Nigeria and Greece demanded restitution from the British Museum: they took advantage of the scandal
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In London, the scandal over thefts from the British Museum does not subside. More and more details are being revealed that led to the early resignation of the director of the museum, Hartwig Fischer. It turned out that for years valuable artifacts had been taken out of the British Museum and sold for a penny on eBay, and the management knew about it. Now countries that have long demanded the return of artifacts once stolen by the British have called for the restitution of the valuables with a vengeance. Nigeria is demanding the return of the Benin bronze, and Greece is demanding the return of the marble sculptures of the Parthenon. How the criminal scandal could end for the museum world, MK understood.
Even at the beginning of the scandal surrounding the thefts from the British Museum, many gloated: the museum was robbed of stolen goods, they say, this is karma and retribution. Perhaps, to be more precise, it is a regularity. The fact is that the British Museum stores about 8 million items, most of them were illegally exported from different countries, mainly during the colonial rule of Britain. However, of these numerous items, no more than 100,000 are publicly exhibited. The rest is stored somewhere in the funds. Moreover, the issue of storage is an old problem of the museum. Actually, Hartwig Fischer was appointed director of the museum in 2016 just so that under his leadership a master plan for the reconstruction was developed, the most important part of which is the construction of a giant research complex and a storage facility. The decision was resonant, because Fischer is a German, he became the first foreigner to head the British Museum. Now, with even more scandal, he leaves the British Museum. Fisher announced his resignation back in July, explaining that the reconstruction plan was ready, which means that he had completed his task, now other, even larger-scale cases are waiting for him. It wasn’t there: instead of leaving the British Museum on horseback, he leaves in disgrace.
In August, it turned out that already in July there was an investigation into the thefts from the British Museum. Just then, the curator Peter John Higgs, who had worked at the museum since 1993 and was considered one of the leading experts in Greek and Roman art and had a doctorate in archeology, was fired. It was Higgs who was suspected of stealing exhibits worth millions of pounds and selling them on eBay. However, he was never arrested, and his son Greg publicly stated that his father was not guilty.
Further more. It turned out that the thefts from the British Museum took years, about 2,000 exhibits disappeared – gold jewelry, precious stones and objects up to 3.5 thousand years old. Moreover, the management was aware of the theft, and some items even managed to be returned. At the same time, back in 2021, the British-Danish art critic and dealer Ittai Gradel turned to the museum, who stumbled upon objects in the art market that he recognized as exhibits of the British Museum, and informed its management about this. But in response, he received only a go-ahead, they say, do not worry, everything is in order. However, it is not. The amount of damage from theft, according to The Times, is 80 million pounds ($102 million). Or maybe even more. The investigation is underway. There is a possibility that not a single museum employee is clean-handed: the temptation is too great to endure something that has been gathering dust in the funds for decades without proper supervision.
Against the backdrop of events in London, Nigeria and Greece demanded that the British Museum return stolen artifacts. Countries have insisted on this before, but now they are afraid that there will be nothing to return. What if everything has already been stolen? Nigeria wants back the Benin bronze – a collection of precious plates with images of animals and scenes from the court life of the XIII-XVI centuries. The bronze plates were created during the time of the Benin kingdom, which existed on the territory of modern Nigeria from the 13th century to the end of the 19th century. In 1897, the British captured and burned the capital of the state and took out the sculptures. In the 1950s and 1970s, Nigeria even bought about 50 exhibits from the British Museum, and since then it has been regularly reminded that the rest should be returned. Shocked by the news of the thefts at the British Museum, Abba Isa Tijani, head of the National Commission on Museums and Monuments of Nigeria, said: “We were told that Benin bronzes would not be safe in Nigeria, but the thefts that are taking place in the British Museum are a shock. But whether it’s safe or not, these are stolen artifacts and they must be returned to Nigeria, where they belong.” Nigerians have already been joined by the Greeks, who are once again demanding the return of the Parthenon marble, sculptures that once adorned the exterior of a temple in ancient Athens. At the beginning of the 19th century, Earl Bruce Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which at that time included Greece, took the artifacts to London under the pretext of research and sold them to the British government. Not even the hour and other countries will join the demands for restitution. Many people have claims against the British Museum, in particular, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt and Ethiopia.
It is appropriate to recall here that back in 2007, the UN issued a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples – calling for the return to them of “cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property” that was taken from them, “violating their laws, traditions and orders.” After that, the Louvre pointedly gave Egypt fragments of a wall painting illegally exported in the 1980s. And several other museums did the same – they returned something to other countries, but those were isolated actions. Drops in the sea. In recent years, however, Germany and the United States have adjusted their restitution laws and are increasingly returning stolen property. For example, the Americans recently returned to Italy 250 artifacts smuggled out of there in the 1990s, and before that, more than 300 artifacts from India, from where they were stolen by a dishonest dealer Subhash Kapoor. A couple of years ago, cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, and clay bullae were returned to Iraq, and 33 artifacts worth $1.8 million were returned to Afghanistan, including the bronze mask of Silenus (2nd century AD) and the statuette of a standing Buddha (III-IV century AD). In recent years, Germany has also regularly returned valuables taken by the Nazi regime from different countries or confiscated by the Third Reich from the Jews. That is, in Europe and America, restitution is the norm. Given this process and the intensity of passions in Britain, perhaps it will come to the dispossession of the world’s largest collection of stolen property from the British Museum. What then – the Louvre, which also stores many exhibits that were forcibly moved? And then – a global redistribution of world collections? Is it possible? Big question.
There are already precedents and trends, but there is no system. To take and immediately return everything that was once stolen means to deprive many people of the opportunity to see important artifacts, because it is not so easy to get to the same troubled Africa. In addition, not all countries that insist on restitution have museum premises and depositories where valuable artifacts can be exhibited and stored at the level. However, now, under the noise of the scandal, under the onslaught of the public, the same Nigeria and Greece may well return what they want. If they act quickly.
Newspaper headline:
Rob the stolen
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