British Museum is digitizing its entire collection in response to recent thefts | All of that scanning will cost over $12 million.::The British Museum is digitizing its entire collection of more than eight million pieces, at a total cost of over $12 million. This move was announced after the museum experienced a theft back in August.
Only 12 million? Sounds like a steal. The British museum has everything. That’s really good
Only 12 million? Sounds like a steal
I mean that’s like 12 million more than they paid for it…
It is the British museum after all
Now THAT was a steal
Very witty and original joke
If anyone wants more detail. The 2021/2022 capital expenditures for the British Museum totaled just over £25M. The digitization will take at least 5 years. So at worst a 10% increase per year in capital expenditures for them.
No kidding. It seems reckless that they haven’t done it yet.
The thefts weren’t recent, they started stealing that collection decades ago.
Higgs is suspected to have taken uncategorized items and selling them on the e-commerce website eBay. One item worth $64,000 was offered for online auction for as little as $51 and listings for artifacts from the museum’s collection appeared online as early as 2016, according to a report in the Telegraph.
The stealing I meant was the British Museum’s acquisition of the collection, but this too.
With all my respects if you repatriate them here in Mexico they will end up in some gangsters villa. The ministry of culture is weaker than their coked up limp dicks.
Oh well that’s a drag :(
Lol that was my first thought when I read this too. Nonetheless, there’s zero chance of any of the historical artifacts being repatriated to their countries of origin now. It’s a big loss.
So the museum famous for stealing its artifacts is complaining about said stuff being stolen from them?
Why is the cost a problem. 12 mill might be a lot of money for like, some guy, but the government is responsible for the artifacts and deal with national budgets in the trillions.
If they dont want to pay for security storage and backups, send the peices back to their countries of origin. Maybe they can find some way of protecting history, cause England sure doesn’t want the responsibility
After they’ve scanned it all will they be returning it to the countries they stole them from?
Of course not. People can’t be trusted to take care of their own historical artifacts. Britain will take better care of them. If they want to see it, they can just pay to fly across the world to see them. It’s surely better this way.
It’s not currently up to the British Museum; it’s up to Parliament. Repatriating artifacts is currently illegal under UK law.
We can’t do it because it’s against the law that we made that says it’s illegal.
Sure, but I don’t see any of the leadership at the museum advocating against that law.
Where have you checked?
Where should I check?
You could write them a letter and ask, I suppose?
It’s dishonest to say “I don’t see X” when you haven’t made any effort to look for X.
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$12 million - a bargain for digitizing the collection for eternity.
Why the fuck is anyone writing an article about $12M dollars?
Do people not understand what rich people make from passive investments? Literally just repurpose a single rich person’s passive investment and you can pay to digitize a library’s worth of artifacts every year for eternity.
Society is absolutely fucked in the head if anyone is allowed to build a yacht without getting crowbarred in the back of the calf while we’re considering whether or not “we can afford to pay” to preserve priceless historical artifacts.
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Thieves all the way down.
Cost of securing your intangibly and financially valuable physical assets for all time and ease of “sharing” losslessly with other museums?
Priceless.
A virtual version of the museum in 2029? What would be the point in going? I can look at a picture of a picture on the internet for free.
I get what you mean, like there’s definitely some stuff you can just look at a picture of it on the internet, but I guess for others it’s about the sense of space, connection, grouping, narrative, context etc that’s present with a well put together Museum or Gallery display.
Without all that, you’ve just got a car boot sale of random things - wheras the text, maps, illustrations, audio, video or 3d recreations etc that sits alongside - or simply the placement of things next to one another, or following through the room in a particular order is what really makes that stuff interesting.
It only took a couple hundred years for them to respond to all the theft they did? Better late than never I guess.
What does it cost? How much of their collection?
I just read it 3 times in the feed, first post title, then preview of link, then op comment :D
