# The Object the Museum Does Not Own > One object in this archive was displayed under a British Museum number for 135 years before the Museum bought it, and the Museum's own record flags that first number as registered in error. > The Study - 2026-08-25 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-object-the-museum-does-not-own/ ## Key points - The British Museum's own record for the Portland Vase carries two numbers. The registration number is 1945,0927.1, the year it bought the vase. A second number, 1810,0609.1, is listed under additional identifiers with the parenthesis registered in error, because in 1810 the object was a deposit and not an acquisition. - That vase was on public display in the British Museum for 135 years before the Museum owned it, and for three of those years, between 1929 and 1932, it was withdrawn by its owner and offered at Christie's, where it failed to reach its reserve. - A loan number is visible on the label if you know to look for it. The National Gallery of Ireland catalogues Caravaggio's Taking of Christ as L.14702 and states in its credit line that the picture is on indefinite loan from the Jesuit Community at Leeson Street, an arrangement now in its thirty-third year. - A loan can end in a gift and the numbering does not change. The David Vases still carry the Percival David Foundation's own numbers, PDF,B.613 and PDF,B.614, although the British Museum's acquisition note records that the collection was on loan from 2009 and was gifted permanently by the Foundation's trustees in 2024. - The owner sometimes pays the running costs. The Archimedes Palimpsest was bought by an anonymous collector at Christie's on 29 October 1998 for two million dollars and deposited at the Walters Art Museum the following January, and the project that conserved and imaged it states that the work was funded by the owner. ## A number on a label is not a title deed ## The Portland Vase carried a British Museum number for 135 years before the Museum owned it ## An L, not an accession year ## A loan that ended in a gift, and a number that never changed ## The owner pays for the conservation ## A loan described as a gift to the American people ## Five arrangements, side by side ## How to read a credit line The label is written for a visitor and the record is written for a registrar, and only one of them is evidence. Where those two disagree the institution is almost never concealing anything, because the British Museum publishes the sentence that says it did not own the Portland Vase until 1945 and flags its own 1810 number as an error, and the National Gallery of Ireland puts an L on the front of its most famous picture. The failure is on the reading side, and it is repaired by treating custody and title as two fields rather than one. ## Questions **Does a museum own everything it displays?** No. Objects can be on loan, on deposit or on indefinite loan, and the arrangement is usually stated in the institution's own catalogue rather than on the wall. Caravaggio's Taking of Christ has hung in the National Gallery of Ireland since 1993 under the number L.14702 and is owned by the Jesuit Community at Leeson Street, Dublin. **What does an L before a museum number mean?** It marks a loan rather than an accession. Accession numbers normally begin with the year the object entered the collection, so a number whose prefix is a letter, or a collection code such as PDF for the Percival David Foundation, indicates that the object is catalogued outside the institution's own acquisition sequence. **How long was the Portland Vase in the British Museum before the Museum owned it?** A hundred and thirty-five years. The Museum's own acquisition note states that the vase was deposited on loan in 1810 and only bought in 1945, from the seventh Duke of Portland with funding from James Rose Vallentin. Its record also lists a number 1810,0609.1 under additional identifiers, marked registered in error. **Who owns the Archimedes Palimpsest?** An anonymous private collector who bought it at Christie's in New York on 29 October 1998 for two million dollars and deposited it at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in January 1999 for conservation, imaging and study. The Archimedes Palimpsest Project states that the work on it has been funded by the owner. **Should a provenance chain end at the museum that holds the object?** Only where title actually moved to that museum. Where the arrangement is a loan or a deposit, the last owner in the chain is the lender, and recording the holding institution as the terminal owner invents a transfer that did not happen. Check the credit field for a preposition: from names a lender, while purchased from and donated by record a change of title. ## Sources - [1] British Museum, collection record for the Portland Vase, registration number 1945,0927.1. Read directly in the Museum's own collection interface. Source for the acquisition date of 1945, the acquisition name naming the seventh Duke of Portland, the funder James Rose Vallentin, the acquisition note stating that the vase was deposited on loan in 1810 and only bought in 1945, and the additional identifier 1810,0609.1 marked registered in error. - [2] British Museum, collection record for one of the David Vases, museum and registration number PDF,B.613. Read directly. Source for the acquisition name donated by Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, the acquisition note recording the loan from 2009 and the permanent gift by the Foundation's trustees in 2024, the 1935 Sotheby's purchase for 360 pounds via Sparks, and the Room 95 display. - [3] National Gallery of Ireland, online collection, The Taking of Christ, object number L.14702. Read directly. Source for the credit line stating indefinite loan from the Jesuit Community, Leeson St., Dublin, acknowledging the generosity of the late Dr Marie Lea-Wilson, and for the 1993 date of the loan. - [4] The Archimedes Palimpsest Project, The History of the Archimedes Manuscript. Read directly. Source for the sale at Christie's New York at two in the afternoon on 29 October 1998 to an anonymous collector for two million dollars, for the deposit at the Walters Art Museum for conservation, imaging and study, and for the statement that the work has been funded by the owner. - [5] United States National Archives, press release nr08-71, Magna Carta Returns to Display at the National Archives, 2008. Read directly. Source for the purchase by David M. Rubenstein in 2007, for the statement that he has placed Magna Carta on loan to the National Archives as a gift to the American people, and for the return to display on 12 March 2008 in the West Rotunda Gallery. - [6] United States National Archives, press release nr10-112, 1297 Magna Carta on Loan to NARA to be Re-encased, 30 June 2010. Used for the joint re-encasement of the document by the Archives and its owner. - [7] Wikipedia, Portland Vase. Tertiary, used only for the withdrawal of the vase by the sixth Duke of Portland and its offer at Christie's between 1929 and 1932, where it failed to reach its reserve. The British Museum's own record does not mention this episode. To be replaced with a contemporaneous saleroom source. - [8] Iconotheca, records for caravaggio-the-taking-of-christ, the-portland-vase, david-vases-british-museum, archimedes-palimpsest and magna-carta-1297-perot-copy, read in full before this article was written.