Anna Reeve traces how Cypriot antiquities reached British museums in a CAARI lecture on 5 November

Dr Anna Reeve, Research Fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, will talk about how Cypriot antiquities came to sit in museums across Britain on Thursday 5 November 2026 at 7pm Cyprus time. Ancient Cyprus in UK museums: unexpected journeys, untold stories is the first of the Autumn Lectures 2026 at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) in Nicosia, which lists it on its events page.

What the talk covers

Reeve follows objects from the island to Britain along two kinds of route. Some left Cyprus in the luggage of the British who passed through or lived there: travellers, diplomats, colonial officials and their guests. Others moved inside Britain, between collectors, scholars, dealers, artists and institutions, and through the salerooms, before many came to rest in local museums, where they are still kept. CAARI's announcement says some of these collection histories are well known and much studied, while others are less expected, and that tracing them changes how today's museum holdings can be read.

How to attend

The lecture is held on Zoom. Those who register receive a confirmation email with the joining details. CAARI aims to hold its lectures in hybrid form, with an audience in its library at 11 Andrea Dimitriou Street, and asks anyone who wants a seat there to email librarian@caari.org.cy; if live events are not possible, the talk stays online only. All CAARI lectures are free and are later posted on the institute's YouTube channel.

The speaker's work

Reeve's doctoral thesis at the University of Leeds (2021) reconstructed how the Cypriot collection now held by Leeds Museums and Galleries was formed between 1870 and 1947, following the objects from Cyprus into the museum and through its changing displays [1]. Its starting point is Thomas Backhouse Sandwith, British Vice-Consul in Cyprus from 1865 to 1870, who dug around Dali with Robert Hamilton Lang in 1868. Sandwith sent antiquities to England for sale in 1870, the year they went on show at the Leeds Mechanics' Institute, and the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society bought them in 1875 [1].

Her current research widens the view to other British collections. One project, backed by the Association for Art History, studies the Cypriot pieces held at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery; another, on a Brotherton Fellowship from Leeds, looks at the antiquities collected by Irene Manton. She is also preparing a corpus of the Leeds Cypriot collection.

In 2025 she co-edited, with Thomas Kiely and Lindy Crewe, Empire and excavation: Critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878–1960, a volume of 23 papers on archaeology under British rule, including the export of excavated finds and their later movements [2]. Sidestone Press publishes it free to read online. CAARI and the British Museum earlier ran a joint webinar conference under the same title, and its sessions can be watched on CAARI's YouTube channel.