Has any museum had a worse time than the British Museum over the last few years? The most recent scandal wherein a long-time curator allegedly stole (personally “deaccessioned”?) up to 2,000 objects over the course of several years merely removes another layer of varnish to reveal an institution losing its brilliance by the minute. At the crux of it all, a collections management problem simmers like magma at the heart of not only the British Museum, but also other similar institutions across the world.
The scale of this fraudulent activity astounds and rarely reaches this level without multiple failures by multiple people along the way. I refer to repatriation issues as well as the stolen objects. You have to admire the irony of the internal plundering of a museum housing so much plunder. A natural response if you represent a country seeking the repatriation of objects is, “The British Museum cannot safely house its collection.” Thus, it can clearly no longer legitimately argue that it can more safely harbor these objects than, say, Greece or Nigeria for example.
History’s Hottest Property
The Parthenon marbles housed at the British Museum represent the most contested examples of cultural patrimony in the world.
The scale of the story consequently commands the attention of the majority of media, but I want to concentrate on the collections management angle of the story, however, which commands the spotlight in this case of this chronic theft. This Artnet News article about the case extensively and uniquely discusses the cataloging issues.
That perhaps half of the British Museum’s mammoth collection of some 8 million objects was never fully catalogued has become a matter of keen public interest.
This is not a problem unique to the British Museum, and understandably, the amount of resources it takes to document millions of objects is truly unfathomable. Of course, one could also retort that they should not acquire them if they cannot properly document and house them.
Many of my colleagues and myself know that institutions globally simply cannot catalog the millions of objects lying fallow in warehouses around the world, but I will go further and ask even harder questions. What of those objects merits embalming in a museum?
From the same Artnet article.
“If it takes just one hour to identify, handle, photograph, and digitize a collection piece for cataloguing, and you have 8 million pieces, it would take a team of four 685 years to complete the catalogue if they work non-stop, eight hours a days, seven days per week,”
It’s a Steal!
Media reports identify objects allegedly stolen from British Museum and posted on eBay.
The items include a piece of Roman jewellery—reportedly worth between £25,000 and £50,000—being offered with a minimum price of £40
Those of us who spend time with collections (not just in museums) know that several pieces will never wake from hibernation. While candidates for deaccessioning, removing objects could create a major image problem and also requires a large amount of work for staff. Safely storing and housing these objects similarly requires massive amounts of resources and represents a safety risk as illustrated by the British Museum.
To be clear, we do not resolve this problem (and it is a problem). With every digit of pi that we can recite, we make a more precise number, but we never recite them all. In the case of the British Museum, their situation may have reached the event horizon where they can take a radical step in how they manage their collection which could influence the rest of the world. Could their leadership have the courage to do this? Who will take on this job-portunity?
