Contested heritage
As publicly funded bodies, you should not be taking actions motivated by activism or politics. The significant support that you receive from the taxpayer is an acknowledgement of the important cultural role you play for the entire country. It is imperative that you continue to act impartially, in line with your publicly funded status, and not in a way that brings this into question.
So wrote the Rt Hon Oliver Dowden CBE MP, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport, in a letter to 26 cultural institutions, including the British Museum, on 22 September 2020. He added that impartiality ‘is especially important as we enter a challenging Comprehensive Spending Review, in which all government spending will rightly be scrutinised’ – implying, according to some, that those who disobey risk losing their grant-in-aid.
The letter refers specifically to the ‘removal of statues or other similar objects’ – a comment that alludes to the toppling in Bristol of the statue of Edward Colston (1636-1721), though some newspapers interpreted this as a covert reference to the British Museum’s decision to move the terracotta portrait bust of the founder, Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), from its place of honour in the Enlightenment Gallery to a nearby cabinet. BM Director Hartwig Fischer defended this action, saying: ‘We have pushed him off the pedestal where nobody looked at him, and placed him in the limelight’ – that is to say, to a case ‘dedicated to Hans Sloane and his relationship to slavery.’
