodes must Fall’ will, however, make this quite a battle I suspect.

My mind turned to this not just because of the article but because of two moments in the last fortnight of my travels. 

The first occurred at Tiwanaku, an important archaeological site in northern Bolivia that I confess I had not heard of until my visit there. The Tiwanaku civilisation presagedthe Incas and the sun worship, social structures and architecture almost certainly influenced Inca culture. The quality of the ceramics in particular was impressive and the civilisation lasted for several hundred years, with pottery helping us to understand the phases of development and the sociology and theology that underpinned their belief systems. It also came to an abrupt end, with various stories but no certainty just as that which hangs over the fate of Easter Island. Until a few years ago one of the main statues there had sat in the middle of the traffic of La Paz, rather as ‘Cleopatra’s Needle’ does in London; there is no doubt it is better placed now as the centrepiece of the museum. To protect it from further decay there is a clear instruction not to take flash photos. Except that the museum attendant there was quite willing, for a ‘fee’, for me to do so. Far worse, he then started a conversation in which I eventually realised he was ascertaining how much I would be willing to pay for one of the ceramic treasures in the museum. Of his criminal intent there was no doubt.

The second occasion was in Potosi and on a visit to a church in this rather haunting town. There we were suddenly encouraged to view the mummified remains of young children and foetuses, laid out below an altar. Despite the rope separating us, no one prevented some of those in the group from crossing over the line and taking photos. Here I was concerned not just by the failure to enforce rules but by the objects being on display at all; just as those shrunken heads had been said to be inappropriate and an affront to the beliefs of the culture from which they were taken, so I felt that there was something sacriligeous or at least distasteful about what was on display here.

I offer these moments not as compelling evidence for the case for keeping objects in the largely western museums where by historical default they largely lie, but perhaps as a cautionary tale that if, as I suspect will happen, it becomes impossible to resist the demand to return at least some objects to their place of origin, then we shouldn’t let cultural sensitivities prevent us from engaging with questions over the security and nature of how they are displayed and managed. There are, of course, other factors to consider too; how far should we consider the potential audience? (I was the only person in Tiwanakufor the full hour I was in the museum) Does the state with contemporary territorial jurisdiction have any more claim to the artefacts of a previous culture than others (to what extent is contemporary Italy the heir to Ancient Rome, for example?) I certainly feel we shouldn’t be ashamed of the quality of our curatorship of many of these objects over many years, critical as they are to the story of world civilisation and critical as that curatorship has been to their preservation.