Clive of India treasures to stay in UK, but . . .

We posted about Clive's goodies going on the block here and here. Now here's more, though the UK papers are giving it a rather ugly spin:

A collection of Mughal treasures once owned by Clive of India have been lost to the nation after being bought by an Arab sheikh.

Is "lost to the nation" here meant to criticize foreign ownership, or private ownership -- or both? Read on.

Sheikh Saud al-Thani, a cousin of the Emir of Qatar, snapped up the multi-million-pound collection at auction earlier this year, intending to display it in his museum of Islamic art in the Gulf state.

He pays huge money for great objects, but to make it seem somehow unfair, the expression "snapped up" is rolled out. And don't forget that the pieces were intended for public display -- albeit not in Britain.

The Government imposed a temporary export bar banning him from taking them abroad, to give British buyers – including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Trust – the chance to raise funds.

Standard operating procedure.

But the sheikh decided this week to withdraw his application for an export licence and instead will keep the collection in the UK.

Them's the breaks. The rules are written to prevent export of important cultural properties, not to guarantee their availability to the public. If you want to change the rules, that's fine -- but spare us the backhanded xenophobia (I suspect we wouldn't be hearing any of this if the buyer had been, say, Elton John). In a somewhat parallel case, I was wondering what would happen if the Getty decided to establish a British base, similarly forestalling efforts to preempt its purchase of the Macclesfield Psalter. Could items held at the UK satellite then be sent out of the country on loan, just as is routinely permitted to other British institutions? If the loan requests were reasonable, it would be difficult to justify denying them.

Unless he offers to loan the collection to a museum, they will be hidden from public view forever.

"Forever"? Isn't that a bit melodramatic? Full story here.

Posted by David on December 16, 2004 10:19 AM