No, the British Museum shouldn’t become a ‘lending library’ – where will it end?

With news that the institution’s new director is open to returning items to their countries of origin, Emily Sheffield explains why sharing isn’t always caring...

Will museums around the world soon empty completely? (PA)

All parents recall the training they tried to instil in their young children around the concept of sharing. The calm interventions when two toddlers go to war over one toy; the sense of panic in one that the other may waddle off with its plastic treasure.

Carefully we entreat them with the word “share” and explain to our tearful audience the concept of lending – to varying degrees of success. Often it ends in a row, or tears.

I was reminded of these scenes in this week’s comments by the new director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan. In his first interview, he said he would like to see the museum become a “lending library” – that is, to return certain objects to their place of origin on a temporary basis.

Restitution is a thorny issue that many museums around the world are tackling – and Cullinan, the former head of the National Portrait Gallery, has dived straight in, declaring that he wants to “do something positive” with the museum’s vast legacy.

It seems on the surface entirely fitting that we should share and lend the many artefacts and historical objects we have as a country collected, or stolen, over the centuries – particularly from poorer countries, who would benefit hugely from their return. Sharing is caring, after all.

The concept of the museum becoming a “lending library” is not new – but is certainly being given a renewed push. Only two weeks ago Mary Beard, herself a national treasure, as well as a British Museum board trustee, spoke passionately of “dramatically upping the British Museum’s commitment to loans to the world’s four corners”. One cannot help noting that under a Labour government, this theme will receive a very positive hearing.

It is hard to argue against loaning artefacts around the world – especially to their country of origin. It is, after all, what museums do already, including the BM. It’s already started, to some degree – in January, along with the V&A, it agreed to send golden treasures back to Ghana in a historic loan deal.

The groundbreaking agreement could provide a template for handling repatriation disputes – or so the positive press lines argued. It’s worth noting that unlike the V&A Museum, whose director is the former Labour shadow minister Dr Tristram Hunt, the BM only agreed a three-year deal, while the V&A Museum didn’t cap theirs.

But the tortured negotiations of return or loan deals nearly always centre on ownership. And so, stating you will be a lending library is a nice sentiment and will place a progressive halo over an institution that appears to bend, not baulk.

But it’s not going to settle our dispute with, say, the Greeks, over the subject of the Elgin marbles – nor settle demands that restitution means atoning for past sins, and must involve returning full ownership. In this, we know the British Museum and others simply cannot return artefacts, because of current British laws that bar the return of certain works.

And even with loans, they will only be able to negotiate requests on a protracted case-by-case basis. Because we cannot compare the Benin bronzes – indisputably stolen – with the Parthenon marbles (though the Greeks will say we can). Furthermore, the way each country feels about certain artefacts is frequently tied to current politics, current levels of nationalism, and the historical totemic value of those objects.

There also remains the case that if we begin this path, where exactly will it end? Will museums around the world soon empty completely? Or empty at least of the central attractions that keep them funded and the crowds returning – the nightmare scenario for any such institution?

I don’t personally think museums are about to empty – that would be a very dramatic leap. Upping lending deals is a wonderful concept, and Cullinan has my full support – we have family membership to the museum – and I imagine the support of many others.

I hesitate more when I think of artefacts never returning to us. Until we change our laws on ownership – and I don’t think we should head down that slippery slope either – for now, I fear, and certainly with the Greeks, there are going to be a lot more rows and tears.