John Oliver discusses some of the world’s most prestigious museums, why they contain so many stolen goods, the market that continues to illegally trade antiquities, and a pretty solid blueprint for revenge. 

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Our main story tonight concerns antiquities.

Basically, relics from bygone times that can tell us stories about people from the past.

Specifically, our story concerns what happens when those relics go missing.

And I'll start by giving you just 1 example.

If you go to Greece, you might go to the Acropolis Museum, and while you're marveling at sculptures that are over 2 millennia old, you might notice some odd details, like this sculpture, which appears to have a white foot, or this 1, where someone's whole upper half seems to be suddenly and overwhelmingly white.

It's what's known in the art world as Season 2 of The Wire.

Well, there is an explanation for where those missing pieces are, and as a British person, I'm a little bit implicated.

So, the darker stone is the original, whereas this white plaster, that represents what's in the British Museum?

The missing marble head and chest floating in a display space.

Honestly, if you're ever looking for a missing artifact, 9 times out of 10, it's in the British Museum.

It's basically the world's largest lost and found, with both lost and found in the heaviest possible quotation marks there.

Specifically, those marbles known in England as the Elgin Marbles were taken by Lord Elgin, a 19th century British lord who hacked them off the Parthenon.

It's something that the Greeks are understandably furious about because they weren't lost, they were taken.

It's like being unable to find the last puzzle piece and learning that you didn't actually misplace it.

A British earl snuck into your house, stole it, and then sold it to a museum over a thousand miles away.

Greece has been demanding the return of the Elgin marbles for decades now, but the response from some of the British Museum's defenders has been, even by British standards, unbelievably patronizing.

1 can't even think about returning the Elgin marbles to Athens until the Greeks start caring for what they already have.

I'm sure they'd take great care of the Parthenon sculptures if they were returned, but if you knew a woman was abusing her child, you wouldn't let her adopt another.

And that's what the Greeks were asking for.

That is not a great comparison, especially because it omits the fact that the woman's child, in this example, was basically kidnapped.

So it's less a woman asking to adopt another child, than it is her demanding the return of her first 1.

And Look, the Parthenon marbles should absolutely be returned to Greece.

Even that woman you just saw now says that she thinks they should go back.

But those marbles are just the tip of the iceberg here.

The fact is, antiquities, largely from the global south, which includes Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Mideast, have been taken and enshrined in European and American museums on a much larger scale than you may realize.

In 2018, a report commissioned by the French president found that over 90 percent of all Africa's cultural heritage is held outside Africa by major museums.

But as the voices arguing for antiquities to be returned are getting louder, others are resisting any change.

In 2010, when asked whether the UK would ever return the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India, Prime Minister David Cameron refused, saying, if you say yes to 1, you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty.

Which is incredibly frustrating, and it's frankly no wonder that some are now taking matters into their own hands.

In June, a Congolese activist removed a 19th century Chagin funeral pole from the Cape Horney Museum in Paris as part of a protest campaign against plundering during the colonial era.

And obviously, that man was unaware of the museum's very clear policy, no stealing African antiquities, starting now.

So given just how many antiquities in some of the world's most prestigious museums are essentially stolen goods, tonight, let's talk about museums.

And this is gonna be a larger story than normal, and we're gonna do it in 2 main parts.

First, concerning how antiquities ended up in museums in the past, and then about the thriving modern market that keeps them supplied with objects to this very day.

And look, we don't have time to recap the entire history of colonialism and the plunder of antiquities.

There are so, so many stolen artifacts that we could talk about tonight, from the treasures of Tipu Sultan to the Zodiac of Dendera.

But in order to say a lot in a little, let's stay with the British Museum.

In its own promotional materials, it makes a big feature of just how important and influential its founding was.

In January 1759, the British Museum opened its doors.

The first national public museum of the world.

Initially, the objects were based on the founding collection of Sir Hans Sloane.

And this is Hans Sloane, scholar, entrepreneur, physician, who was connected with the best minds of his time.

In fact, our collection has always been about connecting people.

Okay, first, I'm gonna say what we're all thinking.

That guy has definitely Googled, could night at the museum actually happen?

Not because he's scared of a big bony dinosaur chasing him, but because when no 1 is around, he definitely fucks the art, and he definitely doesn't want any of it talking.

But, that notion of museums as a place for people to connect with our shared history, with cultures all over the world, clearly isn't fundamentally bad.

But it's also not wholly representative of the actual history of how many museums came to be.

For instance, Han Sloane, who on his best day, looked like that, had some interesting connections of his own, specifically, the fact that he was married to an heiress to sugar plantations in Jamaica, worked by enslaved people, and bought many objects in his collection with that wealth, meaning that the museum's very foundations are inextricably tied up in slavery and colonialism.

With the same being true of many of its most prized holdings.

It's a term that refers to a huge range of objects produced in the Kingdom of Benin, which is currently part of modern-day Nigeria.

Now, the Benin Bronzes were looted from the palace of the King of Benin, or the Oba, in 1897, after the British military invaded and violently toppled him.

That mission was vindictive and it was destructive, but it was also extremely targeted.

The British soldiers armed with machine guns conquered the city and burned it to the ground, But not before carefully taking thousands of artifacts.

They piled them up neatly, photographed them, and even labeled them loot.

This photo, taken at the Benin Palace after the raid, shows soldiers with the dismantled plaques that were brought to the British Museum and sold all over the world.

Okay, first, that's obviously awful, but second, it is pretty remarkable that a British soldier went to the trouble of carefully labeling each of those photos, and the captions he used were, -"Loot and more loot." -$LOOT AND MORE LOOT At the very least, he could have chosen something more descriptive, like, I don't know, Dan, Terry, and I after doing cultural genocide.

But the looting of the Benin bronzes wasn't just a physical loss, it was a cultural and historical 1.

They're something much more important, as this member of the Benin royal family explained.

had the guild of bronze casters to cast it in bronze to keep a record.

So taking them away was like yanking off pages of our history.

For that kingdom, these were their memories made physical.

And these plaques were laid out in a very specific order, which was then lost when the British tore them from the palace walls, meaning that the British, in effect, stole and scrambled a nation's memories.

A crime so fucked up, even Black Mirror hasn't thought of it yet.

-...the bronzes are currently scattered among 161 museums and institutions around the world, with only 9 such institutions located in Nigeria.

And understandably, There have been calls for the return of the bronzes for decades now, and a handful of museums have complied.

But the British Museum, which holds more bronzes than anyone, has repeatedly refused, pointing to the British Museum Act of 1963, which explicitly forbids it from giving an item in its collection away with very limited exceptions.

And the thing is, that law does exist, but laws can also be changed if you want to.

And the more you hear British officials talk, the clearer it becomes that That is not what they want at all.

Well, I think that they properly reside in the British Museum.

The collections of our great national institutions have been developed over many, many centuries, in many times in questionable circumstances.

I think the question now is about what we do with these.

I've seen them many times throughout my life.

And I think them being in the British Museum, which is a world repository of heritage, allows people to see it.

Yeah, that offensively English man loves the Benin bronzes.

And while I'm so glad that Oliver James Dowden, MP for heart smear, has seen them many times throughout his life, the fact is not everyone gets to do that as this Nigerian artist and art historian will attest.

That was my first time of seeing an original, ancient Benin artwork.

the British Museum, to see for the first time these objects.

It was a mixture of pride in the achievement of

these ancient artists, and anger mixed with a sense of loss.

The generations of British children who've grown up loving the Benin bronzes come at the expense of generations of Nigerians who haven't.

And again, this is just 1 example of so, so many.

And whenever the question of returning stolen objects comes up, there are usually a few stock responses which are worth quickly addressing.

The first is basically that these were acquired in a different time, And you can't judge the present by the standards of the past.

When France was recently roiled by debate over whether to return African art, this catastrophically French art historian basically made that exact case.

They belong to the museums where they are now because there are laws you know and if even for the the artifacts which were looted in the 19th century in the 19th century the war there was laws and the looting of war was legal.

And if you want to come back on this, why don't you come back 19th century, 17th century, 16th century?

Okay, so how do I explain this so that that man will understand?

Yes, there may not have been laws explicitly making looting illegal, but the idea that that gives you carte blanche is how you say, orc shit.

And setting aside that Didier Reichner, the looting apologist art historian, seems less like a real person and more like a character in Tintin, how he saved the Egyptians from themselves.

The fact is, looting wasn't just an acceptable, unavoidable byproduct of war under Zillow.

It was sometimes baked into the plan from the outset.

In fact, during 1 notorious British raid in northern Ethiopia in 1868, the army even brought along an expert from the British Museum to bid for some of the choicest items.

And importantly, people knew the practice was wrong even back then.

After that raid on Ethiopia, the British Prime Minister said he deeply lamented, for the sake of the country and for the sake of all concerned, that these articles were thought fit to be brought away by a British army, and urged that they be held only until they could be restored.

We didn't even know how to fix a UTI without leeches back then.

But we knew that raiding other countries for their shit was deeply lamentable, which is British for super fucked up.

Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up,

up, up, up ♪ Now, the second common argument is that objects are actually safer under the care of Western institutions than they would be in their home country.

Here is that case being made by an art dealer regarding pre-Columbian art from Peru.

According to the law, which I think I like to think of as Solomon's Law.

The 1 who loves the baby best gets the baby.

The 1 who'll pay the most for the baby gets the baby.

its national treasures, The rest of the world will take care of it for the Peruvians,

That man seems great, but, you know what?

It's exactly as King Solomon famously declared, the real mother is whoever agrees to offer 200, 000 over the asking price, all cash, inspection waived.

But that argument, you can't be trusted with your own property, you'll just damage it, is hard to land even before you learn that the caretaking record of some museums is mixed at best.

Remember that woman insisting that the Greeks couldn't possibly take care of the Parthenon marbles.

Multiple leaks have been reported in the British Museum's Greek galleries.

And in the 1930s, in what museum officials later admitted was a heavy-handed attempt to clean the sculptures, they actively damaged them by scrubbing them with wire brushes and a harsh cleaning agent.

And look, even under Solomon's Law, whoever loves the baby gets the baby, but if you scrub the baby with wire brushes, we take the fucking baby away.

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ And the final argument that you hear is that these museums are an open repository of the world's treasures and can actually increase the number of people who can enjoy them.

But you've already seen someone point out that is only true if you can get to the museum in question.

And also, it's worth noting that most display only a tiny fraction of their collections.

The British Museum, for instance, has a collection of 8000000 objects, although only around 80, 000 of them, just 1 percent, are on public display at any 1 time.

And it can be pretty galling for people to find that their heritage, which is often part of a vibrant present-day culture, is sitting in storage in the British Museum's underground loot prison.

Here in the U.S., we've stashed away many Native American artifacts.

And just watch as members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes are allowed to visit artifacts in storage at Chicago's Field Museum.

So just beyond here is the storeroom where we'll be looking at some of the artifacts.

When I think about objects that belong to tribal members that are just sitting there in the dark.

You just walk in and there's just like rows and rows and rows of all these objects.

They've been boxed away since they were collected.

Nobody can see them, touch them, be around them.

And it gets a lot harder to pretend that these objects are fulfilling a mission of educating and connecting people when they're in a basement in a box labeled with a fucking Sharpie.

And at this point, you may well be thinking, well, obviously we shouldn't have taken those objects in the past, but now we know better.

But you should know, this practice is still very much going on.

Which brings us to the second big part of our story, the modern antiquities market.

Because items are still being bought, sold, and donated all the time between private individuals, museums, dealers, and auction houses.

And when it comes to those items, the key word to understand is provenance.

Basically, the full history of an object and the path it took to end up here.

Because not every piece is like those famous Benin bronzes, where it is clear from our history books who took them.

For most items, research into provenance is absolutely critical.

It's not just how you know whether an item is real or fake, but also whether or not it got to you legally.

The auction house Sotheby's even has a whole video on its website bragging about how much it loves researching provenance.

Even though it seems to view it as less an ethical imperative and more as a pretty sweet marketing perk.

Provenance is The history of ownership for a work.

How many different hands has it passed through.

For me, this is what we kind of live for, is to get the great stories to tell.

his ownership can be just as interesting, if not more interesting than the artist.

Promise is something that, in a way, doesn't matter.

Yeah, and yet, in another way, it really does.

A quick side note, never in my life has there been such an intimidatingly bougie collection of people.

You can almost hear them saying, actually, it's pronounced, croissant.

♪ -I do not doubt the Southern Beast loves backstories that add luster and, crucially, value to the objects that they auction.

They, and many others, seem much less interested when those stories uncover something seamier.

1 gallery owner who recently pled guilty for her part in trafficking looted Antiquities said that buying and selling objects with vague or even no provenance was so much the norm in the art market, it was a conspiracy of the willing.

And to see exactly what that conspiracy can look like, just look at 1 attempted sale where Sotheby's ignored some pretty glaring warning signs.

3 years ago, Cambodia learned that Sotheby's auction house in Manhattan was attempting to sell a 1, 000-year-old masterpiece for $3 million, the feet of which were still at the temple in Cambodia.

Sotheby's was warned by the very expert they hired to appraise the statue that it was, quote, definitely stolen.

Despite what their expert told them, they decided to put the statue on the front of 1 of their more prominent auction catalogs of the year.

The expert said, this is definitely stolen.

And Sotheby's said, yeah, but it might not be right.

And Sotheby's said, seriously, Jamie, you're too much.

And the expert said, thanks, but again, it is stolen.

And Sotheby's said, tell your mom I said hi.

And the expert said, my mom's actually dead.

-♪ ♪ -♪ Now, legally, I have to tell you, Sotheby's insists that they did nothing wrong and that they conduct extensive due diligence before offering items up for auction.

But you should know, in the case of that statue, federal prosecutors eventually intervened, forcing Sotheby's to hand it over to Cambodia, where it was eventually, happily, reunited with its feet.

If Cinderella had been amputated at the ankle.

And, Interestingly, and to that point, it is not uncommon to see statues missing feet or hands.

And while you might assume that it's damage due to time, it's often a sign that it has been stolen with looters or thieves sawing off heads to sell separately or hacking a sculpture out from a temple wall so rapidly that they leave the feet behind.

And if I know this, and you now know this, then Sotheby's definitely fucking did.

And again, this is why provenance research is so vitally important.

But many buyers fail to do even the bare minimum, meaning that the demand for stolen goods will always be met by a steady supply.

Just watch as a dealer in Nepalese artifacts, Deepak Shakya, basically walks someone through just how easy it can be to get paperwork to justify removing an object from the country.

By law, the country's Department of Archaeology cannot issue export papers on items more than 100 years old.

But Deepak says he has a tried and proven way.

So government no problem getting these out?

Give some money to under-table, otherwise, no problem.

I don't know how hard it should be to illegally export a culture's treasured antiquities, but it should at least be harder than find a guy who has a guy.

That man was later arrested and charged, presumably, alarming any museums with large collections from Nepal.

And just look what happened when those documentary makers sat down with a representative from the Rubin Museum right here in New York to ask a pretty basic question.

Has the Rubin Museum done any dealings with Deepak Shakya or his family, the Shakyas?

A pretty good rule when you're asked, do you work with art thieves?

Is there any answer that's not an immediate no is instantly suspicious.

And while the Rubin later claimed that, to their best knowledge, they didn't have any connection to Deepak Shakir or any objects from him, They did return these 2 objects from their collection just this year that were very much stolen.

And the Nepalese group that pressured them to do that recently identified another object that they say is stolen, which you'll never guess, just happens to be in the Rubin right now.

But don't worry, the Rubin told us they're looking into that 1 now too, and I'm sure they'll get back to us.

And the thing is, there are lots of dealers around who use museums to launder their reputations.

He was once 1 of the leading sources of Asian art for museums and collectors.

The Met currently has 86 objects from him in its collection, and even threw him a private reception in 2009 after he donated dozens of Indian drawings, which was a real win-win, because The Met got the drawings, and Kapoor got to tell people that he had art in the Met.

And it's not like they would work with a disreputable dealer, right?

But Kapoor was ultimately identified as a prolific trafficker of stolen goods, and he didn't even bother coming up with good cover stories.

The most common 1 that he used was that objects had come from the family collection of his girlfriend.

And you might be thinking, that is so stupid, it would only work on a group of real ding-dongs, to which I'd say, you're absolutely right.

It seems to have worked on the Met 86 times.

-♪ ♪ -♪ And buying art without doing proper provenance research can blow up in a museum's face in spectacular fashion.

Take what happened a few years back at the Met Gala.

Kim Kardashian made an appearance wearing head-to-toe Atelier Versace that was notably gold, just like this guy, Ned Jermank, or more specifically, his coffin, which the Met had recently acquired.

Guys, a photo op of the 2 of them had to happen, didn't it?

Well, when it did, the Internet absolutely exploded.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York receiving a tip after Kim's photo from the Met Gala went viral.

The Manhattan assistant district attorney was emailed a photo by an anonymous informant in the Middle East, saying he recognized the coffin and knew it had been looted.

Museum officials saying they bought the sarcophagus for 4000000 dollars from an art dealer in Paris in

but were fooled by fake papers saying it had been legitimately exported decades ago.

The woman has a real knack for producing incredible images just by standing next to men that look like they died a long time ago.

Ned Jamal's coffin had been stolen during the Egyptian uprising in 2011, and as the story unraveled, it became very clear that the Met should have been a lot more suspicious when it was offered to them, because the red flags included 3 conflicting ownership histories, the involvement of known traffickers, and a forged export license that bore the stamp Arab Republic of Egypt before the country used that name.

Even like if Madame Tussauds bought and displayed a clearly alive James Spader.

Your only job was to make sure this celebrity was waxed.

Now, the Met has since relinquished the coffin and apologized to Egypt, but a museum's approach to provenance research cannot be, do nothing until Kim Kardashian takes a photograph in front of 1 of our objects and we're humiliated on the international stage.

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