« Return to news

British Museum Launches Long-Term Loan Program to Former Colonies

From ArtNet (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/british-museum-lending-program-2732038)

The British Museum has launched a new scheme that will see it share artifacts in its collection with museums in former British colonies. Loans under the “new model” may last up to three years. They are intended to reach a compromise in response to growing calls for the repatriation of cultural treasures amassed by Western collections in the colonial era.

This week, some 80 Greek and Egyptian antiquities were transferred to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) museum in Mumbai, India. They will remain on view for three years in the museum’s study gallery “Networks of the Past: India and the Ancient World.” The deal is the latest development in a 15-year long partnership between the CSMVS and the British Museum.

“We think that this model that we are developing is a very positive one, and is very innovative,” the British Museum’s director, Nicholas Cullinan, told the Telegraph, while attending a handover ceremony at the museum. He added that the new model was “a much more positive one of collaboration rather than this kind of zero-sum, binary, all-or-nothing model that people put forward.”

The British Museum has fielded calls from governments around the world to repatriate objects from its collection, including from Greece and Jamaica. Similar calls have been made by museum officials or scholars in Egypt, China, and Sudan. India has also requested the return looted cultural treasures taken during colonial rule, including the Koh-i-Noor diamond and Amaravati Marbles.

Yet the museum has maintained that it is unable to return objects permanently from its collection outside of exceptional circumstances due to the British Museum Act of 1963, which places strict limitations on returning objects.

Cullinan, who joined the British Museum in the spring of 2024, has been under pressure to find a solution. He first teased the idea of a “lending library” last summer, an idea the he said had emerged from the question: “How can we do something positive with this legacy?”

The director said he hoped such a model might allow the Parthenon Marbles to return to Greece without leaving the British Museum’s collection. So far, Greece has rejected any kind of long-term loan of the sculptures as, in order to accept such an arrangement, Greece would have to acknowledge the British Museum’s right to own them. It does not.

In the case of the CSMVS, however, the Indian museum is happy to accept as loans some 80 objects that are not of Indian origin. Cullinan has recently visited China and Nigeria and is planning a trip to Ghana, possibly to negotiate future partnerships that would allow the British Museum to share its treasures with international institutions without any objects permanently leaving its collection.

“It can actually be very beneficial,” Cullinan said of this model. “Cultural diplomacy, that’s what museums should do.”

“You don’t have to embarrass your own country to do something positive with another country,” he added.

Some 300 works have been loaned to “Networks of the Past: India and the Ancient World” from 15 museums across India and the world, including the British Museum, the Berlin State Museums, and the Museum Rietberg in Zurich. The exhibit aims to examine India’s global connections in ancient times, building up a map of dialogue and exchange that stretches to include Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, Greece, Persia, and China. In doing so, it will decenter Western perspectives on the era.

The CSMVS’s director general, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, told the Telegraph that the gallery will “decolonize the narrative.” One of the highlights on view from the British Collection is a 4,000-year-old wooden model of a river boat and another of a two oxen pulling a plough, both from Egypt. The display also features Roman-era items, such as a mosaic, a marble bust of Augustus, and a silver pepper pot imported from India.

“We suffered for many years and colonization penetrated into our education, our culture,” said Mukherjee. “All cultures are great cultures and we need to respect all cultures.”