Museums vow to come clean over origin of treasures

Chinese pottery in the British Museum. Photo / British Museum

Britain's leading museums are employing full-time staff to revisit their colonial-era collections in an attempt to acknowledge any controversies about their provenance.

Major institutions, including the British Museum and V&A, are working to reassess the origins of some of their key objects brought to Britain from overseas under the Empire, to provide an honest assessment for visitors.

The collections have come under increasing pressure in recent years to acknowledge "stolen" items, facing calls to return star objects to their native countries.

The British Museum, which holds the Elgin marbles and Benin bronzes, has regularly emphasised the "great public benefit" of having such items on display in the context of its world collection, and its commitment to the safe-keeping of its treasures.

But, as a new generation of visitors demand answers, the museum, along with the V&A and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, has encouraged staff to look again at its labels.

The V&A has "strengthened its commitment to provenance research", a spokesman said. It recently appointed a dedicated "provenance and spoliation research curator" to look into the origins of the Gilbert Collection - made up of gold and silver, enamel miniatures, gold boxes and mosaics amassed through the 20th century -and co-ordinate the museum's re-examination of where objects came from.

The events programme of 2018 included conferences on colonial history entitled "Troubling Objects" and "Practices of Engagement with Contested Heritage Collections".

A current exhibition about the 150th anniversary of the siege and battle of Maqdala - the culmination of the British expedition to Abyssinia - was developed in "close consultation" with the Ethiopian Embassy in London and an advisory group from the Ethiopian community and representatives from the Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Anglo-Ethiopian society and Rastafarian community, a spokesman said.

At the British Museum, curators are incorporating new provenance research into audio guides, as well as striving for "very honest" labels.

The label on the Benin bronzes currently states they were among the "thousands of treasures taken as booty" in a "punitive expedition" in Nigeria.

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Information provided alongside a controversial bark shield from New South Wales, thought to have been brought back by Captain James Cook, states: "First contacts in the Pacific were often tense and violent."

It also has a series of tours focusing on objects with colonial pasts and how they entered the collection.

Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is advertising for a research assistant to manage a labelling project to "identify and find ways to redress a range of ethical issues in the current displays".

Paid between £32,236 and £39,609, the successful candidate will "tackle a complex problem around historical labelling and language use in the much-loved and criticised Pitt Rivers Museum", with the aim to "dissect and dismantle some of the complex contested words, stereotypes and concepts that are present not only in museums but in society at large".

Tristram Hunt, the director of the V&A, said: "Through exhibitions, conservation work, provenance research, talks and events, the V&A is committed to exploring our own colonial history with rigour and transparency - and to building platforms for partnership and collaboration around the world."

It follows a number of temporary exhibitions that have aimed to tackle the issue head on. The curators of the Royal Academy's Oceania exhibition this year welcomed a "sea change" in how museums showcase other cultures.

Indigenous communities privately blessed sacred objects before they went on display in the exhibition, with curators conducting hundreds of conversations with the many tribal communities of the Pacific Islands.

The British Museum's Aboriginal exhibition included a ban on photography in particular rooms out of respect for indigenous culture.