can someone close to @TristramHuntVA please persuade him that this is NOT the moment to resurrect Hugh Trevor-Roper's claim that there is no history in Africa?

even the British Museum lumps Africa and Asia with the Americas!

This proposed scheme is Trumpian in its world-view
the ideology that claims the global south exists outside history has a history.

the V&A scheme is almost precisely that adopted when Oxford divided collections between the multi-department @AshmoleanMuseum and the @Pitt_Rivers in 1884 — the same year as the Berlin Congress.
so THIS 👆was the "considered response" when it finally came 🤔
vam.ac.uk/blog/news/blac…
idk if you saw this yet @Sathnam ?

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More from @profdanhicks

26 Feb
this opportunistic restructuring at the @V_and_A is a disaster for all who love museums

the V&A was never a historical museum — it's a museum of design

imposing a "chonological" structure is an attack upon the very purpose and ethos of the institution

theartnewspaper.com/news/radical-r…
solidarity with all those affected by this restructuring and whose jobs are under threat @VandPcs
Given this scale of loss, why not just cancel the white elephant that is V&A East instead?
Read 7 tweets
23 Feb
The new DCMS "Rapid Evidence Assessment: Culture and Heritage Valuation" is meant to be a literature review on ideas of heritage value.

It includes the most professionally illiterate definition of "culture and heritage physical assets" I've ever read 👇

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
the consultants missed a trick by not including fascist architect Albert Speer's theory of Ruinenwerttheorie (ruin value) here — could've gone down quite well with the Common Sense Group
on knowing the price of everything, the value of nothing, and nothing at all about heritage management
Read 14 tweets
23 Feb
Pretty sure it wasn't written by a "baying mob", but the new DCMS report on valuing heritage assets defines sculptures and plaques as — wait for it — "moveable heritage".

And, specifically, as examples of a class of heritage "that can be moved into a collection or is mobile"
A very sensible piece by Robert Hewison on the new report here artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/artic…
Read the whole of "Valuing culture and heritage capital: a framework towards informing decision making" here gov.uk/government/pub…
Read 4 tweets
19 Feb
yesterday was the 124-year anniversary of the sacking of Benin City by a British naval force
Read 21 tweets
8 Nov 20
Here is a link to my op-ed published in Thursday's Daily Telegraph — and below is the text as a THREAD (1/34)
(2/34)
I had always believed what I’d been told about the Benin Bronzes. That the British punitive expedition against Benin City (today in Edo State, Nigeria) was a necessary reprisal against a bloody massacre. That there was a grim justification to the looting of the city
(3/34) in February 1897, because the Government needed to auction African artefacts to defray the costs of the naval operation. That taking the spoils of war is a human universal, so special pleading in the case of the Kingdom of Benin would only open a Pandora’s box.
Read 36 tweets
6 Nov 20
Page 3 of today’s @Telegraph
For those who missed my op-ed in for @Telegraph, referenced in this news story, here is is >> telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-se…
And here is the news story seen in print above in its online format >> telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/0…
Read 4 tweets

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