Following the success of the last flyer distribution that he organised outside the British Museum, Lazaros Filippidis, from the Marbles Reunited campaign is organising a sizth distribution of flyers outside the British Museum to raise awareness for the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.

The flyer distribution will take place outside the British Museum on 2nd August at 13:00. People will meet for the event in Starbucks opposite the British Museum. If you want to join in, could you contact Lazaros through the details given on his website to let him know that you will be joining in.

Samples of the flyers that are going to be distributed can be seen here.

As mentioned before, this is a great way to assist the campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, which will only take up a couple of hours.

Photos of the previous event in early July can be viewed online here.

The British Museum is running out of time in which to return the Elgin Marbles before the New Acropolis Museum highlights the missing pieces for the whole world to see.

From:
Bloomberg News

Acropolis Museum Awaits Missing Body Parts, Held in London
By A. Craig Copetas
July 28 (Bloomberg)

At Athens’s New Acropolis Museum, the most popular exhibit is in London.

That absent art would be what the Greeks label the Parthenon Marbles, the British brand the Elgin Marbles and what the sculptor Greg Wyatt reckons are history’s most important and fought-over examples of priceless classical sculpture.
Read the rest of this entry »

The New Acropolis Museum in Athens is due to open imminently. Unfortunately though, there is still no sign of its star exhibits being there for the opening.

From:
Guardian

Acropolis now
Athens’s new museum is spectacular, even without its star exhibits. Kevin Rushby gets a sneak preview
Kevin Rushby, The Guardian, Saturday July 26 2008

Walking through bright sunshine and crowds of tourists in an Athenian street, I glanced down and read the publicity blurb in my hand. The story was there, contained in just a few words: “Museum mission: to house all the surviving antiquities from the Acropolis within a single museum of international stature.” Actually the entire story is distilled into one word: ALL. But they might have added that it has been a 207-year mission to return the so-called Elgin Marbles – the first being cut down from the Parthenon on July 31, 1801.

A little further up the road and both buildings are in sight: to my right, rising from a skirt of trees, is the knobbly hill of the Acropolis, crowned by the Parthenon; to my left, behind some low buildings, is the New Acropolis Museum. The international stature of the Parthenon requires no words, but does this new museum live up to the lofty ambition? And the big question: does it have the requisite stature even when ALL the antiquities are not present – because half of them are in London?
Read the rest of this entry »

The British Museum (& others) make much of the fact that they allow comparison of cultural artefacts from different parts of the world within close proximity to one another, allowing comparisons to be drawn. Is this really the only (or even best) method though & how much relevance does it actually have? In some situations, there are clear comparisons to be drawn, but in other cases, perceived similarities are more coincidental than they are indicators of a bigger unifying picture.

From:
Modern Ghana

IS AFRICA CLOSER TO OCEANIA THAN TO EUROPE? VISIT TO AN EXHIBITION ON AFRICAN AND OCEANIAN ARTS.
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Sun, 27 Jul 2008

“We Westerners are the ones who confer the quality of art to these objects. These statues should not return to Africa.” Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller (1)

Seldom have I been to an exhibition where almost everything seemed to have been so well-planned and very carefully considered as the exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, entitled, Afrique – Oceanie, Les chef-d’oeuvres de la collection Barbier-Mueller,19 March – 24 August 2008.
Read the rest of this entry »

New York’s Metropolitan Museum has no record of Nigerian art prior to the Benin Bronzes. Met Director Philippe de Montebello suggests that this is a problem brought about by the 1970 UNESCO convention on Cultural Property.

Kwame Opoku however suggests that perhaps this approach is glossing over the realities of the situation.

From:
CultureGrrl

Kwame Opoku, a tireless commentator on restitution issues (one of whose essays recently attracted a rejoinder on Afrikanet.info from Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello), responds to Michael Conforti Q&A About AAMD and Antiquities:

It is always interesting to hear from those whose work it is to keep records of the past achievements of mankind and society declaring that we must forget the past and look forward to the future. What they are saying is that there should be no archaeology of the acquisition practices of the past.
Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Dismore, a British MP is launching a new campaign this week for a change in the law that would allow major museums in the UK (such as the British Museum) to legally deaccession artefacts from their collections if they desired. The current impetus for this stems from the Feldmann case in 2005, although the implications affect many other cases too. Currently, the British Museum claims that even if they wanted to return the Elgin Marbles, the anti-deaccessioning clauses in their charter would prevent them from doing so.

From:
Totally Jewish

‘Change Law So Looted Art Can Be Returned’
by Simon Williams – Thursday 24th July 2008

Launching a new campaign this week, a Labour politician set his sights on changing the law to enable national museums and galleries whose collections include artworks stolen by the Nazis to return them to their rightful owners.

Hendon MP Andrew Dismore, who several years ago was among those who campaigned successfully for the establishment of the spoliation panel to help resolve disputes over stolen artefacts, is hoping that a drive which began recently with a series of parliamentary questions will conclude with new legislation later this year.
Read the rest of this entry »

Following successful progress of the current restoration programme on the Athenian acropolis, the decision has been made to undertake an additional phase of restoration work on the west facade of the building.

From:
Agence France Presse

Acropolis to undergo restoration from 2009
20 hours ago

ATHENS (AFP) — The world-famous Parthenon of the Athens Acropolis will undergo restoration work from 2009 that will see its western facade obscured by scaffolding for three years, officials said.

The work will mainly be focused on repairing damage caused by the Greek uprising against Ottoman rule in 1821, when the facade was damaged by around 700 bullet holes, architect Manolis Korres said.
Read the rest of this entry »

Dimitrios Pantermalis is the president of the Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum. He talks here about various aspects of the New Acropolis Museum.

Make sure to also watch the videos of his interview available in two parts here & here.

From:
Global Atlanta

New Acropolis Museum to Open in Fall After Monumental Move
Phil Bolton – Publisher
Atlanta – 07.23.08

The new Acropolis museum in Athens, Greece, is scheduled to open in September, marking the end of the monumental tasks of building a 270,000-square-foot structure on an earthquake prone site and then transferring 2,500-year-old antiquities into their new home.

Dimitrios Pandermalis, president of the new museum and an archaeologist who has been overseeing the project for years, told GlobalAtlanta in a filmed interview that when the museum is finally opened its anticipated 3 million annual visitors will have “a realistic idea” of what classicism is all about.
Read the rest of this entry »

One may be able to see the Codex Sinaiticus virtually reunited from today. This doesn’t solve the complex four way dispute over its ownership that continues behind the scenes though. The British Museum would do well to remember this case when suggesting that the issue of the Elgin Marbles can be solved by providing the Greeks with copies.

From:
The Times

From The Times
July 24, 2008
Ancient Bible with a murky past is on the path to a new era of clarity

The story of the Codex Sinaiticus Bible, the oldest complete copy of the New Testament in existence, reads like a script from an Indiana Jones film.

Ever since a German explorer controversially removed it from an Egyptian monastery, four countries have fought for control over the ancient manuscript.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Benin Bronzes are spread across many museums & institutions of the west – demand for their return grows though, as more people begin to understand how many of them were acquired.

From:
Afrikanet

NEWS FROM NIGERIA ON THE RECOVERY OF THE STOLEN BENIN ARTEFACTS
Written by Dr. Kwame Opoku
Wednesday, 23 July 2008

The information below indicates that the demand for the return of the Benin artefacts which the British looted in 1897 in the infamous Punitive Expedition of 1897 is growing. This increase interest is no doubt due to the discussion on the exhibition, Benin Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria’ now at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Read the rest of this entry »

One hears about many collaborative projects at their inception – all too often though interest dies out & the planned eventual result never appears publicly. In the case of the digitisation of the Codex Sinaiticus though, the project has progressed to the extent that much of the work will be available for viewing online later this week.

From:
Agence France Presse

One of world’s oldest Bibles to be put online
21st July 2008

BERLIN (AFP) — One of the world’s oldest Bibles, the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered in Egypt in the 19th century, is to be made available online this week, the Leipzig University library said Monday.

The Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from the fourth century, is one of the two most ancient copies of the entire Bible in Greek. The other is the Codex Vaticanus.
Read the rest of this entry »

Most people would acknowledge that culture is often very much aligned with political borders. James Cuno however would disagree that this is the case.

Kwame Opoku’s response to Cuno’s interview helps to outline the many inaccuracies in Cuno’s contentions.

From:
Spectator

‘Culture knows no political borders’
Tiffany Jenkins
Wednesday, 16th July 2008

Tiffany Jenkins talks to James Cuno about looting, exporting and owning antiquities

James Cuno is a busy man. I pin him down between two projects: promoting the new Modern Art Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, opening next year, where he is president and director, and the launch of his new book Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage (Princeton University Press, £14.95), which is provoking controversy on both sides of the Atlantic.

He was prompted to write it, he tells me, ‘as an intervention into the war, or should I say “discussion”, between museums, archaeologists and nation states, about who can acquire antiquities’.
Read the rest of this entry »