My God, this is what the king saved?
Reflections on a visit to London, plus some New York news on concert tickets
The Benin Bronzes are in the basement of the British Museum, below a giant sculpture of a head from Easter Island. They are relatively small – maybe a foot squared – and depict scenes from west Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. The detail is exquisite.
But the context of these sculptures was quite jarring when I saw them during a recent trip to the United Kingdom with my family. I haven’t been to London since I was an adolescent (1999), and while I remember visiting the British Museum with my parents, I mostly recall seeing the Rosetta Stone and being told how cool and significant the Elgin Marbles are. (Now that I’ve taken some art history courses, I will attest that the Parthenon sculptures are indeed cool and significant.)
None of these cultural treasures originate from Britannia. They are the fruits/spoils/trophies* of a day when the country ruled the waves and built an empire upon which the sun never set. My big takeaway from our recent time in London was that I was reviewing at the spoils of colonialism. They were often presented without apology. And the people who did the taking/plundering* are placed on nearby pedestals.
(*I’m struggling to write this, because lots of verbs and nouns could work and I don’t want to be overly sanitary or inflammatory in my rhetoric.)
It’s everywhere if you look a bit below the surface. The crown jewels in the Tower of London are beautiful and layered with centuries of history. But then you read that the marquee diamond was acquired/extorted* from a 10-year-old leader. (Yes – ten years old!)
A dozen yards from Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey is Sir. Thomas Stamford Raffles, who I’ve never heard of, but who apparently “by wisdom, vigour and philanthropy … raised Java to happiness and prosperity unknown under former rulers.” Indonesians might remember that Raffles was the first European to sack an indigenous palace.
The story of the Benin Bronzes was laid on starkly in a nearby plaque. In 1897, seven British soldiers died when their “highly provocative” mission into Benin City was attacked. “This triggered a large-scale British military expedition,” the plaque continues, employing some EPIC use of the passive voice. “Benin City suffered a violent and devastating occupation with many casualties. Objects were plundered from palaces and shrines, including nearly 1,000 brass plaques. Oba Ovonramwen, Benin’s king, was deposed, marking the end of Benin’s independence and its integration into the British Empire.”
Integration!
Colonial conquest is no longer in vogue, but the British Museum has resisted efforts to repatriate parts of its collection. “Dismantling it must not become the careless act of a single generation,” Chairman George Osborne, a former chancellor of the exchequer, said in a speech to British Museum trustees in 2022, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. “Not just because the law prevents it. That’s an excuse to hide behind for those who don’t have the courage to make their case. But because we believe in this museum of our common humanity.”
Our common humanity!
“The Museum is actively and openly investigating Benin objects in its collection in collaboration with Nigerian partners,” the museum plaque assures. A dialogue group has been established, and I’m personally hopeful that a preliminary report could arrive soon.
I’m not naïve that history is complicated. I wrote two years ago about how I appreciated the German approach to commemorating the atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust, and how the United States simply whistles past the darker parts of our history. I still remember the words of one Turkish woman in my German-language class in Berlin: “The British Museum is the greatest crime scene in the world.”
I also understand that my country of birth was built on land expropriated/stolen* from Native Americans, who have been explicitly mistreated/murdered* by a series of government policies going back centuries. To say nothing of the exploited/stolen* labor of enslaved Black people and the decades of segregation and repression that reverberate to this day.
Indeed, American conquest dates to before the American revolution, when the Founding Fathers (who we feature on pedestals, and whose names are on streets) threw off the yoke of British imperialism, establishing democracy over monarchy.
We have plenty of museums about it.
SHE’S GOT A TICK IN HER EYE: There’s a debate happening in Albany that anyone who enjoys live music, theater or sporting events should keep an eye on. As I reported last week for Gothamist, some lawmakers want to give performers the power to stop resellers from flipping high-priced tickets to their shows on the secondary market.
State Sen. James Skoufis has introduced legislation that prompted allies of major platforms like StubHub to dispatch lobbyists to Albany this week. They argue the measure would empower an even larger behemoth in the live entertainment industry: Ticketmaster.
“This system is abusive to fans. It's abusive to artists,” Skoufis said. “It’s abusive to every single stakeholder except for the resellers and the very wealthy individuals who are able to afford those very marked-up resold tickets.”
The resale restrictions are one piece of an omnibus bill that the Hudson Valley Democrat hopes will get a vote before the state Legislature adjourns this month. New York lifted most of its restrictions on ticket scalping in 2007, allowing a regulated secondary market to flourish online. Lawmakers must reauthorize the ticket resale rules every few years, including this one.
The proposal has spooked resale platforms like StubHub. Dana McLean, executive director of the Coalition for Ticket Fairness, which StubHub has supported, said the proposal puts around 2,000 jobs at ticket brokers and resellers at risk.
She also warned that passing the bill could lead to an unregulated secondary market, where consumers could be confronted with counterfeit tickets. “It's going to limit the access for fans. It's going to stifle competition. It's going to stifle customer service,” she said.
This all licks at a really interesting economics problem that arises because performers usually price their tickets at less than what the market will demand. If you want to geek out more, check out this Freakonomics episode.
THE QUESTION: Who is honored in London’s Trafalgar Square?
Know the answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER: The last person who had been a member of Congress to be elected governor New York is Kathy Hochul. I didn’t say it had to be a sitting member; that would be Hugh Carey, who represented Brooklyn before he was elected in 1974.