The following article by Raymond O’Connell was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
WHEN we had tired of playing cowboys in Botanic Gardens or because it had started to rain, wimps that we were we would often head to the Ulster Museum. Just like in Dodge City we had to hand over our guns before being allowed into its hallowed galleries. This did not stop us using the bench seats as slides in the Art Galleries though. Our visits inevitably ended up with us gazing, fascinated, at the Mummy in her glass case.
Back then in the 1950s we were blissfully unaware of the issue of thefts from various countries of artifacts and other treasures of ancient civilizations taken/stolen by western archeologists and adventurers, many of which ended up in Museums. Perhaps the tussle over the so-called Elgin Marbles is the best known. The Parthenon Sculptures were sent to England by the Earl of Elgin who was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time. However, more recently another alleged way to recover stolen items has been the subject of articles and a book and is now the subject of an as yet unreleased film.
Known as The Great Chinese Art Heist the story refers to a series of robberies of historically significant Chinese artifacts from various European Museums. These were stolen by the British and French from the old Summer Palace just outside Beijing during the Second Opium War in 1860 in what the Chinese regard as the ‘Century of Humiliation’. The accounts of the heists are the stuff of James Bond movies.
The antiques are priceless and the heists have taken place at prestigious locations, including, The Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm (the official residence of the Swedish Royal family) and the Kode Museum (a short distance from Police headquarters) in Bergen. Museums in Durham and Cambridge were also raided as was the Chateau de Fontainebleau. Only Chinese pieces were taken in the various heists.
In Sweden (2010) burning cars were used as a decoy, the raid took six minutes from start to finish and escape was by speedboat. Various accounts have been put forward regarding who is responsible, including the Chinese government, either directly or using professionals hired for the job. Needless to say the Chinese government is furious that it is being ‘fingered’ and doubly so now a movie is due for release.
However, it is an incontrovertible fact, even if not acknowledged by all, that much of what resides in western museums, on display and also locked away was looted in the years of colonialism.
As one art critic, Holland Cotter, put it: “The history of art is, in large part, a theft of history”.