The Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies collected in the British Museum is the closest copy of the prestigious Chinese painting by Gu Kaizhi. It is one of the most famous collections of the museum. It was plundered from the court of the Qing Dynasty during the Siege of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900.
There are very few tri-colored Luohan statues of the Liao Dynasty in the world and those collected in the British Museum were stolen overseas from the Yixian County, Hebei Province.
The British Museum has refused to return the cultural relics over the years mainly on the grounds and basis of the British Museum Act, which was amended by the British Parliament in 1963 and basically prohibits the museum from returning any of its collections.
The British leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”
