Tiffany Jenkins – Keeping Their Marbles

The fabulous collections housed in the world’s most famous museums are trophies from an imperial age. Yet the huge crowds who visit the British Museum, the Louvre or the Met each year have little idea that the objects on display were acquired by coercion or theft. 

Now the countries from which these treasures came would like them back. The Greek demand for the return of the Elgin Marbles is the tip of an iceberg that includes claims for the Benin Bronzes from Nigeria, the bust of Nefertiti and Aboriginal human remains.   

Keeping Their Marbles tells the bloody story of how western museums came to acquire these objects and investigates why repatriation claims have recently soared. Contrary to the arguments of campaigners, it shows that sending artefacts back will not achieve the desired social change nor repair the wounds of history.

Instead, this ground-breaking book makes the case for museums as centres of knowledge, demonstrating that no object has a single home and no one culture owns culture. 

Tiffany Jenkins is an author, academic, broadcaster and columnist, and was previously the director of the Arts and Society Programme at the Institute of Ideas. Her first degree is in art history, her PhD in sociology. She divides her time between London and Edinburgh.

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