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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/19/has-british-museum-scored-spectacular-goal-mo-salah-football-boots
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| Has the British Museum just scored a spectacular goal? | Has the British Museum just scored a spectacular goal? |
| (21 days later) | |
| National museums, at least in the west, often exist in an uneasy relationship to history and identity in our modern age – and the British Museum has one of the trickiest roles. Long criticised by many as an anachronistic bastion of cultural imperialism, stuffed with the spoils of our entitled violations, it has increasingly found itself on the back foot, forced to defend its “appropriation” of other people’s cultural booty in the face of repeated calls for restitution. | National museums, at least in the west, often exist in an uneasy relationship to history and identity in our modern age – and the British Museum has one of the trickiest roles. Long criticised by many as an anachronistic bastion of cultural imperialism, stuffed with the spoils of our entitled violations, it has increasingly found itself on the back foot, forced to defend its “appropriation” of other people’s cultural booty in the face of repeated calls for restitution. |
| While the most celebrated and contested of all the looted treasures remain the Parthenon marbles – their return championed by public figures from Lord Byron to Amal Clooney – we’ve pilfered quite a bit from the Egyptians, too, and they’re not happy about it either. In 2010, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities hosted a two-day conference in Cairo that ended with a demand that the British Museum return ancient artefacts to their country of origin, beginning with Egypt’s Rosetta Stone. | While the most celebrated and contested of all the looted treasures remain the Parthenon marbles – their return championed by public figures from Lord Byron to Amal Clooney – we’ve pilfered quite a bit from the Egyptians, too, and they’re not happy about it either. In 2010, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities hosted a two-day conference in Cairo that ended with a demand that the British Museum return ancient artefacts to their country of origin, beginning with Egypt’s Rosetta Stone. |
| So in this ongoing climate of recrimination and post-colonial defensiveness, it makes a change to see the British Museum acquire a new Egyptian treasure that’s been donated voluntarily by an Egyptian king, of sorts. | So in this ongoing climate of recrimination and post-colonial defensiveness, it makes a change to see the British Museum acquire a new Egyptian treasure that’s been donated voluntarily by an Egyptian king, of sorts. |
| Mo Salah scores again as boots enter British Museum collection | Mo Salah scores again as boots enter British Museum collection |
| I refer, of course, to Mohamed Salah’s mint-green football boots, given by Adidas on the occasion of his winning the Golden Boot award as this season’s top scorer in the Premier League. The boots will feature as a temporary part of the BM’s Egyptian collection, to be displayed next to a pair of ancient Egyptian sandals (number of goals unknown) near the mummies, as part of a drive to better reflect contemporary Egyptian life. The museum’s keeper of ancient Egypt and Sudan, Neal Spencer, said: “The boots tell the story of a modern Egyptian icon, performing in the UK, with a truly global impact.” | I refer, of course, to Mohamed Salah’s mint-green football boots, given by Adidas on the occasion of his winning the Golden Boot award as this season’s top scorer in the Premier League. The boots will feature as a temporary part of the BM’s Egyptian collection, to be displayed next to a pair of ancient Egyptian sandals (number of goals unknown) near the mummies, as part of a drive to better reflect contemporary Egyptian life. The museum’s keeper of ancient Egypt and Sudan, Neal Spencer, said: “The boots tell the story of a modern Egyptian icon, performing in the UK, with a truly global impact.” |
| Is this progress? It’s by no means the weirdest museum exhibit in London; that award might go to the merman sculpture made of fish remains at the Horniman Museum in Lewisham or the celebrity stool samples in Hackney’s Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities. It’s possible that Salah’s boots might be an effective way to tempt kids into the museum, except that if you can’t get your children into a gallery that already has 2,000-year-old dessicated corpses in it, will a pair of unworn boots have much pull? The exhibit has already caused controversy in Egypt, with a former minister of state for antiquities denouncing it as disrespectful to place the boots next to sacred treasures. | Is this progress? It’s by no means the weirdest museum exhibit in London; that award might go to the merman sculpture made of fish remains at the Horniman Museum in Lewisham or the celebrity stool samples in Hackney’s Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities. It’s possible that Salah’s boots might be an effective way to tempt kids into the museum, except that if you can’t get your children into a gallery that already has 2,000-year-old dessicated corpses in it, will a pair of unworn boots have much pull? The exhibit has already caused controversy in Egypt, with a former minister of state for antiquities denouncing it as disrespectful to place the boots next to sacred treasures. |
| I can’t help feeling that the boots are unwittingly revealing far more about our confused British sense of self at this point in history. Even as some among us cling to a misplaced pride in empire and the invention of football, we’re constantly having our faces rubbed in the fact that our age of dominance in both is long past; the publicity photographs of Saleh’s boots in front of the giant statue of Ramesses II serve as a reminder that much of the best of our culture has been imported from elsewhere. | I can’t help feeling that the boots are unwittingly revealing far more about our confused British sense of self at this point in history. Even as some among us cling to a misplaced pride in empire and the invention of football, we’re constantly having our faces rubbed in the fact that our age of dominance in both is long past; the publicity photographs of Saleh’s boots in front of the giant statue of Ramesses II serve as a reminder that much of the best of our culture has been imported from elsewhere. |
| It would be progress if we were better at acknowledging and celebrating that in a wider sense, rather than fetishising the footwear of one exceptionally talented Egyptian the way we’ve previously fetishised their carvings and dead bodies, while also insisting on our right to hang on to them. | It would be progress if we were better at acknowledging and celebrating that in a wider sense, rather than fetishising the footwear of one exceptionally talented Egyptian the way we’ve previously fetishised their carvings and dead bodies, while also insisting on our right to hang on to them. |
| British Museum director Hartwig Fischer: ‘There are no foreigners here – the museum is a world country’ | British Museum director Hartwig Fischer: ‘There are no foreigners here – the museum is a world country’ |
| The project to expand the museum’s Egypt collections to illustrate the country’s contemporary history is laudable, not least because they’re going to need new exhibits to fill the gaps when we inevitably have to give back all the stuff we nicked. But at a time when the England manager, Gareth Southgate, is warning about racism in football, enshrining the footwear of one player, claiming him as both an Egyptian icon and somehow “ours”, in a museum gallery surrounded by the spoils of empire feels like something of a confused gesture. | The project to expand the museum’s Egypt collections to illustrate the country’s contemporary history is laudable, not least because they’re going to need new exhibits to fill the gaps when we inevitably have to give back all the stuff we nicked. But at a time when the England manager, Gareth Southgate, is warning about racism in football, enshrining the footwear of one player, claiming him as both an Egyptian icon and somehow “ours”, in a museum gallery surrounded by the spoils of empire feels like something of a confused gesture. |
| But if the exhibit is to be more than useful advertising for Adidas, the BM needs to broaden its range of contemporary Egyptian icons. They could have Omar Sharif’s favourite pack of cards. Or one of the condom balloons handed out to police in 2016 by the comedian and satirist Shady H AbuZaid, who was later arrested for the prank. Or anything belonging to the many women arrested and sentenced for protesting in Tahrir Square. | But if the exhibit is to be more than useful advertising for Adidas, the BM needs to broaden its range of contemporary Egyptian icons. They could have Omar Sharif’s favourite pack of cards. Or one of the condom balloons handed out to police in 2016 by the comedian and satirist Shady H AbuZaid, who was later arrested for the prank. Or anything belonging to the many women arrested and sentenced for protesting in Tahrir Square. |
| Modern icons come in many guises – not all of them with corporate sponsorship. | Modern icons come in many guises – not all of them with corporate sponsorship. |
| British Museum | British Museum |
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| Mohamed Salah | Mohamed Salah |
| Egypt | Egypt |
| Museums | Museums |
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