Returning colonial loot denies history, says V&A director

DECOLONISING Britain’s museums and giving back colonial spoils would be a denial of history, the director of the V&A has said.

While France is currently considering returning African artefacts to their rightful owners, Tristram Hunt said he does not believe Britain should follow suit.

“We’re having this debate at the moment: should we decolonise the museum? And if you decolonise the V&A, in a sense you decontextualise the institution. It’s almost ahistorical. To deny that moment would be, I think, historically wrong and inaccurate,” Hunt told the Cheltenham Literature Festival, as he discussed items from the East India Company, which now form part of the V&A’S collections.

“Because, in a sense, where does one stop? If empire has been an important part of people’s lives for centuries – be that the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire or the British Empire … to strip all of that away probably undermines the role of a museum today.”

During his talk, Hunt also reiterated calls for a “hotel tax” on tourists as a means of funding museum entry and said the V&A is exploring an airlinestyle system to vary the cost of tickets.