{"id":19781,"date":"2018-10-12T11:07:07","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T16:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=19781"},"modified":"2018-10-16T09:14:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T14:14:29","slug":"not-everything-was-looted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2018\/10\/12\/not-everything-was-looted\/","title":{"rendered":"Not everything was looted"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Your Humble Blogger hasn\u2019t posted in a while\u2014I haven\u2019t had much that was coherent to say, nor time to make anything incoherent into a note anyway. And I tend to post short links and wisecracks in Another Place, since they don\u2019t seem to fit in, here. But when I saw the headline Not everything was looted<\/a> on a story about the British Museum, after posting it I just kept writing.\r\n

Scene: interior, museum. FLACK is standing in front of a large display case of items from the Solomon Islands. Various HACKS with microphones, cameras, etc are gathered in front of her. Slightly to one side is a nervous-looking CURATOR.\r\n

FLACK: ...and so, in short, the British Museum wishes to emphasize that there is a range\u2014a broad range\u2014of contexts in which this material is collected.\r\n

HACK 1: So you are saying that the works in that case were not looted?\r\n

FLACK: There is a range of contexts.\r\n

HACK 2: So some of it was looted?\r\n

FLACK: There is a nuanced story behind the acquisition of all our materials.\r\n

HACK 3: How much of the stuff in that case would you say was looted?\r\n

FLACK: I think there is a broader context\u2014\r\n

HACK 3: Half?\r\n

FLACK: Certainly not half, and\u2014\r\n

[CURATOR approaches FLACK and whispers]\r\n

FLACK: Your interested readers can come to a lecture series, where there will be time for a fuller\u2014\r\n

HACK 2: So more than half?\r\n

FLACK: I don\u2019t feel that it\u2019s necessarily productive\u2014\r\n

HACK 1: Three quarters?\r\n

FLACK: No!\r\n

[CURATOR approaches FLACK and whispers]\r\n

FLACK: What?\r\n

[CURATOR whispers again]\r\n

FLACK (to CURATOR): Everything?\r\n

[CURATOR whispers again]\r\n

FLACK (to CURATOR): What about that other case?\r\n

[CURATOR whispers again]\r\n

FLACK (to CURATOR): And that room with the South Asian crap?\r\n

[CURATOR whispers again]\r\n

FLACK (to CURATOR): The _what_ massacre?\r\n

[CURATOR whispers again]\r\n

FLACK (to HACKS): Hey, look over there\u2014samurai armor!\r\n

[FLACK runs away]<\/blockquote>\r\n

And then I kept writing\u2026\r\n

SKETCH TWO:\r\n

Scene: interior, museum. FLACK is standing in front of a table with a cloth-covered box on it. HACKS again gathered in front of her. CURATOR is at FLACK\u2019s side.\r\n

FLACK: Now, there has been a lot of negativism about our Collected Histories project, and I would just like to make it clear that we have many, many items in our museum which are not, and I want to make this very clear, not looted. Here we have one example\u2014just one example\u2014of a magnificent work, really inspiring and informative work that we can assure the public was definitely not looted.\r\n

[CURATOR moves forward and removes cloth from box[\r\n

FLACK: Now, I know this may not fit with everyone\u2019s agenda, but the British Museum is the place that can tell the full, complex and nuanced history of wonderful items like this\u2026 \r\n

[FLACK looks at CURATOR. CURATOR shrugs.]\r\n

FLACK: This\u2026\r\n

[FLACK looks at CURATOR again. CURATOR shrugs again.]\r\n

FLACK: This truly fascinating object we are lucky to have before us today.\r\n

HACK 2: That\u2019s an exit sign.\r\n

[It is.]\r\n

FLACK: It is, yes.\r\n

HACK 1: An exit sign?\r\n

FLACK: You may not appreciate it, but the British Museum\u2019s brief is to put all the world into context, not just the elite so-called masterworks. We tell the world\u2019s story through objects both humble and exalted, sacred and everday.\r\n

HACK 3: No, but that\u2019s your exit sign.\r\n

FLACK: Indeed yes, the provenance on this item is impeccable and totally, totally without any improprieties of any kind.\r\n

HACK 1: You just took that off the wall.\r\n

FLACK: I beg your pardon?\r\n

HACK 1: Above that door over there, you just took that down.\r\n

FLACK: We at the British Museum are constantly rethinking our displays\u2014\r\n

HACK 3: No, but you just took that right off the wall and shoved it in a box.\r\n

FLACK: The important thing\u2014\r\n

HACK 2: You call that a treasure!\r\n

FLACK: The legitimate provenance\u2014\r\n

HACK 1: It\u2019s an exit sign, mate!\r\n

FLACK: Look over there, ancient graffiti with dirty jokes!<\/blockquote>\r\n

And then I realized I hadn\u2019t included the punchline yet:\r\n

Scene: exterior, a podium in front of the entrance to the British Museum. FLACK is at podium, with HACKS again gathered in front of her and CURATOR at her side.\r\n

FLACK: Today the British Museum is announcing a new\u2014\r\n

[KILLMONGER shoots FLACK and destroys entire museum]\r\n

CURATOR [shrugs]: It's a fair cop.<\/blockquote>\r\n

\u2026and\u2026 cut to commercial.\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger knows that the obvious casting is Tracey Ullman, and that John Cleese of course does that sort of thing very well, but perhaps would be even better with the great Meera Syal in the role. Adrian Scarborough plays the Curator, obviously.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19781"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19786,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19781\/revisions\/19786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}