John: Our main story tonight concerns antiquities. Relics from bygone times John: What?
John: What? That’s not a great comparison, especially because it omits the
that can tell us stories about people from the past. Nana, but less overtly racist.
Specifically, our story concerns what happens when those relics go missing.
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 2 of The Wire.” Well, there’s 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.
John: Yeah! We took it. Honestly, if you’re ever looking for a missing artifact?
Nine times out of ten it’s in the British Museum. It’s basically the world’s largest
“lost & found”, with both “lost” and “found” in the heaviest possible quotation
marks. Specifically, those marbles — long 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 the Greeks are understandably furious
about. Because they weren’t lost, they were taken. Which is 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 a thousand 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.
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 Elgin Marbles should absolutely be returned to
Greece. Evan that woman you just saw, now says she thinks they should go
back. But those marbles are just the tip of the iceberg. 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 larger scale than you may realize. In 2018, a report
commissioned by the French president found that over ninety percent 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. 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.”
John: Yeah! 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. 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 day. And look —
we don’t have time to recap the entire history of colonialism and the plunder
of antiquities. There are so many stolen artifacts we could talk about — 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 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.
John: Okay, first, I’m going to say what we’re all thinking: that guy’s 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’s
around, he “definitely” fucks the art and 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 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 the museum’s very foundations are inextricably tied up in slavery and
colonialism, with the same being true of many of its most prized holdings. Take
the Benin Bronzes, 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 military invaded and violently toppled him. That
mission was vindictive and destructive — but also extremely targeted.
The British soldiers, armed with machine guns, conquered the city and burned
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.
John: Okay, first, that’s awful. But second: it’s pretty remarkable that a British
soldier went to the trouble of carefully labelling each of those photos, and the
captions he used were “loot” and “more loot.” At the very least, he could’ve
chosen something descriptive, like, “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’re 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 bronzecasters to cast it in bronze. To keep a record. So
taking them away was like yanking off pages of our history.
John: Right — for the people of Benin, 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 the British
in effect stole and scrambled a nation’s memories, a crime so fucked up,
even Black Mirror hasn’t thought of it yet. Now, the British Museum still holds
more bronzes than anywhere else, but they’re all 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 has repeatedly refused, consistently 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’s 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.
John: 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.
1995. In London. That was my first time of seeing an original, uh, ancient
Benin artwork, was, yes, at a 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.
John: 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,
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 war, there was laws, and the looting of war 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, 19th century, 17th century, 16th century? You cannot
stop. You don’t know where to stop.
John: So. How do I explain this so that man will understand? “Yes, there may
not have been lows explicitly making looting illegal, but the idea that gives you
carte blanche is, “ow you say, “orseshit.” 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 byproduct of war “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.” He was saying that in 1868! We
didn’t even know how to fix a uti without leeches back then, but knew that
raiding other countries for their shit was “deeply lamentable’ which is British
for “super fucked 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’s 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.
John: He seems great. But he’s right — it’s exactly as King Solomon famously
declared: “the real mother is whoever agrees to offer 200 thousand over the
asking price all cash, inspection waived.” And the 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 the Greeks couldn’t possibly take care of the
Parthenon marbles? Here’s 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 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’s only true if you can get to the museum in question. 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, though
only around eighty thousand of them — one percent — are on public display
at any one time. 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 US, we’ve stashed
away many native American artifacts. 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. ♪ ♪ 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.
John: That’s devastating. And it gets a lot harder to pretend 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
be thinking, “well, obviously, 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’s clear from our history books who took them. For most items, research into
provenance is 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 less as an ethical
imperative and more as a 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.
John: and yet, in another way, it really does. And 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
don’t doubt Sotheby’s loves backstories that add luster and, crucially, value to
the objects 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, 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.
John: Holy shit. 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’s stolen.” And Sotheby’s said, “you’re so funny.” And
the expert said, “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 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, if Cinderella had been amputated at the ankle. And
interestingly, it’s not uncommon to see statues missing feet or hands. And
while you might assume it’s damage due to time, it’s often a sign it’s been
stolen, with looters or thieves sawing off heads to sell separately, or hacking
a sculpture out from a temple wall so rapidly, they leave the feet behind. And
if I know this, and you now know this, then Sotheby’s “definitely” fucking did.
And, again, this is why provenance research is so vitally important. But many
buyers fail to do even the bare minimum — meaning 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. I mean, we have to give some money under the table, but otherwise no
problem.
Okay.
I mean, it’s not legal-
Okay.
But still, I mean, we can get it done, it’s no problem.
John: Okay, that’s 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 museums with large collections from Nepal. Just look
what happened when those documentary makers sat down with a
representative from the Rubin Museum, 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.
I don’t-I mean, we would obviously look into our-you know, we’d have to do a
lot of research to know that.
Do you want to say that?
Do you want us to like, get back to you about it?
That would be, yeah, that’d be good.
John: 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”
stolen. And the Nepalese group that pressured them to do that, recently
identified another object they say is stolen which — you’ll never guess — just
happens to be in the Rubin right now. But don’t worry, they told us they’re
looking into that one now, too. And I’m sure they’ll get back to us. 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. Who 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. The Met got the drawings, and Kapoor got to tell people 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 he used was that objects had come from the family collection of
his girlfriend. And you might be thinking, “that’s so stupid it would only work
on a group of real ding dongs.” To which I’d say, “you’re 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 opp of the two of them had to
happen! It did, the internet 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 from an art dealer in Paris in 2017, but were fooled
by fake papers saying it had been legitimately exported decades ago.
John: Wow. Say what you want about Kim Kardashian — the woman has a
real knack for producing incredible images, just by standing next to men that
look like they died a long time ago. It turns out, Nedjemankh’s coffin had been
stolen during the Egyptian uprising in 2011. And as the story unraveled, it
became clear the Met should’ve 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’s 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 fuck this up so badly? Now, the Met’s since
relinquished the coffin and apologized to Egypt. But a museum’s approach to
provenance research can’t 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 can’t be her responsibility — she’s too busy
revolutionizing shapewear! And it’s worth noting: in the last five years the Met
has had no fewer than nine search warrants executed 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 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’s 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. The story
behind how it got to Aberdeen is both fascinating and 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?
That is, yeah.
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. 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.
No. No.
God, that’s terrible, isn’t it?
John: Yes, it is for about a hundred 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 serial killer. 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? Well,
some institutions like the University of Aberdeen have been taking this
reckoning seriously. They’re 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 “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 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 those
items originally belonged to. Because while obviously, museums shouldn’t be
violating the law, they shouldn’t be violating basic moral decency, either.
There is so much we need to do to reckon with the harms, past and present,
of colonialism. But this should be the easy part. And until such time as we
genuinely engage in that reckoning, I’d 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 have been plundered of their greatest treasures throughout history by
colonial dick heads. This is a collection all about disconnecting people,
specifically disconnecting western countries from their shit the way everyone
else — come on, I’ll show you around. Welcome to our Africa wing, this is
where there should Benin Bronzes, the spectacular tablets that tell the
comprehensive story of the glorious kingdom. But they were put in the back,
shaken and dumped out over Europe look 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 have noticed your missing one, we took it because
you were just leaving it out and getting it wet, and look, there’s grass and shit
on it. We won’t think about returning it until you start caring about what you
already have. Honestly, I don’t even like it, I think that Stonehenge sucks, they
are just rocks, I don’t want to return them to spite you. Are 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 are all at the
museum in Philadelphia, so instead we have… the Liberty Bell! An early
American example of a… f*cking bell. 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. [Laughter] You might be thinking
“why are you depriving thousands of bored schoolchildren the sight of this
oversized snoz and this fucked up dinger? Well, you know the rules, whoever
loves the baby best… gets the baby… and your babies got got.
Now we have 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 10th century religious statues… or at
least we were. Now we only have their feet. So instead we got a couple things
from France. Oh, we got most of the Mona Lisa overrated bunch of shit from
Versailles, Eugène 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 loved it, who you’ll stop as we ran out of the
museum with it — if that would happen, which it definitely didn’t because we
have the papers saying it’s fine. See, don’t worry, we followed all the laws…
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 shit. Every one of these boxes here will blow your mind.
We’ve got loot, more loot… oh, this one is very, very special. In this box lie
three of Gerald Ford’s ribs. You wonder why do we have them? Because we
cannot get four. You think 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? Give me a number how long after his death it’s okay to have part of his
body sweating in a museums hot storage. If you hear from one of the countries
who own this stuff, enjoy it. Our museum is a repository so you can visit your
stuff anytime between 9:00 a.m. At 4:00 p.m. And not on Mondays. 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. Smells like
payback. [Laughter] Or dust.