The British Museum is about to launch a new initiative called Collected Histories talks, which is aimed at disseminating information about how certain artifacts ended up in the museum’s collection, The Guardian reports.
Dr Sushma Jansari, the curator of the Asian ethnographic and South Asia collections at the British Museum, told the newspaper that she devised Collected Histories in a bid to change address the perception that the museum’s collection constitutes solely of looted items.
"There are a lot of partial histories and they tend to focus on the colonial aspect of the collecting so you have a bunch of people who tend to be quite angry and upset. We’re trying to reset the balance a little bit. A lot of our collections are not from a colonial context; not everything here was acquired by Europeans by looting," she said.
Her rationale however apparently did not resonate with many social media users who were quick to poke fun at the new program.
Might start shoplifting if this is an excuse that works out. "oh sure officer, most of the stuff in my house is stolen, but not all of it, so it's fine"
— Jade-O'-Lantern 🎃 (@QomradeJade) 12 октября 2018 г.
Excited to see the new British Museum slogan, We Didn’t Steal *All* Of It. https://t.co/K9nIuWrTAl
— Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley (@lottelydia) 13 октября 2018 г.
My life's ambition is to grab something valuable from the British Museum, make a run for it, get caught, then watch exasperated museum authorities try and explain why finders keepers isn't a thing.
— ƋƞƬƟƞ ƦƋƋƬǶ Ϡ (@antonraath) 13 октября 2018 г.
Reminds me of Andy Maxwell’s riff about the Nat’l Museum of Scotland: “Through the left hand door, we invented this. Through the right hand door, we stole this”. About right.
— John Field (@John__Field) 13 октября 2018 г.
'Not everything was looted' is not exactly a stout defense.
— Tom Wallace (@HiHRetrofonts) 12 октября 2018 г.
"'Not everything in the house is stolen!', claims thief surrounded by stolen goods"
— 🏴Greg | It's Moth-tober!🏴 (@Greg_Sideyr) 13 октября 2018 г.
