Russ Roberts: Let’s start by talking about why museums are important, in the abstract. What happens to us as visitors to a museum that matters? They’re interesting. I look around. There’s artifacts and some of them are impressive. Is anything more than that?
Tiffany Jenkins: Well, I find it’s an encounter with the past and with the people of the past. So, I really noticed during COVID that you couldn’t go to these places that you would go to regularly and you took for granted. You could see them online. You could see the artifacts online. You could go to the Louvre. You could go to the Met. You could go to anywhere; but you couldn’t go yourself through that door. And it’s something about going through that door and you enter this world–it might be ancient Egypt, it might be Assyria, it might be ancient Athens–and it’s like you’re transported. I find them almost like a time machine.
Depending on your state of mind and the time of day and what’s going on with your life, it might be that you just dart in to see a particular painting or object, but it also might be that you want to be just taken somewhere–actually by the institution, because they curated these things, usually intelligently, to tell a story. And, I just find it awe inspiring–I really do–that these people thousands of years ago were creating these things. And they might not have been initially to impress us. They certainly weren’t. They were often for a particular purpose–to worship a God or to make their breakfast, an ordinary breakfast bowl, that sort of thing. Somehow it’s like they’ve left it for you so you have a door into their life.
If I’m sad or happy, they take me out of myself and show me another world and another time and place. I mean, just think that’s worth everything really, understanding other cultures, understanding that we aren’t the only ones on the earth. That there’s a sort of chain of generations behind us that influence us, that connect us, connect to us. And I do find them inspiring.
So, they make me think of human achievement. Even if you go into Museum of War, you see the complicated, sometimes destructive nature of human beings, but you also see the creative and human side. So, I really like them.
Russ Roberts: A lot of your book is about the increasingly loud demand that many of the objects in these museums that came from elsewhere should return to where they once were–either geographically within some national boundary that may or may not have existed in the past, but certainly closer to where they started.
When I went to London for the first time, I asked a British friend of mine what I should do when I was there. He said, ‘Well, the British Museum, of course.’ Then he listed a bunch of other things. I’ve probably remarked on the program in the past: that phrase, ‘the British Museum,’ of course, doesn’t really capture what an extraordinary collection of human experience is under its roof.
I have the suspicion that if objects currently there were repatriated to where they once came from, there wouldn’t be much there. Much of it is a comment on the British past, both military and colonial and exploratory. These demands that items be returned certainly make you think about what a museum would be in the absence of some of the imported items.
For the British Museum in particular, the most prominent example would be what are called the Elgin Marbles. Tell us what they are, where they started, and how they came to be residing in Bloomsbury under the roof of the British Museum.
Tiffany Jenkins: Okay. Well, the British Museum is an interesting museum to start with, because it doesn’t house very many objects from Britain. Lots of other museums, particularly France and Europe, were built to house the collections of the nation. The British Museum was constructed a little bit earlier, in 1756, out of the collection of a man called Hans Sloane. Initially, you had objects from the voyages of exploration. So, there’s no antiquity in there whatsoever. But now they are, if you’d like, all about antiquity. Not all about antiquity. The Elgin Marbles–many people want to call them the Parthenon sculptures now–even the term ‘Elgin’ gets you into trouble, but there we have it. I’ll probably call them both. In fact, no–I’ll call them the Elgin Marbles just to distinguish them.
So, these are sculptures that were taken from the Parthenon in Athens. They’re about 2,000 years old. So, they were made at the height of Athens’ most Democratic but also imperial moment. They were built under Pericles, the general and politician–under his command–to honor the goddess Athena. So, it was a temple initially, this Parthenon. A temple is not like how we would think of the temple. It was there really to house the god or the goddess–in this case Athena–and properly loot from war. It was constructed partly as a trophy against the Persians who they had just defeated. So, it was like: ‘We are the best. Us [sic: we] Athenians are the best.’ It is an astonishing work.
I was in Athens this summer and the image we all have now of Athens is obviously of the Parthenon that’s still left on the Acropolis. Half of those sculptures roughly are in the Acropolis’ new museum, which is a reasonably new museum, 10 years old or so, a bit older. And half are in the British Museum in Bloomsbury. So, these sculptures from ancient Athens are really at the center of the British Museum [BM]. The ones in the BM–I mean, there are a lot of them. There’s a whole room and there’s these incredible sculptures of horses. The big part of it is this relief. And in ancient accounts, actually, people don’t really talk about the relief. That’s not the big deal. But that’s what we’ve got. And it is a big deal.
It’s a procession and a few battle scenes. These figures are–they’re sort of off-white, as ancient antiquity is. It’s not like the Romans’ sculptures, which are really white. This is off-white. I sometimes think of it a bit like a Leonardo inasmuch as it’s realistic but it’s also imagined. So, you can see the–on the horse, for example, which is one of the most famous sculptures, you can see this vein down its nose. When you want to touch a horse’s face or long nose, it’s like that. It’s sort of pulsating.
There’s these battle scenes and you can see this warrior is about to die. I find it incredible.
There was an exhibition there a few years ago at the British Museum that compared the Parthenon to the sculptures of Auguste Rodin, the French sculptor. He was really, really impressed and excited by them. And, putting them side by side, you could see both how he was influenced by them, but also how he departed from them; and how, actually those pieces, since they were taken to the British Museum at the turn of the 19th century, have inspired artists for generations, including to this day. Obviously, people are wandering around to this day.
So, you asked the most important question, which is: How did they get there? So, there were very few antiquities in the British Museum and there was very little knowledge of Greek antiquity at that time–at the turn of the 18th into the early 1900s.
Ancient Athens itself was under an occupier, the Ottomans, and had been for 340 years or so, 300 years. And there were just travelers that were beginning to get into the area and look at it. At the time, it was a shanty town in Athens. It was on the top, but there were buildings everywhere. It doesn’t look like it does today because a lot of surrounding buildings were taken down to subsequently glorify that particular period in history. So, all the modern stuff has since gone. The Turks were using it as a garrison.
Russ Roberts: You’re talking about the Acropolis now.
Tiffany Jenkins: Yes, the Acropolis.
Russ Roberts: Which, if you haven’t been to Athens–I was also just there recently for the first time–it’s rather extraordinary. It is essentially a plateau. It looks like it’s created to be a pedestal for the Parthenon. It towers above–‘towers’ is too strong–but it’s visible from everywhere as this standalone mesa almost, this flat-topped area. The Parthenon is large enough to be visible from almost everywhere that you could see it. You’re saying that before, in the 1800s, the Turks used that whole flat-topped area as a garrison and had other buildings as well as the remnants of the Parthenon.
Tiffany Jenkins: Yes. And in fact, inside it, there was a mosque which they’d created for themselves, which has also since been gone.
But, there were travelers and people were beginning to get really interested in this particular period in history and really wanted to see the real Greek stuff. They had the Roman stuff, but they didn’t have the Greek stuff. Elgin–Lord Elgin–is the British ambassador to Constantinople, and he becomes intrigued by these some paintings and drawings that he’s seen of these sculptures. He sends a number of people to go fetch them. He comes to a deal with the Ottomans. This is one of the controversial things later, but what we know is that they came to some kind of agreement of which there is a Firman, which is the terms of an agreement. There is an Italian translation of it, which was the lingua franca of the time. That’s what diplomats and people spoke. So, we have this Italian translation of the Firman, which says he can take parts of the sculptures which are on the ground. What we know is he took some off the building.
So, did he exceed the limits? Probably, but it’s not like modern day where you have contracts that are that thick where there’s everything saying, ‘You can take this blade of grass but not that blade of grass.’ It’s a different setup. Equally, many of the locals were taking parts of the building to grind up and to use for their own purposes. So, it wasn’t this sort of archeological or rarefied site that it is today.
There is writing between him and his agents about how–I think there’s one phrase which said, ‘We were forced to be a little barbarous.’ And there’s a description of the–because these are big sculptures. They’re really heavy, large marble stone. There’s descriptions of them crashing to the ground and the earth shaking. They then are shipped back to Britain. I think at the time, he wanted some for his house. He goes bankrupt. He has syphilis. He has a terrible time. He can’t afford to keep them. He lands on a scheme of selling them to the British government.
They have an inquiry into it. Should they do it? That inquiry, if you read through it today, is quite interesting. There’s two things that are at the center of whether they should buy it or not. One is: Were they looted in a way that the French would loot? They decide No, they weren’t. Exactly. So, that’s fine. But, the other that I find really fascinating is that when they arrive, people have this idea in their heads of what they should look like: a). They should have all their limbs. They should be kind of smooth. They should be white. And they’re not. They’re off-white, and they look a little bit more kind of relaxed than the Roman stuff that they are familiar with.
So, there’s a big debate over whether they’re any good or not. Massive, massive debate. It’s possibly through that debate that they begin to be established as these great works of art. They’re acquired in the end by the British Museum, I think, for £74,000 pounds.
They are bought partly because they hope that they will reinvigorate and revitalize the arts in England. There’s some desire that maybe they’ll also, by their sheer presence–the kind of democratic spirit of Athens will seep into British culture. There was some talk of putting them–I mean, at first, they were treated more like art objects. So, the aesthetic quality and less as hoping that they would inspire artists. I think they certainly became objects of poetry and inspirations. But they never quite had that impact upon British art that it was hoped.
But, they did become the centerpiece of this museum in Bloomsbury and they are still today. In fact, if you go to the Duveen Gallery where they’re housed, you always hear this massive discussion going on at the hum. And the hum isn’t about what people had for dinner or where they’re going afterwards. It’s about whether or not they should be there in the first place. Which is quite interesting, really.
Russ Roberts: And they’re arranged in a large rectangle, somewhat akin to how they may have been mounted as a frieze or the relief part of it, at least, around the top of the Parthenon, which is–correct?–where they started.
Tiffany Jenkins: Yeah. It’s a rough approximation. Although it’s much lower. So, if you ever go to Parthenon, it’s absolutely huge. I mean it’s so tall. It’s an amazing picture, which you can find on the Internet of Isadora Dora [?Duncan?] standing in front of it and it just towers above her. So, the British Museum, they’re much lower, which means you can see them. One of the debates is: should they be as they were or should you play around with it? The British Museum brings them low so you can actually see them. And you can go up close to them. You can be right there in front of the horse, which I really like.
Russ Roberts: Well, the thing that I learned from your book that–I learned many things from your book, by the way, that I did not know. We’ll talk somewhere about some of them in a minute. But, one of the most interesting things I learned was that it’s very hard to remember that people in the past were almost as complicated, if not more so, than people alive today. We have a certain set of templates and stereotypes about people in the past. One of my favorites is: Everyone was religious except for David Hume. And this is not true. There were many people who had doubts about the existence of God or the value of religious life, just like today. Different proportions, perhaps.
But, in this case, I assumed–incorrectly–not in a conscious way, but I would’ve, if you’d asked me: ‘Well, most people in England when those marbles arrived were proud of them and glad that they came and didn’t really care about how they were acquired, because: We’re England. We ruled the Senate recess on the British Empire, and we’re proud of that.’
And yet, your book reveals that–certainly with the marbles, and with the looting of the palace in Peking during the aftermath of the Opium Wars in the earlier part of the 19th century–that many people in England were deeply uncomfortable with this process. They didn’t just say, ‘Well, we’re the most powerful nation on earth. We’re entitled to anything we happened to pick up and grab.’ There was shame. There were people who said, ‘This is immoral, unethical.’ So, even then, people were uneasy with that acquisition, even if it was different than loot or plunder. In the case of the marbles, it was purchased, maybe exceeded in the contract, yes. But, as you say, there were gray areas in many contracts like that. It wasn’t like there was an archeological commission there overseeing the removal. It was a chaotic time and that was that. But, even then, people were somewhat–not ‘somewhat’–many people were very uncomfortable.
Tiffany Jenkins: They were. I think there are other ideas that influence that. Like, I mentioned about the French: the French were much more conscious and deliberate about their looting. It wasn’t to say that the Brits didn’t do it, but it’s much more accidental and haphazard and informal. And it often came as a consequence of Empire rather than it being a kind of instrument of Empire.
There was also quite a romantic strain. So, there was a very strong sense that artifacts belonged in the soil of where they came from: That, cultures are different and they have different practices and different ways of thinking and different ways of worshipping, and they should remain in the soil of where they came from.
So, at the beginning, that kind of encyclopedic or more cosmopolitan idea of comparing cultures was something that not everybody bought into. And in fact, if you see some of the claims–some of the demands–for repatriation, were along those lines: They should go back to where they belonged.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I was shocked to discover that that there wasn’t just looting. There was systematic looting. They were eager to acquire–the French army and Napoleon were eager to acquire–although I have to confess, Tiffany, this is an account from someone who is from the United Kingdom. So, perhaps biased against the French–we have to keep that in mind. I’ll let you defend yourself in a second. But Napoleon, in your story, had plans. He’d say, ‘Let’s go get that thing in Belgium. When we get to Italy, we’re going to take those things.’
And then when he loses the Battle of Waterloo, the British systematically tried to get returned. That is extraordinary.
So, they repatriated–repatriated through war. Well, you have to put a footnote. The Rosetta Stone–British army did defeat the French and took the Rosetta stone that the French soldiers had found.
But, in general, the British army forced the repatriation of native works of art to their places of origin after conquering France in 1815 in the Battle of Waterloo. Correct?
Tiffany Jenkins: Correct. In a way, it’s the mirror image of taking it for national gain. So, there was this ditty in France that went something like: ‘Rome is no longer in Rome. It’s all in Paris.’ The idea was that you take the greatest works of civilization to the greatest city of civilization–Paris, then. Napoleon, I think, in his head was following in the footsteps of the Romans who looted. They were the first great looters; and they would bring their stuff back in the center of Rome in these big imperial triumphs with crates of everything that they had taken to show that they conquered their enemies and the objects were part of that.
I think that’s what very much inspired Napoleon. He did bring these things back and have his equivalent to the triumph in Paris. So, the Brits, when they win at Waterloo, forcing him to return is their kind of same sort of thing. They’re using loot and objects as a display of might.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, it’s really quite fantastic. When I visited Rome for the first time–which again was recently, it was about five years ago–it’s hard not to notice that there’s a number of obelisks–large towers with Egyptian hieroglyphics. Being an idiot, my first thought was, ‘I wonder why they would build Egyptian–.’ Of course, they didn’t build them. They stole them. They have the most obelisks. They have 13, evidently. I looked it up before our conversation. I think they have the most of anywhere in the world. They have more than there are in Egypt. That’s because they were powerful and they took them; and they still have them. And they’re rather extraordinary. It’s particularly extraordinary to see them in Rome.
But, the French took many things from Rome and the British made them give many of them back. They couldn’t get all of them. As you point out, maybe about half. Some of the more important ones got returned, probably not all of them, and so on.
Tiffany Jenkins: I think also–I think the interesting thing about those obelisks is I think they also made a particularly large ship for them, because these are huge objects. I mean, if you imagine how they could have done it, it’s quite astonishing. There were also–maybe I’m being a bit generous to the Brits then–I think there were the beginnings of an idea of what was right and what wasn’t wrong. Which wasn’t to say it was systematic. I think probably there was possibly a sense of: This is not what we Europeans do. Which doesn’t mean to say that they then didn’t do it elsewhere.
Russ Roberts: The other interesting controversy at the museum that I found so extraordinary is that, if you go to the British Museum, they have quite a number of these large stone objects from Nineveh–from Assyria–of their [?]–of a creature that is half-bull, half-human. And the human part, the head, is this large, bearded head. And then there’s wings, just to make it interesting. They’re extraordinary; and they have a ton of them. I learned two fascinating things in your book. One is: lots of other people have them, too. They don’t have all of them. There’s some in Seattle, and there’s some in New York. My gosh. When Nineveh was plundered again in semi-modern times when there were no Assyrians around to speak for themselves, these things went everywhere; and they’re so striking.
Tiffany Jenkins: I should just say they weren’t plundered then. They were excavated.
Russ Roberts: Correct. No; yes, absolutely.
Tiffany Jenkins: But, that’s also an amazing thing I think–is that they were underground. These things in museums were not just taken from the shelves in other countries. They were underground and they were excavated by, in this case, Henry Layard. So, they were there with their shovels and their spades and finding them. I love those objects because they are huge and I think they were at the entrance of the palace. There are all sorts of other things that they found then, things that we didn’t know about those civilizations.
Russ Roberts: But, the thing I love about those is that when it came time to decide whether the British Museum should acquire them–again, using the money of the British government, not a private collector–there was an enormous debate about whether they were, quote, “any good.” And whether they were art. They were inevitably compared to the Elgin Marbles, which were, quote, “the best.” And, these were just, like, ‘Ermmm. I’m not even sure this is art.’ Talk about that. It’s incredible. [More to come, 27:00]