"FOR GENTLEMEN OF MATURE YEARS & SOUND MORALS": BODHISATTVA TARA IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM'S SECRET ROOM

Object of the Week | Caitlin McCurdy

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The centralization of Western sensibilities regarding sex when it comes to the treatment of non-Western artifacts is nothing new. When artifacts from one culture are usurped by another, the sensibilities of that new culture may cause some willful misinterpretations on the part of the interpreter, and the history of the usurped object becomes altered. This process is highlighted in the history of a statue of the Buddhist deity Tara, and its home in the British Museum’s Secretum, or as it is known by its more colloquial name, The British Museum Porn Room.

The statue is made of solid bronze, gilded in gold, and stands 143 cm high. It was made in the 7th-8th century AD in Sri Lanka. Her lower body is covered in a tight-fitting cloth knotted around the hips, her upper body is bare, revealing prominent breasts. It is this last detail that caused so much disruption upon its arrival at the British Museum. Despite Britain’s scandalization of her, Tara does not serve a sexual or erotic role in her original contexts in Medieval-era Buddhism. Tara is a spirit of generous compassion in Buddhism. Her origins can be traced to a Hindu mother goddess, eventually adopted by Buddhists. As a Bodhisattva, she guides worshippers along the spiritual path to enlightenment.

The Statue of Tara in it's current gallery at the British Museum. Source.

Tara was looted during the British annexation of Kandy in the early 19th century in Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon. The British Governor of Ceylon, Robert Brownrigg donated it to the British Museum in 1830, where it would remain in storage for several decades due to the statue’s nudity, considered unacceptable by British standards. She was described as “dangerously erotic and voluptuous” and the British Museum determined this statue to be too obscene and sexual for public display, and only allowed approved men to view it and other artifacts housed in the same room. Tara is not a sexual entity in Buddhism, yet that understanding is now embedded in her history due to her presence in the Secretum.

Postcard Depicting 19th century Kandy. Source.

The 19th century in England saw a rise in Victorian sexual hysteria where it was believed that to protect an impressionable public from moral decay, the “moral perils of erotica” must be kept from them, which lead to the establishment of the Obscene Publications Act in 1857. This line of thought emerged while Britain was looting and pillaging countries across the world, in which they often found objects they determined to be of an “obscene” nature, but yet served no such purpose. This evidently led to complications when the artifacts were returned to Britain and distributed amongst their museums. With this act in mind, the British Museum established their Secretum where objects seen as too obscene or perverse were displayed for the viewing pleasure of “gentlemen of mature years and sound morals.” Men who wished to view this room had to prove that they met the arbitrary requirements to do so. Women and men of lower classes were denied access.

British Museum, 1857. Source.

What is sexual culture? And who decides who has access to the perceived obscene? The regulation of sexual culture is well documented in British history, even well before the establishment of the Obscene Publications Act or the Secretum. Considering this with the development of museums during the 19th century in Britain, clear distinctions were being drawn between art, material culture, and the obscene. The people in power decide what is obscene and what can and cannot be seen. This is directly tied to what artifacts can be held in museums and the narratives we choose to present them with as we put them in exhibitions. By collecting certain objects in one spot that gentlemen believed were for their eyes only, the British Museum decontextualized and redefined objects they stole.

While the statue of Tara is now housed in the British Museum’s China & South Asia gallery, it was not originally defined by its own culture, but rather what the colonial powers perceived it to be. That the nudity of a colonized and racialized deity was considered dangerous and erotic by the same museum that displayed and revered the nudity of Greco-Roman statues for their artistry exemplifies the long lasting and engrained Victorian sensibilities of Britain’s most identifiable museum.