Thirty-odd years ago I worked as a gallery warder in the British Museum. The most dreaded shift rotation for me was the Egyptian Sculpture gallery - four hours of standing over the Rosetta stone telling visitor after visitor after visitor not to touch it (these were the days before they put it behind glass) because literally no-one could believe it was the REAL stone, out there and unprotected. At that point it was also having chalk regularly rubbed on it to make the texts stand out brightly. So much for looking after it better than the country of origin!!!
Also, a really horrifying fact from the past - the Parthenon marbles were scrubbed with wire brushes and carbolic soap back in the 1800's to make them extra white and shiny for the white supremacist gaze, thereby obliterating any traces of remaining paint AND badly damaging the stones' surfaces. And various directors/MP's over the years have had the cheek to cite acid rain in Athens as the reason we have to keep them - it's more likely they fear the international scandal that would erupt if the Greeks got them back and did a proper, modern analysis of therm...
Thirty-odd years ago I worked as a gallery warder in the British Museum. The most dreaded shift rotation for me was the Egyptian Sculpture gallery - four hours of standing over the Rosetta stone telling visitor after visitor after visitor not to touch it (these were the days before they put it behind glass) because literally no-one could believe it was the REAL stone, out there and unprotected. At that point it was also having chalk regularly rubbed on it to make the texts stand out brightly. So much for looking after it better than the country of origin!!!
Also, a really horrifying fact from the past - the Parthenon marbles were scrubbed with wire brushes and carbolic soap back in the 1800's to make them extra white and shiny for the white supremacist gaze, thereby obliterating any traces of remaining paint AND badly damaging the stones' surfaces. And various directors/MP's over the years have had the cheek to cite acid rain in Athens as the reason we have to keep them - it's more likely they fear the international scandal that would erupt if the Greeks got them back and did a proper, modern analysis of therm...