Another British Museum is acting as a gatekeeper, but merely using objects in its stores for facile and demeaning guessing games:
Ashmolean Museum@AshmoleanMuseum It's MYSTERY OBJECT TIME! [emoticon] What do you think this could be? Wrong answers encouraged.
Oh how utterly droll, eh? Note that they do not give any indication of dimensions (no scale in photo) or material. This was followed by people making fatuous remarks, each of which the Ashmolean staff answered individually - having obviously a lot of free time at the moment. That is, apart from one:
Paul Barford@PortantIssues·11 g. W odpowiedzi do @AshmoleanMuseumIt seems to me with all the public debate (in the UK too) about repatriation of unethically-appropriated cultural property, there were more profitable lines of discussion with members of the British public that one could have used this object to initiate than making silly suggestions.* Note that only one of these comments included the idea that the museum in a far-off land should not be hanging on to something like this (probably looted from a grave) in order that their nationals can entertain themselves by making fun of it. Dumbdown culture at its very worst. And what valuable mind-expanding information did the museum impart at the end"
Jade ear ornament that you date no closer than 7 centuries, date of context lost on market. Bought (from whom?) in 1996, no provenance or collecting history on Museum website, no mention of documentation of legal export. Why are you doing this? Why is this in a UK museum at all? [followed by link 'Viet Nam News: Return looted artworks to the Vietnamese people']
Ashmolean Museum@AshmoleanMuseum·30 paźW odpowiedzi do @AshmoleanMuseum
We had so many guesses that this was a coat hanger that we started to second guess ourselves. It is not, in fact, a coat hanger, but an ear ornament! Otherwise known as 'lingling-o', these were often made from jade or nephrite and might have indicated the wearer's social status.
This of course is why we get people voting for Brexit. Reassuringly equally-inane comment, followed by Inane ("we are with you") comment sketchy label (followed by an exclamation mark) then three sketchy "facts", omitting to say which country/culture produced it, where and when. Most importantly how it got out of the country of origin and why, how it entered the UK and how it ended up in their stupid guessing game. Totally meaningless fluff.
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