Who's to say the British Museum are the best equipped to maintain the artifacts? Why would you expect an organization that acquired these artifacts through violence to be able to properly take care of them, or even understand their significance? In GP's example the British are literally committing blasphemy against one of the artifacts. And this is for an Ethiopian artifact, which belongs to arguably the same religious group as the British, and is from a region the British have been aware of for more than a thousand years.

> they would probably be tucked away far from public view

IIRC for most museums the vast majority of items aren't on display either because they're not suitable for public display or because there simply isn't enough space to display them.