Sculptor Michael Rakowitz says he will give his fourth-plinth bull to Tate Modern if Iraq can share custody
Rakowitz said returning one of these treasures would help replace a 700BCdeliberately destroyed
by Islamic State fighters in a raid on Mosul Museum in 2015. Rakowitz’s proposal is expected to be on the agenda of a visit to London next month by Iraq’s new minister of culture, Ahmed Fakkak, when he is expected to be given a tour of the British Museum. In a letter to the British Museum, setting out his bargain, Rakowitz said: “As I pondered my gift to the nation of Great Britain, I began to fantasise that it could be attached to a second gift: the return of one of the British Museum’sThe letter went on: “Given all that has been destroyed in Iraq, and the intersection of that destruction with the west’s insatiable appetite for the objects of the east while not always, if ever, extending that concern to its people, this return of an original...
Rakowitz said the British Museum initially dismissed the idea when he first suggested it in 2020. He was told the museum had helped to produce replicas of the originals. Rakowitz said: “I thought to myself, this is fucking insane. Where’s the dignity of sending back these things that are basically a husk of the original.”
But since then other experts at the museum have been more sympathetic, Rakowitz claimed. He said: “I’ve had a generally good relationship with some of the people in the British Museum, who are not ventriloquised by the overall attitude that things can’t go back. The discussions and demands are about breaking through some of the language that protects these objects and institutions.”was also lobbying behind the scenes to try to make it happen.
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