The gallery opening comes at a critical time for the institution. Increasing pressure to return works like the Elgin marbles and the Rosetta stone, oftentimes removed from colonial possessions, threaten to deprive the museum of some of its best-known and most popular works. Last month a new British organization, Marbles Reunited, argued that with the modern Olympics’ returning to their original site in Athens this summer, it’s the perfect time for the Elgin marbles to return, too. The new gallery, intended as a thought-provoking introduction to the main collections, cuts through the controversy, underscoring how the Enlightenment’s zeal for discovery was in large measure responsible for the iconic status the Marbles and the Rosetta stone enjoy in Western art and thought. During the 18th century the marbles were lauded as the pinnacle of artistic achievement, the standard by which all other art was measured. Today they’re appreciated within a broader, global context of Egyptian and Assyrian art; the full breadth of Greek artistic achievement, which influenced sculpture from Turkey to India, is better understood.
Such things are not only important for the history of art. These artifacts also chart the passionate thirst for knowledge about far-flung civilizations and the physical world that characterized the Enlightenment. The collections were built by 18th-century explorers, entrepreneurs and wealthy aristocrats, who traveled far and donated their treasures to the newly founded museum. Antiquarians and dilettantes amassed Greek vases and statues on their grand tours of Europe; serious collectors like Sir Hans Sloane gathered plants, minerals and curiosities from all over the world. Businessmen with the East India Company’s outposts brought back cuneiform tablets and coins and explorers returned with ceremonial headdresses and tools from Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. Their ultimate aim: to aid research and raise the nation’s cultural taste.
This rapid growth in trade and exploration also helped lay the foundation for the modern, scientific study of the world. Archaeology, botany, geology and paleontology emerged as new disciplines. The origins of religion, art and writing were picked apart and analyzed. The exhibit reveals changing attitudes toward classification: Sloane’s trays of minerals, rescued from the Natural History Museum’s storerooms, were intended to be encyclopedic. Later collections were grouped according to their nature and origins, and gradually the idea of geological time emerged, superseding the firm 18th-century belief–derived from the Bible–that the Earth was 6,000 years old.
So were the items stolen? Enlightenment exploration, maintains exhibit curator Kim Sloan, “wasn’t a case of grabbing [artifacts] and running off. It was about trading, setting up relationships.” Viewed along with the rest of the museum’s collections, the Enlightenment gallery certainly allows us to grasp how much we have learned. Does that justify the British Museum’s right to hold on to such artifacts? In keeping with the Enlightenment’s spirit of open inquiry, Athena isn’t saying. But the gallery is inspiring enough to cause visitors to linger, working out the answer for themselves.
