British Museum: Ethiopian Sacred Altar Tablets

Debate between Lord Sassoon and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is right that these items remain of enduring importance to people, and the British Museum is very sensitively discussing those matters with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, so that those sensitivities can be understood and reflected and so that the future of the items can be discussed appropriately. The past may be distant, but it remains around us, and the issues of sensitivity and importance are of course considered very carefully by the British Museum and all other cultural institutions.

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

My Lords, as a former trustee of the British Museum, may I ask my noble friend the Minister whether he agrees with me that, more generally, museums have a responsibility to be clear about the provenance of contested objects and that the British Museum’s website provides a model of openness and transparency for museums globally on how to deal with, and explain the provenance of, such objects?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I completely agree with my noble friend, and am grateful to him for alluding to the British Museum’s work in this area. The pages on its website that explain both these items and, more generally, the museum’s approach to issues of restitution and contested heritage, are a model of transparency. They set out the facts very clearly so that people can understand the past and make their own decisions—and also so that they can understand the claims for restitution that have been made to the museum, and how the museum is dealing with them.

Parthenon Marbles

Debate between Lord Sassoon and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, fortunately for all Ministers, government policy is not made by the things that Ministers wrote when we were undergraduates. The Prime Minister has made the long-standing position of Her Majesty’s Government clear to the Greek Prime Minister, most recently when they met in November.

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

My Lords, as a former trustee of the British Museum, may I ask my noble friend the Minister if he agrees with me not only, as he said, that the British Museum is prepared to lend objects—and is at this point lending objects to many countries generously on a long and short-term basis—but that this requires an acknowledgement of the good title that the British Museum has to those objects?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend on his recent appointment as chairman of Sir John Soane’s Museum. He is absolutely right that the British Museum is indeed a very generous lender, both overseas and within the United Kingdom. Before the pandemic, the British Museum normally loaned over 2,000 objects to around 100 venues outside the UK every year. In addition, as I say, many millions of people come to see the items in its global collection in Bloomsbury. The British Museum will consider any request for part of its collection to be borrowed, but that requires its legal ownership of those items to be recognised.