The Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A) has launched a webpage dedicated to research into the provenance of its objects. The page shines a light on the stories of some looted works in the collection.
The new collections hub page, entitled “How have objects come to be in the V&A?”, points out that “for some objects, their journeys have involved known histories of violence, coercion or injustice, while for others there remains uncertainty over exactly how they came to be here”.
In an Instagram post, Tristram Hunt, the V&A’s director, says: “The product of detailed scholarship and research by V&A staff, the site speaks to our institutional commitment to accountability and transparency as we continue to operate under the 1983 National Heritage Act which prevents the legal deaccession of museum artefacts.” The act stipulates that an object can only be deaccessioned from the V&A if it meets certain criteria, for example of it is a duplicate, irreparably damaged or transferred to another national collection.
The new V&A site was launched on International Provenance Research Day (8 April), an event during which museums around the world highlight and share the work they are doing to trace the histories of their objects. The day is organised by the Research Association for Provenance Research, which is described on its website as “a nonprofit membership organisation for the promotion of provenance research in all its interdisciplinary variety”.
A V&A spokesperson says that the new collections page compiles existing articles along with a newly published piece about the museum’s Ethiopian collections. The landing page also features a selection of objects from the collection that speak to a variety of provenance themes.
Hunt says the new webpage includes “superb essays” on the Asante Regalia, now on display at the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi, Ghana; the Maqdala material looted in 1868 from Ethiopia, and a 4,250-year-old Anatolian gold ewer from the Gilbert Collection which was returned to Turkey in 2021.
The new text on Ethiopian collections, by the provenance research curator Alexandra Watson Jones, explains that the V&A’s collection includes around 90 objects from Ethiopia. “The majority of these are in some way associated with a British military expedition to Ethiopia from 1867-68,” she writes. “This pivotal historic episode culminated in the death of the Ethiopian emperor Tewodros II, the destruction of his fortress at Maqdala, and the looting of vast quantities of Ethiopian material culture by the British Army.”
Objects looted at Maqdala, or otherwise collected during the course of the expedition, can today be found in the V&A along with photographs, drawings and archival material relating to this period in Ethiopian and British history, adds Jones.
“Two of the most famous objects looted from Maqdala are today in the V&A collections: a solid gold chalice and a gold crown, both sacred items from the Ethiopian Orthodox church,” says Jones. In 2007, the museum received a formal request from the Ethiopian government for the restitution of the crown and chalice. Discussions regarding long-term loan of the items to Ethiopia appear to have stalled.
Betel box, on a stand in the shape of a karaweik or mythical bird, Konbaung Dynasty (around 1850-75)
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Other objects listed include a circular plaque from China (1700-1800) made of nephrite jade which was looted from Yuanming Yuan—a former imperial summer palace in Beijing—in 1860 by the antiquary Thomas Dudley Fosbroke and a 19th-century betel box from the regalia of King Thibaw of Burma which was given to Britain as a token of friendship in 1964.
