Much is said about context – not least by the British Museum. The reality though is that the original context for which many artefacts were designed was very different from the museum environments in which they are currently displayed.

From:
Modern Ghana

Forever Bronze
By Tam Fiofori

According to Omo N’Oba N’Edo Erediauwa, Benin bronzes were not meant to be kept in museums and used as decorative pieces. Rather, bronzes filled in for the absence of photography in Benin traditional society and the Oba’s court as bronze castings were specifically used to depict and document important events and activities of a reigning Oba of Benin.

Put another way, the thousands of Benin bronzes which were looted by the British from the Oba’s palace in 1897 and, are now in the British Museum, London, and in other museums and private collections in the ‘western’ world represent a ’stolen library of the history of the Benin Kingdom’ and their rightful place remains the various ancestral spiritual altars/shrines within the Oba’s palace in Benin City.
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Kwame Opoku looks at how the bust of Nefertiti, on display in Berlin’s Neues Museum, is in many ways isolated from its original context – showing that context is not just important for understanding large in-situ pieces such as the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
Modern Ghana

NEFERTITI, IDIA, TIYE AND OTHERS REVISITED: NEFERTITI IN SPLENDID ISOLATION?
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Mon, 16 Nov 2009

“The history of the bust of Nefertiti shows very clearly how hollow it can sound when Germans and other Europeans refer to legal principles in relation to the “Third World.”
Gert von Paczensky and Herbert Ganslymayr (1)

The intensive and extensive publicity surrounding the re-opening of the Neues Museum in Berlin and the renewed demands by Zahi Hawass made it inevitable that all those interested in restitution of looted/stolen cultural objects would pay attention to the recent celebration of the renovated museum on the Museums Island in Berlin.(2)
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The British Museum regularly asserts that artefacts are best displayed there. Much of what they do though indicates that like most others, they believe that there is an importance attached to the original context of artefacts. That it is important to show artefacts within the vicinity of where they were found. It’s just that they’d prefer to keep the artefacts for themselves too.

From:
Evening Leader

Holograms to display historic artefacts at North Wales museums
Published Date: 19 June 2009

LLANGOLLEN museum, along with a number of others in North Wales, is to start using holograms to display historic artefacts.
The institutions, along with View Holographics, based in St Asaph, have been successful in securing funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation to create a project, called Bringing the Artefacts Back to the People.

The scheme will use pioneering holographic technology to display works, described as the closest reproduction possible to the real life object and more realistic than photography and computer rendering.
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From the inception of its concept, the New Acropolis Museum was designed with the principal aim of providing the best possible home for the Parthenon Sculptures. As such it will present the most persuasive argument yet that it gives the best context for the display of the fragments currently held in the British Museum.

Because of the importance of the contextual argument, it is not possible to replicate the New Acropolis Museum somewhere else – even if the British wanted to, they could never create a space for the display of the Elgin Marbles that would equal the one in Athens.

From:
The Independent

Elgin Marbles question renewed as Athens museum opens
By Frank Partridge
Saturday, 23 May 2009

The long-overdue New Acropolis Museum is now scheduled to open in Athens on 20 June. However, the impact will be felt most acutely in Bloomsbury, central London, as one of Britain’s longest-running international disputes takes a potentially decisive turn.

Athens’ share of the marble sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon temple on Acropolis hill, the crowning achievement of classical Greece, now have a permanent home 300 metres below the original site. The glassy, angular new museum is daring and eye-catching in itself, but it’s the contents of the third and top floor – and the way they’re arranged – that will make the world sit up and take notice.
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The British Museum (& others) make much of the fact that they allow comparison of cultural artefacts from different parts of the world within close proximity to one another, allowing comparisons to be drawn. Is this really the only (or even best) method though & how much relevance does it actually have? In some situations, there are clear comparisons to be drawn, but in other cases, perceived similarities are more coincidental than they are indicators of a bigger unifying picture.

From:
Modern Ghana

IS AFRICA CLOSER TO OCEANIA THAN TO EUROPE? VISIT TO AN EXHIBITION ON AFRICAN AND OCEANIAN ARTS.
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Sun, 27 Jul 2008

“We Westerners are the ones who confer the quality of art to these objects. These statues should not return to Africa.” Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller (1)

Seldom have I been to an exhibition where almost everything seemed to have been so well-planned and very carefully considered as the exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, entitled, Afrique – Oceanie, Les chef-d’oeuvres de la collection Barbier-Mueller,19 March – 24 August 2008.
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Nashville Tennessee is home to the most accurate replica of the Parthenon. Despite the accuracy of parts of it however, anyone who has seen the real Parthenon in Athens will understand that without its surrounding context, it can never even come close to recreating the experience.

From:
Home & Away magazine (American Automobile Association)

The Temple in Tennessee
Nashville’s Parthenon stands as a tribute to ancient Grecian culture.
By Andrea Gross

The Parthenon is one of the world’s most renowned buildings, an artistic and architectural wonder that serves as a reminder of the glories of ancient Greece. And, as we all know, it sits atop the Acropolis, one of the highest hills in Athens.

To the surprise of many, it also sits atop a small hill in Nashville.
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Yet again, in discussions about the Parthenon Marbles (amongst other things), Neil MacGregor reverts back to his favourite Universal Museum argument. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Universal Museum idea – but at the same time, it is only one premise (out of many) that a museum could be based on. Just because the British Museum happens to fit within this (largely self created) category, it does not mean it is the only option, nor does it mean that it is the right option. Many archaeologist would convincingly argue, that seeing site specific historic artefacts within the context they were created for is far more important than seeing them within the context of other tenuously related artefacts from different times & cultures.

From:
Time Out (London)

Neil MacGregor: interview
By Ossian Ward. Photography Gautier Deblonde
Posted: Tue Apr 1 2008

You may think you‘re in London when you visit the British Museum but according to its acclaimed director Neil MacGregor you are actually walking the corridors and galleries of a global institution. As the record-breaking ’First Emperor‘ exhibition comes to an end, MacGregor tells Time Out why he‘s excited about the future
Neil MacGregor: interview

Neil MacGregor loves talking about the world, because most of it is on display at the British Museum, where he’s been director since 2002. ‘The museum was set up in 1753 to be a comparative world collection. One that should be usable by the world and free to people of all nations.’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone repeat one word so often in the space of an hour. ‘In order to make citizens equipped for the world, they’ve got to study the world. There was no equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge in London at that point, so in a way this became the Open University. In fact, it’s like the World Service, helping to build global citizenship and community.’
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