As a historian, many things enrage me. AI generated “historians” on YouTube is a big one, as is poorly cited research and sticking horns on Viking helmets. But I would take all of these and more over rich people buying up precious historic artefacts to keep in their homes or to accessorise with an outfit. The privatisation of history enrages me like nothing else.
One of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever discovered has been sold at Sotheby’s auction in New York for a record breaking $50.1m (£37.4m), the most ever paid for a dinosaur. We don’t know who bought it or what they intend to do with it. For all we know, they may intend to put the entire thing in a blender and snort it with their rich mates, and they would be perfectly entitled to do so if they felt like it.
Fossilised remains like this are regularly bought up by private collectors for astronomical sums of money, which means they are not accessible to scientists and researchers to study, let alone for plebs like us to look at. In fact, most fossils of Tyrannosaurus rex are now commercially or privately owned, rather than held in a public trust.
Perhaps their owners will lend them out to museums, or perhaps not. Either way, crucial research that helped us understand our shared past is no longer possible. Scientists cannot run tests to determine how the animals lived and died, or what ecosystem it existed within. All gone, but at least some crypto-billionaire gets a quirky talking point in his summer home in the Hamptons, right?
“Look, darling! I privatised the cretaceous period!”
It seems like buying up the past is de rigueur for the mega wealthy at the moment. In the same week as the public said farewell to any chance of seeing a high-quality T-Rex skeleton, actress Zendaya caught heat for wearing 3,000-year-old Iranian gold medallions as earrings to promote The Odyssey.
Like most celebrities wearing jewellery on the red carpet, Zendaya was loaned these earrings, in this case from Barron London, a gallery and dealer, for the event. The earrings were made by London jeweller, Glenn Spiro, who turns historical artefacts into jewellery for his mega rich clients. How cute!
Whether buying or loaning, this is showcasing the privatisation of historic artefacts. Why is something that significant dangling from Zendaya’s lugholes on the red carpet?
Historic treasures were often looted back in the 19th century when Europeans marched off around the world and helped themselves to whatever they fancied. I hate to get all Indiana Jones about this but historical artefacts belong in a museum in their country of origin, not hoarded by the mega rich to turn into a “look”. It’s grotesque.
As well as Iranian pendants, Spiro also boasts about working with gold from Côte d’Ivoire’s Baoulé tribe and Colombian emeralds. All ethically sourced, right Spiro? Right?? In a 2025 interview the acclaimed jeweller said: “You can wear something around your neck that dates back thousands of years but is still contemporary and cool.” He explained his work is “a dialogue among history, faraway cultures, symbolism, and gems”.
Do you know what else is a dialogue among history, faraway cultures, symbolism, and gems? A sodding museum!
And it’s not just Zendaya who is wearing items like this on the red carpet. Anne Hathaway wore a Bulgari watch set with an ancient Roman coin alongside Zendaya at The Odyssey premiere. Margot Robbie wore the controversial Taj Mahal diamond as a necklace to the premiere of Wuthering Heights. (The diamond was most likely looted from the Mughal treasury during the 1739 sack of Delhi and then sold to a private collector in the West.)
The 2022 Met Gala saw Kim Kardashian wedge herself into Marilyn Monroe’s iconic “happy birthday dress”, to rack up the clicks online. The irony of doing this at an event intending to raise funds for a museum that preserves historical garments is enough to make my head explode.
I was lucky enough to talk to one of the curators at the recent V&A exhibition on Marie Antoinette, and she told me that the office had received enquiries from celebrities asking if they could borrow one of the French queen’s dresses to wear to the Met Gala! Obviously, the answer was a resounding “absolutely not”, but just knowing that someone had the gall to even ask has rewired my brain chemistry.
It is just so colossally arrogant. How clueless and selfish do you have to be to not just hoard significant historical artefacts but to strip them of all historical context and wear them as a “vibe”? If I had the money, could I wear the Mona Lisa as a boob tube? Or repurpose Michelangelo’s David as a toilet roll holder?
As a historian, I hate the cold truth that if you have enough money, you don’t just own the present; you own everything that came before you, too. You can wear ancient cultures like a scarf and turn a T-Rex into a “feature”.
Of course, this appalling behaviour isn’t anything new. The rich have been stripping historical artefacts for their own private collections for as long as there has been history to pilfer from. In these conversations someone usually brings up the Parthenon Marbles, currently and controversially housed in the British Museum, but do you know how they ended up there?
In 1803, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin (1766-1841) and his young wife, Mary Nesbit, paid to remove the marbles from the Parthenon in Ottoman-controlled Athens to keep at his family home, Broomhall House in Fife. He wanted to redecorate his pile in the classical style and create a “Caledonian Parthenon”. That’s why! It wasn’t about preserving history or saving art. It was about interior design. In other words, more rich people nonsense. The marbles were only sold to the British government after a messy divorce left Elgin needing to raise some cash.
People rightly point to this as an example of the worst excesses of colonial looting, and I don’t see that much difference between the Elgins deciding to ramraid the Parthenon to decorate their living room and rich people paying millions to buy up fossilised remains or repurposing ancient artefacts as jewellery.
There are precious examples of the rich and famous using their money not to steal history from the public, but to give it back to them. In March, Norwegian footballer and super hunk Erling Haaland donated a rare 16th century book of Viking sagas to a library in Bryne so it can be accessed by the public. This year, Meryl Streep made a seven-figure financial donation to the National Women’s History Museum in Washington, and Oprah Winfrey has donated more than $16m (£12m) to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
This is how you use money to preserve history. If you want to decorate your home, buy a nice painting by a living artist who could use the rent money.
The past is the only thing we have that actually belongs to everyone. Let’s stop letting the people with the biggest bank accounts pretend they’re the only ones who get to touch it.
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