09x24 - Cultural repatriation of looted artifacts

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LAST WEEK TONIGHT
WITH JOHN OLIVER

Welcome, welcome, welcome to
"Last Week Tonight." I'm John Oliver.

Thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.

Hurricane Ian battered Florida,
massive protests continued in Iran,

and a far-right coalition
took power in Italy.

And the only good news there is that
doing an over-the-top Italian accent

is now a noble strike
against the rise of the fascism.

But we're gonna start tonight in the UK,
where brand-new Prime Minister Liz Truss

has been facing a cost-of-living
crisis due to high energy prices.

She and her finance minister unveiled
a new economic plan last Friday,

accompanied by,
for some reason, a video

where stirring music almost managed
to disguise an utter lack of content.

What this is about is about making sure

that the United Kingdom
is a successful economy

where we're getting more jobs,
more investment.

This is a fantastic country

with huge reserves of talent,
energy, and enterprise.

And what this is all about

is unleashing those talents,
that energy,

for the betterment of our country.

Okay, first, choose a camera, Liz.

You've got two there,
and you're looking at neither of them.

Second, that music
sounds like it's from

"Generically Inspiring Violin

for Bullshit Political Ads
and Commercials for Hospitals, Vol. 2."

And finally, "unleashing talent and
energy" is completely meaningless,

unless that is,
you're a youth track coach

that's finally decided
to give the team steroids.

Now, Truss's plan, controversially,

entails massive tax cuts,
mostly to the wealthy,

on the assumption it'll eventually
boost the economy for everyone.

It's basically trickle-down
economics bullshit yet again,

and it's something that Truss' allies
desperately tried to justify,

with one arguing that "a rising tide lifts
all ships," and saying this.

If you look at the proposals,
according to the Resolution Foundation,

if you're on 1,000,000 pounds,
you're getting a tax cut of 55,000 pounds.

That is quite clearly tax cuts that are
weighted at the top end of the scale.

But so, if all you care about

is the distributional impacts
of the tax cuts in the next 24 weeks,

you're not going to like this package
if you care more about the poor.

"If you care more about the poor, then
you're not going to like this package."

That sounds less like someone
defending an economic plan

and more like Jeff Bezos
describing his penis.

Because in general, it's not great
to describe a government policy

the same way you'd describe
legacy college admissions

or a Ronald Reagan duvet cover.

Right after those tax cuts
were announced,

UK financial markets
were plunged into chaos,

the pound hit a record low
against the dollar,

and the Bank of England was forced to step
in to prevent pension funds collapsing.

Making matters even worse, Truss then
disappeared from public view for days,

to the point that one British
newspaper ran with the front page,

"Missing: Have You Seen This PM?"

And all this was such a fiasco,

members of her own party were
complaining to journalists about her.

An awful lot of Tory MPs are going
'round and using words like

"reckless" and "madness" today.

Another back bench MP,
"I'm shell-shocked."

Another senior Tory back-bencher,

"I thought Boris Johnson's cabinet
the worst in history,

that one's just beaten it."

This person is saying, "People",
that's conservative Mps, "are now asking,

'How do we get rid of her?'"

Just received… I'll have to be…
have to tiptoe around this,

but we're just hearing from a former Tory
minister and conservative MP saying,

"Liz is… " I can't use the word.
"She is…" same word again.

Wow. And remember:
she took office less than a month ago!

The only people who experience
a shorter honeymoon period than that

are praying mantises.

But I'm honestly intrigued by this anchor

reading her texts aloud
in the middle of a broadcast.

I really hope she does that all the time.

"I just received a text here,
it's from my friend Danielle.

'Do you want to go
seeBullet Train tomorrow?

Me and Peter are going,
we might invite Trish,

even though she's a bit of a…
No, can't say that word."

This has been a truly spectacular
start to the Liz Truss era,

as she's somehow managed to throw
the UK market into turmoil,

disappear, and enrage her own party,
all in less than a month.

It is genuinely hard to put the scale
of what she just did into words…

sadly, because all the words
that actually apply

apparently can't be said
on television.

And now, this.

And Now:

Shopping Networks Recognize
Queen Elizabeth's Death

the Only Way They Know How.

And I know this is such a hard time
because our…

the beautiful Queen Elizabeth
just passed,

but she actually wore Clarks,
and her sister, on a trip to Africa

and this is, like,
elegant and timeless, just like her.

What's so wonderful,
over the last few weeks,

because of the passing of the Queen,

how we have kind of returned
to the look of diamonds.

Look how rich that purple is.
Isn't that rich?

You know, we're thinking about
the Queen right now in England

and I think what's so gorgeous,
when you look at this royal purple,

there is an elegance to this.

Did you see that thing
about Queen Elizabeth II?

She had someone who wore
her shoes before she wore them

because they broke them in, right?

And she never had an
uncomfortable shoe in her entire life.

Well, guess what, you do not need
someone to break these shoes in.

And, again,
it's got the lily of the valley,

which is our queen's favorite flower,
our late queen.

Moving on. Our main story
tonight concerns antiquities.

Basically,
relics from bygone times

that can tell us stories
about people from the past.

Like your nana, but less overtly r*cist.

Specifically, our story concerns what
happens when those relics go missing.

And I'll start by giving you
just one example:

if you go to Greece,
you might go to the Acropolis Museum.

And while you're marveling at sculptures
that are over two millennia old,

you might notice some odd details,
like this sculpture,

which appears to have a white foot,

or this one,
where someone's whole upper half

seems to be suddenly
and overwhelmingly white.

It's what's known in the art world
as season two ofThe Wire.

Well, there is an explanation
for where those missing pieces are.

And as a British person,
I'm a little bit implicated.

So, the darker stone is the original
whereas the white plaster,

that represents
what's in the British Museum.

Yes. Exactly.

And here it
is in the British Museum.

The missing marble head and chest
floating in a display space.

Yup! We took it.

Honestly, if you're ever
looking for a missing artifact,

nine times out of 10
it's in the British Museum.

It's basically
the world's largest lost and found,

with both "lost" and "found" in the
heaviest possible quotation marks there.

Specifically, those marbles known
in England as the Elgin Marbles

were taken by Lord Elgin,
a 19th-century British lord

who hacked them off the Parthenon.

It's something that the Greeks
are understandably furious about.

Because they weren't lost,
they were taken. Which is clearly worse.

It's like being unable to find
the last puzzle piece,

and learning that
you didn't actually misplace it,

a British earl
snuck into your house, stole it,

and then sold it to a museum
over 1,000 miles away.

Greece has been demanding the return
of the "Elgin Marbles" for decades now,

but the response from some of the
British Museum's defenders has been,

even by British standards,
unbelievably patronizing.

One can't even think about returning
the Elgin Marbles to Athens

until the Greeks start caring
for what they already have.

I'm sure they'd take great care
of the Parthenon sculptures

if they were returned.

But if you knew a woman was abusing her
child, you wouldn't let her adopt another.

And that's what the Greeks
are asking for.

What?
That is not a great comparison,

especially because it omits the fact that
the "woman's child" in this example

was basically kidnapped.

So, it's less a woman
asking to adopt another child

than it is her demanding
the return of her first one.

And look, the Parthenon Marbles should
absolutely be returned to Greece.

Even that woman you just saw now
says that she thinks they should go back.

But those marbles are just
the tip of the iceberg here.

The fact is, antiquities,
largely from the Global South,

which includes Latin America,
Africa, Asia, and the Mideast,

have been taken and enshrined
in European and American museums

on a much larger scale
than you may realize.

In 2018, a report commissioned
by the French president

found that over 90%
of all Africa's cultural heritage

is held outside Africa
by major museums.

But as the voices arguing for antiquities
to be returned are getting louder,

others are resisting any change.

In 2010, when asked whether the UK

would ever return
the Koh-I-Noor diamond to India,

Prime Minister David
Cameron refused, saying,

"If you say yes to one, you suddenly find
the British Museum would be empty."

Which is incredibly frustrating,

and it's frankly no wonder that some are
now taking matters into their own hands.

In June, a Congolese activist removed
a 19th century Chadian funeral pole

from the Quai Branly Museum
in Paris as part of a protest campaign

against plundering
during the colonial era.

Yeah! That happened.

And obviously, that man was unaware
of the museum's very clear policy,

"No stealing African antiquities,
starting now."

So, given just how many antiquities

in some of the world's most prestigious
museums are essentially stolen goods,

tonight, let's talk about museums.

And this is going to be
a larger story than normal,

and we're going to do it
in two main parts.

First, concerning how antiquities
ended up in museums in the past,

and then about the thriving
modern market

that keeps them supplied
with objects to this very day.

And look, we don't have time to recap
the entire history of colonialism

and the plunder of antiquities.

There are so, so many stolen artifacts
that we could talk about tonight,

from the treasures of Tipu Sultan,
to the Zodiac of Dendera.

But in order to say a lot in a little,
let's stay with the British Museum.

In its own promotional materials,
it makes a big feature

of just how important and
influential its founding was.

In January 1759,
the British Museum opened its doors,

the first national public museum
of the world.

Initially, the objects were based on the
founding collection of Sir Hans Sloane.

And this is Hans Sloane,
scholar, entrepreneur,

physician, who was connected
with the best minds of his time.

In fact, our collection has always
been about connecting people.

Okay, first, I'm going to say
what we're all thinking:

that guy has definitely Googled "could
Night at the Museum actually happen?"

Not because he's scared
of a big bony dinosaur chasing him,

but because when no one is around,
he definitely fucks the art

and he definitely doesn't
want any of it talking.

But that notion of museums as a place for
people to connect with our shared history,

and with cultures all over the world,
clearly isn't fundamentally bad.

But it's also not wholly representative

of the actual history
of how many museums came to be.

For instance, Hans Sloane,
who on his best day, looked like that,

had some
interesting connections of his own.

Specifically,
the fact that he was married

to an "heiress to sugar plantations in
Jamaica worked by enslaved people,"

and bought many objects
in his collection with that wealth.

Meaning that the museum's
very foundations

are inextricably tied up
in sl*very and colonialism,

with the same being true
of many of its most prized holdings.

Take the Benin Bronzes. It's a term that
"refers to a huge range of objects"

produced in the Kingdom of Benin, which
is currently part of modern-day Nigeria.

The Benin Bronzes were looted from the
palace of the King of Benin, or the Oba,

in 1897, after the British m*llitary
invaded and violently toppled him.

That mission was vindictive
and it was destructive,

but it was
also extremely targeted.

The British soldiers,
armed with machine g*ns,

conquered the city,
and b*rned it to the ground.

But not before carefully
taking thousands of artifacts.

They piled them up neatly,
photographed them,

and even labeled them "loot".

This photo, taken at the
Benin Palace after the raid,

shows soldiers with the dismantled plaques
that were brought to the British Museum,

and sold all over the world.

Okay, first, that's obviously awful.
But second, it is pretty remarkable

that a British soldier went to the trouble
of labeling each of those photos,

and the captions he used
were "loot" and "more loot."

At the very least, he could've chosen
something more descriptive,

like, I don't know, "Dan, Terry,
and I after doing cultural genocide."

But the looting of the Benin Bronzes
wasn't just a physical loss,

it was a cultural
and historical one.

Take these plaques.
They are not just pieces of art.

They're something much more important,

as this member
of the Benin royal family explained.

Those things are like our own diaries.

Whatever was significant,

the Oba would tell the Guild
of Bronze casters to cast it in bronze.

To keep a record.

So, taking them away

was like yanking off pages of our history.

Right. For that kingdom, these were
their memories made physical.

And these plaques were laid
out in a very specific order,

which was then lost when the British tore
them from the palace walls.

Meaning that the British, in effect,
stole and scrambled a nation's memories,

a crime so f*cked up, even
Black Mirror hasn't thought of it yet.

The bronzes are currently scattered

among 161 museums and institutions
around the world,

with only nine such institutions
located in Nigeria.

And understandably, there've been
calls for the return of the bronzes

for decades now, and a handful
of museums have complied,

but the British Museum,
which holds more bronzes than anyone,

has repeatedly refused, pointing to
the British Museum Act of 1963,

which explicitly forbids it from
giving an item in its collection away,

with very limited exceptions.

And the thing is, that law does exist. But
laws can also be changed if you want to.

And the more you hear
British officials talk,

the clearer it becomes that
that is not what they want at all.

Well, I think that they properly
reside in the British Museum.

The collections
of our great national institutions

have been developed
over many, many centuries,

in many times,
in questionable circumstances.

I think the question now is about what we
do with these. I love the Benin Bronzes.

I've seen them
many times throughout my life,

and I think them being
in the British Museum,

which is a world repository of heritage,
allows people to see it.

Yeah, that offensively English man
loves the Benin Bronzes.

And while I'm so glad that Oliver
James Dowden, MP for Hertsmere,

has seen them
"many times throughout his life."

The fact is, not everyone gets to do that,

as this Nigerian artist
and art historian will attest.



That was my first time
of seeing an original

ancient Benin artwork,

was, yes, at the British Museum.

To see, for the first time,
these objects

it was a mixture of pride

in the achievement
of these ancient artists,

and anger mixed with a sense of loss.

Most Nigerians will never see them.

Exactly.

The generations of British children
who've grown up loving the Benin Bronzes

come at the expense of generations
of Nigerians who haven't.

And again, this is just one
example of so, so many.

And whenever the question
of returning stolen objects comes up,

there are usually a few stock responses,
which are worth quickly addressing.

The first is, basically, that these were
acquired in a different time,

and you can't judge the present
by the standards of the past.

When France was recently roiled by a
debate over whether to return African art,

this catastrophically French art historian
basically made that exact case.

These artifacts, who do they belong to?

They belong to the
museums where they are now.

Because there are
laws, you know,

and if, even for the artifacts
which were looted in the 19th century,

in the 19th century of the w*r,

there was laws,
and the looting of w*r was legal.

Maybe it's not moral, but it's legal.

And if you want to come back on this,

why don't you come back,


You cannot stop.
You don't know where to stop.

Okay. So, how do I explain this
so that that man will understand?

"Yes, there may not have been 'lows'
explicitly making looting illegal,

but the idea that gives you carte
blanche is, how you say, horseshit."

And setting aside that Didier Rykner,

the looting-apologist art historian
seems less like a real person

and more like a character in "Tintin: How
We Saved the Egyptians from Themselves,"

the fact is, looting wasn't just

an acceptable, unavoidable
by-product of w*r under "ze low."

It was sometimes baked
into the plan from the outset.

In fact, during one notorious British raid
in Northern Ethiopia in 1868,

the Army "even brought along an expert
from the British Museum

to bid for some of the choicest items."

And importantly, people knew the
practice was wrong even back then.

After that raid on Ethiopia,
the British prime minister said

he "deeply lamented, for the sake of the
country and for the sake of all concerned,

that these articles were thought fit to be
brought away by a British army."

And urged that they "be held only
until they could be restored."

And he was saying that in 1868!

We didn't even know how to fix a UTI
without leeches back then.

But we knew that raiding other countries
for their sh*t was "deeply lamentable,"

which is British for "super f*cked up."

Now, the second common argument
is that objects are actually safer

under the care of Western institutions
than they would be in their home country.

Here is that case being made by
an art dealer,

regarding pre-Colombian art from Peru.

According to the law,

which I think like
to think of as Solomon's Law,

the one who loves the baby best
gets the baby,

the one who will pay the most
for the baby gets the baby.

If Peru cannot properly take care
of its national treasures,

the rest of the world will take care of it
for the Peruvians, as it should be.

That man seems great. But you
know what? You know what? He is right.

It's exactly as King Solomon
famously declared,

"The real mother is whoever agrees

to offer 200,000 over the asking price,
all cash, inspection waived."

But that argument,

"You can't be trusted with your own
property, you'll just damage it,"

is hard to land, even before you learn

that the caretaking record
of some museums is mixed at best.

Remember that woman insisting

that the Greeks couldn't possibly
take care of the Parthenon Marbles?

Here is a fun fact.

Multiple leaks have been reported in the
British Museum's Greek galleries,

and in the 1930s, in what
museum officials later admitted was

a "heavy handed" attempt to clean the
sculptures, they actively damaged them

by scrubbing them with wire brushes
and a harsh cleaning agent.

And look, even under Solomon's Law,
"Whoever loves the baby gets the baby,

but if you scrub the baby with wire
brushes, we take the f*cking baby away."

And the final argument that you hear

is that these museums are an open
repository of the world's treasures

and can actually increase the number
of people who can enjoy them.

But you've already seen
someone point out

that that is only true if you
can get to the museum in question.

And also, it's worth noting
that most display

only a tiny fraction
of their collections.

The British Museum, for instance,
has a collection of eight million objects,

although only around 80,000 of them, just


And it can be pretty galling for
people to find that their heritage,

which is often part
of a vibrant present-day culture

is sitting in storage in the British
Museum's underground loot prison.

Here in the U.S., we've stashed away
many Native American artifacts.

And just watch as members of the Eastern
Shoshone and Northern Arapahoe tribes

are allowed to visit artifacts
in storage at Chicago's Field Museum.

So, just beyond here
is the storeroom

where we'll be looking at
some of the artifacts.

Anthropology Collections Ahead

When I think about objects
that belong to tribal members

that are just sitting there in the dark,

I felt angry.
And I felt sad.

You just walk in and there is just like,

rows and rows
and rows of all these objects.

They've been boxed away
since they were collected.

Nobody can see them,
touch them, be around them.

That is devastating.
And it gets a lot harder to pretend

that these objects are fulfilling a
mission of educating and connecting people

when they're in a basement in
a box labeled with a f*cking Sharpie.

And at this point,
you may well be thinking,

"We shouldn't have taken those objects
in the past. But now we know better."

But you should know,
this practice is still very much going on.

Which brings us to the second big part of
our story: the modern antiquities market.

Because items are still being bought,
sold, and donated all the time

between private individuals, museums,
dealers, and auction houses.

And when it comes to those items, the
key word to understand is provenance.

Basically, the full history of an object
and the path it took to end up here.

Because not every piece
is like those famous Benin Bronzes,

where it is clear from our
history books who took them.

For most items, research into
provenance is absolutely critical.

It's not just how you know
whether an item is real or fake,

but also whether or not
it got to you legally.

The auction house Sotheby's
even has a whole video on its website,

bragging about how much
it loves researching provenance,

even though it seems to view it
as less an ethical imperative

and more
as a pretty sweet marketing perk.

- So, provenance…
- That's my favorite part.

Provenance is the history
of ownership for a work.

- Since it was brought to life…
- Who that work of art had been made for.

Whose walls it's been hanging on.

How many different hands
has it passed through.

Who else has looked at it,
in some cases, who else has loved it.

Who wore it, when did she wear it, how did
she wear it, how often did she wear it?

For me, this is what we kind of live for,
is to get the great stories to tell.

And often the story of its ownership
can be just as interesting,

if not more interesting, than the artist.

Provenance is something that, in a way,
doesn't matter. And yet, and yet.

Yeah. And yet,
in another way, it really does.

And quick sidenote:
never in my life

has there been such an intimidatingly
bougie collection of people.

You can almost hear them saying,
"Actually, it's pronounced 'cwoissant'."

And while I do not doubt that Sotheby's
loves backstories that add luster

and, crucially, value
to the objects that they auction,

they, and many others,
seem much less interested

when those stories
uncover something seamier.

One gallery owner
who recently pled guilty

for her part in trafficking
looted antiquities

said that buying and selling objects
with vague or even no provenance

was so much the norm in the art market,
it was "a conspiracy of the willing."

And to see exactly
what that conspiracy can look like,

just look at one attempted sale

where Sotheby's ignored
some pretty glaring warning signs.

Three years ago, Cambodia learned that
Sotheby's Auction House in Manhattan

was attempting to sell a thousand-year-old
masterpiece for 3 million dollars,

the feet of which were still
at the temple in Cambodia.

Sotheby's was warned by the very expert
they hired to appraise the statute

that it was, quote,
"definitely stolen."

They knew the feet were still there.

Despite what their expert told them,

they decided
to put the statue on the front

of one of their more prominent
auction catalogs of the year.

Holy sh*t!
How did that conversation go?

The expert said,
"This is definitely stolen."

And Sotheby's said,
"Yeah, but it might not be, right?"

And the expert said, "No, it is stolen."
And Sotheby's said, "You're so funny."

And the expert said,
"I'm sorry, what?"

And Sotheby's said,
"Seriously, Jamie, you're too much!"

And the expert said,
"Thanks. But, again, it is stolen."

And Sotheby's said,
"Tell your mom I said hi."

And the expert said,
"My mom is actually dead."

And then they printed it on the cover.

Now, legally, I have to tell you,
Sotheby's insists they did nothing wrong

and that they conduct
extensive due diligence

before offering items up for auction.

But you should know,
in the case of that statue,

federal prosecutors
eventually intervened,

forcing Sotheby's
to hand it over to Cambodia,

where it was eventually
happily reunited with its feet.

It's a real Cinderella story, isn't it?

If Cinderella had been
amputated at the ankle.

And interestingly, and to that point,

it is not uncommon
to see statues missing feet or hands.

And while you might assume
that it's damage due to time,

it's often a sign that it has been stolen,

with looters or thieves sawing off heads
to sell separately

or hacking a sculpture
out from a temple wall so rapidly

that they leave the feet behind.

And if I know this, and you now know this,
then Sotheby's definitely f*cking did.

And, again, this is why provenance
research is so vitally important.

But many buyers
fail to do even the bare minimum,

meaning that the demand for stolen goods
will always be met by a steady supply.

Just watch as a dealer in
Nepalese artifacts, Deepak Shakya,

basically walks someone through just
how easy it can be to get paperwork

to justify removing an object
from the country.

By law, the country's department
of archeology cannot issue export papers

on items more than 100 years old.

But Deepak says he has a tried
and proven way.

So, government, no problem getting
these out?

No. We have to give some money
under the table, but otherwise no problem.

Okay.

I mean, it's not legal.

But still, I mean, we can get this done,
it's no problem.

Okay, that is way too easy.
I don't know how hard it should be

to illegally export
a culture's treasured antiquities,

but it should at least be harder
than find a guy who has a guy.

That man was later arrested
and charged,

presumably alarming any museums
with large collections from Nepal.

And just look what happened

when those documentary makers
sat down with a representative

from the Rubin Museum right here in
New York to ask a pretty basic question.

In Nepal, authorities recently arrested

a number of antique dealers.

Has the Rubin Museum
done any dealings

with Deepak Shakya
or his family, the Shakyas?

I don't think we should
answer that. I mean…

The museum's PR person intervenes.

We'd have to do a lot
of research to know that.

- Do you want to say that?
- Do you want us to get back to you?

That would be, yeah, that'd be good.

Okay, a pretty good rule, when you're
asked, "Do you work with art thieves?"

is that any answer that's not an
immediate "no" is instantly suspicious.

And while the Rubin later claimed that,
to their best knowledge,

they didn't have any connection to
Deepak Shakya, or any objects from him,

they did return these two objects
from their collection just this year,

that were very much stolen.

And the Nepalese group
that pressured them to do that

recently identified another object
that they say is stolen

which, you'll never guess,
just happens to be in the Rubin right now.

But don't worry, the Rubin told us
they're looking into that one now, too.

And I'm sure they'll get back to us.
After all, it's what they do.

And the thing is,
there are lots of dealers around

who use museums
to launder their reputations.

Take Subhash Kapoor.

He was once one of the leading sources
of Asian art for museums and collectors.

The Met currently has 86 objects
from him in its collection,

and even threw him
a private reception in 2009

after he donated dozens of Indian
drawings, which was a real win-win.

Because The Met got the drawings

and Kapoor got to tell people
that he had art in The Met,

and it's not like they would work
with a disreputable dealer, right?

But Kapoor was ultimately identified
as a prolific trafficker of stolen goods

and he didn't even bother coming up
with good cover stories.

The most common one that he used

was that objects had come from
the family collection of his girlfriend.

And you might be thinking,

"That is so stupid it would
only work on a group of real ding-dongs."

To which I'd say,
"You're absolutely right.

It seems to have worked
on The Met 86 times."

And buying art without doing proper
provenance research

can blow up in a museum's face,
in spectacular fashion.

Take what happened a few years back
at The Met Gala. The year? 2018.

Kim Kardashian made an appearance
wearing head-to-toe Atelier Versace,

that was, notably, gold,
just like this guy, Nedjemankh,

or more specifically, his coffin,
which The Met had recently acquired.

Guys, a photo op of the
two of them had to happen, didn't it?

Well, when it did,
the internet absolutely exploded.

But then, this happened.

The Metropolitan Museum
of Art New York receiving a tip

after Kim's photo
from The Met Gala went viral.

The Manhattan assistant district
attorney was emailed the photo

by an anonymous informant
in the Middle East,

saying he recognized the coffin
and knew it had been looted.

Museum officials saying they bought
the sarcophagus for 4 million dollars

from an art dealer in Paris in 2017
but were fooled by fake papers

saying it had been legitimately
exported decades ago.

Wow! Say what you like
about Kim Kardashian,

the woman has a real knack
for producing incredible images,

just by standing next to men
that look like they d*ed a long time ago.

Now, it turns out…

Nedjemankh's coffin had been stolen
during the Egyptian uprising in 2011.

And as the story unraveled,
it became very clear

the The Met should have been a lot more
suspicious when it was offered to them.

Because the red flags included
three conflicting ownership histories,

the involvement of known traffickers,
and a forged export license

that bore the stamp "Arab Republic of
Egypt" before the country used that name.

And that is too many red flags!

It'd be like if Madame Tussaud's
bought and displayed

a clearly alive James Spader.

Your only job was to make sure
this celebrity was wax,

how'd you f*ck this up so badly?

Let the man go home!

Now, The Met has since relinquished
the coffin and apologized to Egypt.

But a museum's approach
to provenance research cannot be

"do nothing until Kim Kardashian takes a
photograph in front of one of our objects

and we're humiliated
on the international stage."

This cannot be all her responsibility.
She's too busy revolutionizing shapewear!

And… and it's worth… it's worth
noting, in the last five years,

The Met has had no fewer
than nine search warrants ex*cuted on it,

resulting in 37 pieces being seized.

And none of this is a victimless crime.

Because the trafficking
of looted antiquities

has financed some
of the world's worst actors,

from the genocidal
Khmer Rouge in Cambodia

to the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria

and the harm also
extends to the personal level.

Because, again,
if I can impress one thing on you,

it's that when these objects
end up in the West,

we put them behind glass
and we call them art.

But in their home contexts,
they can be much more.

For instance, this stolen,
sacred statue was in a Dallas museum

until March of last year,
and when it was finally returned to Nepal,

it was immediately put back into
use for religious worship.

There is just a level of abject
callousness on display here,

which, to be fair, some institutions
are finally coming to terms with.

Take the University
of Aberdeen in Scotland.

It recently began reassessing
objects in its collection

and facing the grim realities
of what it had been holding onto,

like this glass sphere.

Now, the story behind
how it got to Aberdeen

is both fascinating
and completely horrifying.

This Hindu holy man had been challenged
to hold the glass sphere for 12 years

in order to obtain a beneficial afterlife.

He only managed eight.

Subsequently, we discovered that in the
anatomical collection of human skulls,

we have his skull.

Wow. Is that his head?
Let's have a look.

- Gosh.
- That's him.

Amazing and awful
at the same time, isn't it?

They're cremated, aren't they, Hindus?

- And he hasn't been cremated.
- No.

That's profoundly offensive,
isn't it?

And here we are
in the 21st century

and we still haven't put this person
to rest. God, that's terrible, isn't it?

Yeah. It is, and for
about 100 different reasons.

Because a head in a box
is less something you'd expect to find

at an academic institution, and more in
the basement of a f*cking serial k*ller.

And that's emblematic of so much here.
The fact that, for so long,

not only did no one see the significance
of that object to that man,

no one saw
that man as significant, period.

So, what can be done? Some institutions
like the University of Aberdeen

have been taking
this reckoning seriously.

They are beginning discussions
with a local Hindu temple

about what to do
with that man's remains.

They actually also had
a Benin Bronze,

which they repatriated late last year,
which is great.

But too often,
the reckoning only goes so far.

A few years ago,
the UK's National Army Museum

returned to Ethiopia a stolen lock of hair
belonging to an Ethiopian emperor

but took pains to point out that it was,
and I quote, "definitely not a precedent".

Look, the fact is, museums should be
getting asked hard questions

about every aspect of both their
acquisition process and their collections,

as part of a long-overdue conversation

about where their items came from,
and whether anyone wants them back.

Some countries
might even be willing

to loan items back out
to museums around the world,

but with a clear understanding
of who actually owns them.

The point is,
that conversation should be led

by the groups that those
items originally belonged to.

Because while, obviously,
museums should not be violating the law,

they shouldn't be violating
basic moral decency, either.

There is so much that we need to do

to reckon with the harms,
both past and present, of colonialism.

But this should really be the easy part.

And until such time as we genuinely
engage in that reckoning,

I'd actually like to present
a potential plan B.

Hi, I'm Kumail Nanjiani,

and I'm here to introduce you
to the Payback Museum,

the first public museum in the world
devoted to providing recourse to nations

who've been plundered of their
greatest treasures throughout history

by colonial dickheads.

This is a collection
that's all about disconnecting people,

specifically disconnecting
Western countries from their sh*t,

you know,
the way they did to everyone else.

Come on, I'll show you around.

Welcome to our Africa wing.

This is where there should be
Benin Bronzes,

the spectacular tablets that tell the
comprehensive story of a glorious kingdom.

But they were put in a bag, shaken,
and dumped out all over Europe

like a bunch of Scrabble letters, so until
we get them back, this room is home to…

one of the Stonehenge arches!

Yeah, Britain, you might've noticed
you're missing one.

We took it because you were
just leaving it out, letting it get wet.

I mean, look, there's like,
grass and sh*t on it.

And frankly,
we can't even think about returning it

until you start caring
for what you already have.

Honestly, I don't even like it.
I think Stonehenge sucks.

It's just big dumb rocks, but I don't want
to return them to spite you.

You having fun?
I am. Let's move on.

In our Latin America wing,
we wanted to feature a collection

of gorgeous ancient
Indigenous Peruvian textiles.

But they're all in a museum
in Philadelphia so instead, we have…

the Liberty Bell!

An early American example of
a f*cking bell, and we didn't stop there.

We also have Mount Rushmore.
To be more accurate, just the tip.

And to be more specific,
of George Washington's nose.

You might be thinking,

"Why are you depriving thousands
of bored schoolchildren

the sight of this oversize
schnoz and this f*cked-up dinger?"

Well, you know the rules, whoever
loves the baby best gets the baby.

And your baby's got got.

Now we've got something really special.

I'm thrilled to announce
the grand opening

of our brand-new
state of the art Asia wing,

where we are beyond proud to display

a number of priceless


Or at least we were.
Now we only have their feet.

So instead,
we got a couple things from France.

We got most of the Mona Lisa, overrated,
bunch of sh*t from Versailles,

Eugene Delacroix's
Liberty Leading the People,

which I swear we're gonna frame at some
point, or at least get some poster putty,

tack it onto a wall like in a college dorm
room next to a picture of Bob Marley.

You know what's fun?

The story of its ownership can be
just as interesting as the art itself.

Who's owned it, who's loved it,
who yelled, "Stop!"

as we ran out
of the museum with it…

if that's what happened,
which it definitely didn't

because we have
the papers saying, "It's fine."

See? Don't worry.
We followed all the "lows."

Now, if you come with me, our last stop is
where the real treasures are.

Here we are in the storeroom, where we
keep some of our most prized possessions,

items so valuable we know it's
morally indefensible for us to have them.

The good sh*t.

Every one of these boxes
here would blow your mind.

We've got loot, more loot…

Oh, this one's
very, very special.

In this box lies
three of Gerald Ford's ribs.

You wondering why do we
have three of Gerald Ford's ribs?

It's because we could not get four.

You're probably thinking,

"He hasn't been dead nearly long
enough for that to be okay."

And I say, "Oh, yeah? How long do you
have to be dead for it to be okay?"

I'm serious, give me a number
for how long after his death

it's okay to have a part of someone's body
sweating in the museum's hot storage?

So, if you're from one of the countries
that own this stuff, come, enjoy it!

Our museum is a world repository
so you can visit your stuff anytime,

between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM
and not on Mondays.

And I know you might want
some of this stuff back

and we would love to give it
back to you, but if we give it to you,

everyone else is going to line up and
suddenly this whole place is empty.

So, the answer is no.

It's all ours forever.

Mm, smells like payback.

Rib dust!

That's our show, thanks so much for
watching. See you next week, goodnight!

U KNOW WHAT

Delicious!