Britain’s leading museums are employing full-time staff to revisit their colonial-era collections, in a bid to acknowledge the controversies of where they came from.

Major institutions including the British Museum and V&A are working to reassess the provenance of some of their key objects brought to Britain from overseas under the Empire, to provide an honest assessment for visitors.

The collections have come under increasing pressure in recent years to acknowledge “stolen” items, facing calls to return star objects to their native countries.

The British Museum, which holds the Elgin marbles and Benin bronzes, has regularly emphasised the “great public benefit” of having such items on display in the context of its world collection, and its commitment to the safe-keeping of its treasures.

But, as a new generation of visitors demand answers, it, along with the V&A and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, has encouraged staff to look again at its labels.