Author: Michael Chappell

You know the rest, but in the case at hand, the cows have already gone to the knackers, made into mince and the leftovers, hides and tallow, doubtless someone’s shoes or a lady’s handbag, and a bar or two of soap.

I am in crude metaphor referring to the British Museum’s current exhibition in Room 3 of gems that have been returned- 10 out of a count into the several hundreds. But no one really knows because, as the tombstone plaques on the wall tell us, the engraved gems had never been catalogued.

Oh, yes, of course, pressure of work and all that, but the fact is, many of these, again information the museum admits to within the exhibition, were part of the collection put together by the antiquary Charles Townsend and acquired by the British Museum in, wait for it,1814. Well, it’s been a nightmare of work for the BM, and perhaps the curators had planned to prepare some accession information in the upcoming 210 years.

That the museum has prepared this exhibit is something, caught with their pants down, they had to do. Ostensibly, it also serves the purpose of alerting the public to be vigilant, letting the museum know when and if someone sees something that might have been stolen from its study collections and acquired innocently on eBay. Fat chance. Were there any images of anything on view that one might look out for? No, of course not, because such images do not exist. Let me remind you, none of these items were catalogued. It was only the result of a sharp eyed academic who had seen first hand some of the items who recognized them when they turned up offered by an online seller.

‘On the advice of recovery specialists, we are not sharing full details of the lost and damaged items at this time.’

British Museum

‘Not sharing…’ because there is nothing to share. The museum has a group of experts in the policing services and the field of art loss recovery assisting in their efforts to locate the missing items.

As if, fat chance- whatever efforts are being made cannot be considered as any more than window dressing. Close the barn door, at long last- the cows are gone for good.

In a recent edition of Apollo, there was an article about how the system of public service examinations had beggared curatorial and art historical positions at some of Italy’s national museums, with the nation’s cultural affairs bureaucracy making it nearly impossible to deliver the right arts professional in a timely manner to the right cultural institution.  

Although given Apollo’s connoisseurial bent, I would prefer to respond in appropriate prolixity, but believe in this instance I can sum up my reply in a single word in the vernacular- crap. 

The plain fact of the matter is, positions cannot be filled because the cultural sphere internationally has no money to pay qualified staff. Sadly, museum visitor totals, indeed the attendance at any number of cultural sites have the uniform appearance when viewed on a bar graph that can also be communicated in a single word, well, two, with an intensifying morpheme-  rapidly shrinking.  

And with this shrinkage, not lost on politicians, the presumption is that those shrinking numbers represent a smaller constituency upon whom no beneficence needs be extended- read, no money needs be spent. And I suppose, looked at from the point of view of political expediency, they’re right. 

Not long ago I was told by an erstwhile colleague who sought to apologize for not reciprocating my acquaintance that we should put our friendship, his words, ‘on ice.’ I didn’t know that friendship worked that way, as indeed, heritage doesn’t, either. Both must be valued and nurtured to have the chance to survive. It can’t be put in cold storage, delaying decomposition because decomposition will ineluctably occur. Mind, I am, mercifully, not at a loss for friends, so the chap who sought to put ours ‘on ice’ will be at most a footnote in my memoirs. Cultural heritage however, once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. It can’t be put on ice with the hope that, in the fulness of time, the pendulum will re-swing and it will again be worthy of note, worthy of politicians’ consideration, and consequently, in receipt of the funding it requires. 

In the meantime, however, all those who might be keepers of the flame are left with difficult choices. Consider four years of a first degree in art history, then two years to achieve a master’s in a particular specialization, say Renaissance Italian art, and highly likely followed by a PhD in the same subject. So now, with some eight years of university training, one is prepared to enter the workforce, and the choices are- let me see, shall I work for the- you name the London or New York or Paris or Rome- museum, or shall I get a job as a checker at Tesco, where I can get benefits and enough pay to allow me to rent a flat?  

This is not something I have made up or exaggerated to make a point. Within the last couple of weeks, I was in contact with one of the scholarly societies about some research materials when the fellow who runs the place told me to spread the word amongst my colleagues about a half time editorial position requiring someone with training at PhD level. Pay, wait for it, £20 an hour, and on contract, so no benefits. Don’t spend it all at once and it will seem like more. 

The upshot was, I was a day or so later mentioning this to a collegial friend who lives in Buckinghamshire. She put it neatly in context, saying the job wouldn’t pay her return train ticket to make her way into London. Before we the two of us began to just guffaw, another colleague, younger and with whom we were not on so intimate terms, sidled up, heard the rate of pay and said that sounded like something she was interested in pursuing.  

Well, what more can I say? Heritage is ill regarded so ill requited and those whose mission it might be to safeguard the world’s treasures are not able to earn a living safeguarding the world’s treasures. The senior curator at the British Museum solved that problem, ostensibly, anyhow, making off with items from the museum’s collection over the course of 20 or so years. His thefts, given the context of his employment, while not anything anyone could sanction, becomes, however, a little more understandable. One does have creatural needs, like buying groceries. 

Again, theft is hardly anything any of us can sanction, but what of the functional theft of our heritage, the result of public and consequent political disinterest? Of course, the pendulum of public interest will indeed swing back, but the open question is, what will be left to humanity once it does?  

It must take lots of practice, as my few efforts at a selfie always depict me with some manner of ailment that might be characterized as far-gone dementia. Mind, the use I make of my iPhone extends to the now rare receipt or placing of telephone calls, and the much more frequent placing or receipt of text messages- except in England, where the cost of a single text message is about equivalent to a starter, entrée, and pudding at Rule’s. So, displacing texts in some quarters, substitute emails.

With all that, I do need to take a selfie, albeit rarely. The Warburg Institute, where I hang my academic hat of late, requires an updated ID photo, to affix to an updated ID card, annually. Given that the full compliment of Warburg scholars is only about 80, one can imagine that, with all of us well known to each other, it is rarely anyone has given my ID card even a first look, much less a second. Good thing because, as noted, had anyone done so, they’d opine I was some manner of mental defective and had no hope of flourishing in an environment of advanced scholarship. A sidebar- that sounds ego-driven, as I am not sure to what extent I am in actuality flourishing. However, I am still there, with my colleagues still friendly, but it might be they’ve taken pity on an old man of diminished capacity.

Now I have put my colleagues on their mettle to come to my defence, and before the cries of ‘no, no- you’re highly valued’ become overwhelming, let me crack on.

Of course, those cries would be voiced virtually, and that’s what I really want to write about, the confluence of selfies and social media. Can one in this day and age avoid social media? In the olden days, that is, three years ago, when we closed down our last gallery location, we had already established our presence on Facebook, Instagram, Medium.com and Twitter- which isn’t even Twitter anymore, but not claiming social media maven status, I don’t remember what it is called- so take that, Elon Musk.

Our motivation for all this was entirely venal, or should I say, less cynically, ‘commercially motivated.’ We’d have images of current stock, images of stands at various antiques and art fairs, images of the gallery spaces, and, just rarely, ourselves depicted within, doing whatever it is we were doing. Although a lot of what we were doing was hoovering the floor, most typically we were shown expatiating, and this generally linked to the images of the gallery interiors, in our attempt to provide some manner of virtual experience for punters.

Did it work? Was any of this worth it? Well, frankly, yes. We achieved a few sales early on from people who, ultimately, never did darken our door, and with our need to move on in life and eventually close down our bricks and mortar premises, we believed that, along with the Chappell & McCullar website, we were well along the road as successful online merchants.

As perhaps we were. We quickly determined, however, that we were not the only venal ones, and that our online posts were hardly seen by anyone save being ‘boosted’ with some manner of strange and mystical algorithm that magically presented our posts to those others who, based on their online affinities, might be interested in what we were selling. So far, so good, one might say, and, for a time, it was. We acquired friends and followers, most of whom one would have to stretch the general understanding of those words to so characterize them, but we had them all the same, and in vast numbers.

And sales increases thereby? Well, no. The magical algorithms regularly linked our stock in trade with things like painted flower pots, throw cushions, and pet care items. Go figure.

However, the cost to promote our posts was cheap, but did require the keeping on file credit card information and that, finally, is where we had to part company. Despite so very many assurances that our credit card information was secure, we were repeatedly hacked and while nothing ever happened beyond the inconvenience of having to cancel the card on file and then replace it with another, we figured, reasonably enough, that we were just asking for it. Besides, the utility of the posts for sales purposes had run its course. I found, like so many others- so many millions, in fact- I was viewing the success of a post by the numbers of times it was liked and the numbers of new followers/friends it engendered. This very nearly became a mania, or addiction- you choose- from which, thank goodness, I recovered. Hello, my name is Michael- I am a social media whore. By the way, it was my third nephew then age 27 who so characterized me. I suppose that might be counted an intervention.

And so it is, I suppose in my recovery I feel some manner of superiority to those sods who are still in the throes of addiction, posting selfies every damn day, or more often, in any manner of inane activity. Mind, the more comely the person depicted, the more followers they seem to have, but I would also note, very many of these ostensibly non-commercial posts are promoted by the poor sods. The question is, why? ‘Friends,’ or ‘followers’, or what have you, that are having their addiction fed by others

1. Living vicariously, ‘liking’ images and activities more attractive and interesting compared to what’s happening in their own dismal lives, or
2. The selfie posters attempting to live vicariously through other’s lives, with the hope of some vague affiliation and ego strokes from ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ who will provide kudos about one’s otherwise inane posts.

That of course, if one were on fire, these same friends or followers wouldn’t provide an ounce of piss to put out the flames, even if they could, has, sadly, restructured the heretofore generally accepted definition of friendship. Friendship, it now seems, no longer implies a degree of intimacy that carries with it an understanding of frequent, and person to person, social interaction.

That interaction, the central tenet of friendship, has gone out the window, and what there is of it that does survive, survives only to the extent it mirrors one’s ‘friendships’ on social media. And I suppose that’s where selfies form some manner of matrix, that if one meets a person in real, as opposed to virtual life, if that person does not accord with the facial imagery one has chosen to befriend on social media, one gives that real life person the go by. With all that, I doubt the late great director of the Warburg Institute, Sir Ernst Gombrich, would fare very well on social media, but then, I can’t picture him taking very many selfies, either.

Will the row over the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles ever cease?  

The short answer is no. For those who believe that in this modern age repatriation is entirely appropriate, it might be worth remembering that, upon their acquisition by Lord Elgin, there was no ‘patria’ in existence, as Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire and I would venture to say, not exactly the empire’s keystone. Res judicata? Certainly the British government thinks so and has done since Parliament said so in 1816. Although opinions differ as to its strength, no one disputes that Lord Elgin, and consequently the British Museum has more than a slightly tinged colour of a legal claim to them.  

So, the translocation and eventual placement of what are no longer identified as the Elgin marbles have been safely cared for and displayed proudly in the British Museum. No one has ever tried to mask their origin or done anything that would denigrate, in fact just the opposite, has served to appropriately lionize the miraculous culture that gave them form.  

But the culture that wrought the Parthenon marbles, that exist as an externalized memorial to an enduring ethos that we experience every day in the way we think about ourselves, the way we govern ourselves, and the very way we consider our place in the universe, is now world culture, and hardly specific, nor has it been for centuries, to Greece. In this regard, the Parthenon marbles are not what they once were, nor are they really what the Greek government considers them, objects solely emblematic of the modern Greek nation state.  

Reading the political to-ing and fro-ing about the Parthenon marbles, however, makes me think it is largely that. They are an easy talking point for Greek politicians to divert attention at least briefly from Greece’s ongoing fiscal problems and simmering unrest because of inward immigration. I don’t say the Greek government doesn’t really want the return of the Parthenon marbles, but that they haven’t got them yet provides something in the way of a continuing step upon the moral high ground. Where formerly Greece was able to use the return of the Parthenon marbles as some kind of at the ready, one size fits all bargaining chip when dealing with the EU, now post Brexit, Greece has fewer allies as there are no governments that have any manner of ability to directly influence Great Britain.  

The issue of repatriation is a knotty one and complicated, paradoxically, by the fact that it is an issue generally reduced to simplistic terms. If an object was acquired from its country of origin under terms and conditions that were by the way we measure things now less than salubrious, then, upon demand they should be returned. The Benin bronzes are perhaps the most cited and arguably the most legitimate example, stolen as booty concomitant with the British military incursion in Nigeria in 1897. No one questions the imperative that drives their repatriation as they are integral to the heritage of the geography from which they came. 

Were the Parthenon marbles stolen? At the best, that’s arguable. The fact of the matter is, items of varying degrees of cultural importance change hands each and every day. If that didn’t occur, Christie’s and Sotheby’s couldn’t stay in business. Are we now more mindful of the provenance of the object that might be on offer, and the consequent morality of its sale? Yes, of course we are, witness the frequent discovery and consequent return of artwork looted during the last war. But at some point, a line needs to be drawn.  

Very many of the artworks in the National Gallery are extraordinary Italian Renaissance paintings acquired in Italy through dint of the extraordinary efforts of its first director, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake. But I have misspoken- there was no ‘Italy’ in the 1840’s and 1850’s when so much that formed the corpus of the gallery was being acquired- nor would there be until the finality of the risorgimento in 1871. Indeed, much of the Italian peninsula was in political and economic chaos that then allowed Eastlake an unparalleled opportunity to acquire exquisite Italian art. Does this start to sound a cognate with the acquisition of the Parthenon marbles? It should. While it currently appears unlikely the UK government will acquiesce in the return of the marbles, if they were to in a weak moment it begs question where this might lead. If one then goes into that bastion of world heritage that is the National Gallery and finds it bereft of very many of its Italian pictures, you’ll have your answer.  

What’s been revealed about Dr Peter Higgs, longtime curator of Greek antiquities at the British Museum, while eye-poppingly brazen, shouldn’t, for those in the museum world, come as anything of a surprise.  

For those few of my gentle readers, and I know there are very few of you, who are unaware of this, most accredited museums of even the humblest stripe invariably have more objects given to their care than are ever at any one point out on display. Witness those items allegedly stolen by Peter Higgs, valuable though they might have been, they were, none of them, ever displayed and kept by the museum for study purposes, presumably handled by a very few scholars for purposes of academic research.

Or maybe not.

For most museums, their so-called back room contains a welter of objects, as my farmer father would have said, not good enough to keep but too good to throw away. When items are accepted into a museum’s permanent collection, it is very often at the whim of one or two people who may, or may not, accord with a museum’s accession policy. This further assumes such a policy exists, and often it does not. Further, a less than desirable gift might accompany something highly desirable and it is a rare donor that allows the museum to cherry pick- one must take either all or none, and the taking of the none might prove opprobrious to a donor otherwise highly esteemed by the museum.  

So the institution is between a rock and a hard spot, and in consequence, is in possession of very many more items that are of mediocre quality and do not therefore articulate with those a curator might deem worthy of public presentation. Mind, everything taken into the permanent collection of an accredited museum requires the preparation of a curatorial dossier, an accession file that documents at a minimum a description of the object, notes on its condition, details of how it was acquired, and, importantly, good photographic images. And, of course, an inventory number is assigned.  

Simple enough, yes? The problem is, certainly in the case of the British Museum, very many objects were acquired literally centuries ago, and some rudimentary curatorial dossier might have been prepared, but, no surprise, itself not looked at by anyone in decades. As in the case of the light-fingered Dr Higgs, save the sharp eye of a nameless researcher who saw one of the objects offered on eBay, no one might ever have known the object had been filched.  

One has to note that very many of the most prestigious museums are in locations where the cost of living is, by most measures, prohibitive. I think of one long tenured senior curator of my acquaintance in London, who, until recently, lived in a small basement flat in Hackney. But even that, with Hackney up and coming, proved too expensive but the death of a near relative resulted in a legacy, and, with much of the salt removed from his tears of mourning,  allowed him to stay put. I am hardly an apologist for the sticky fingers of museum personnel, but the financial exigencies of living in London, or Paris, or New York make the prospect of relieving their museum employer of a few unappreciated items more than a bit tempting.