The British Museum in London. Photo / Tara Menzi, Unsplash
The British Museum will share artefacts from its collection with former colonies to help them “decolonise”.
Curators have overseen the transfer of prized Greek and Egyptian treasures to a leading Indian museum, Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS).
The 80 artefacts are now displayed in a new gallery intended to undo “colonial misinterpretation” by highlighting India’s contributions to civilisation.
Dr Nicholas Cullinan, the British Museum director, told the Telegraph that the project would be a “new model” for working with countries seeking redress for colonialism, with former nations of the empire welcome to strike long-term deals for artefacts held in Britain.
There have been prolonged disputes over the return of treasures held in the United Kingdom, including Indian artworks, Ghanaian gold, Ethiopian sacred tablets, Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles.
Cullinan said: “You don’t have to embarrass your own country to do something positive with another country. It can actually be very beneficial. Cultural diplomacy, that’s what museums should do.”
Following Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, museums including the Horniman, in south-east London, and those in Oxford and Cambridge rushed to repatriate artefacts such as the Benin Bronzes. Many of the bronzes were looted by British forces in 1897 from what is now Nigeria, which has long insisted that they be returned.
Some insiders have suggested that the British Museum avoided the excesses of the “woke” movement, when many cultural institutions pledged to “decolonise” and transform their offering to the public.
The British Museum Act 1963 also legally prevents the institution from handing over its treasures, meaning that requests for controversial artefacts to be returned to former colonies have been repeatedly rebuffed.
The museum under Cullinan is aiming to calm disputes by encouraging loan deals of up to three years.
The director, who took over in 2024, said: “There is another model, a much more positive one of collaboration rather than this kind of zero-sum, binary, all-or-nothing model that people put forward. We think that this model that we are developing is a very positive one, and is very innovative.
“Every case is different, you can never apply the same criteria to two different cultures, countries or territories. Some are more difficult than others. But we’re still trying.”
Artefacts including the Amaravati Marbles, the personal regalia of Tipu Sultan and the Koh-I-Noor diamond were all brought to Britain from India during the period of colonial rule.
While Narendra Modi’s Indian Government wants to reclaim historical artefacts, the British Museum’s Mumbai loan includes treasures from other civilisations.
These include an extremely delicate, 4000-year-old wooden model of an Egyptian river boat, a wooden sculpture of oxen pulling a plough, and devotional Sumerian statues from 2200BC.
These were created by societies contemporary with those of the Indus Valley, a less well-known culture straddling what is now Pakistan and India that developed a complex urban and literate civilisation.
Later objects, curated by British Museum expert Thorsten Opper, include a Roman mosaic found beneath Leadenhall Market in London, a marble bust of Augustus and a Romano-British silver pot for storing pepper shipped from India.
The scores of artefacts from the British Museum form part of the largest ever loan of ancient material to India, and the first deal of its kind with a non-Western museum.
The new displays, supported by the US$7 billion ($12b) J Paul Getty Trust, will demonstrate how India was a cradle of civilisation.
Sabyasachi Mukherjee, director general of the CSMVS museum, said the gallery stocked with British loans would help to “correct colonial misinterpretation” of India’s past.
He told the Telegraph: “All cultures are great cultures and we need to respect all cultures.
“Through this exhibition, there is decolonisation, an attempt is made to decolonise the narrative.
“We suffered for many years and colonisation penetrated into our education, our culture.
“There is a kind of emergence. I’m going to use the word ‘revolt’, but we are emerging with dignity and are very proud of history.”
Mukherjee hopes that the gallery will help to “reposition” India’s place in the world, and that this model of borrowing artefacts to tell a fuller history could be adapted by other countries in Asia and Africa.
Cullinan, who was previously director of the National Portrait Gallery, said: “When we lend objects from the British Museum’s collection, things that come from Britain, back to their source, it can be incredibly powerful, it can be incredibly enlightening.”
Cullinan visited China and Nigeria recently and is planning a visit to Ghana.
In 2024, the museum loaned golden regalia once belonging to the Asante king, and seized by British troops in 1874, as the institution began to think about how to ease post-colonial tensions.
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