Snubbing ivory art won’t save elephants, says British Museum chief

The British Museum has accepted the donation of hundreds of ivory antiques, arguing that refusal “would not save an elephant’s life today”.

Hartwig Fischer, the museum’s director, defended the decision to accept more than 500 Chinese ivories collected about a century ago by Sir Victor Sassoon, a businessman.

Mr Fischer said that the objects were “artefacts of high cultural value that need to be preserved, not destroyed”.

“You can think of many cultures in India, China, Europe, Byzantium where ivory has played an important role to shape belief and social practices and yet we would never buy modern ivory,” he said. “That is totally out of the question.”



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