Columbia University’s Wallach Gallery in New York is hosting an exhibition of architecture & archaeology that relates to the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. Bernard Tschumi, the architect of the New Acropolis Museum was previously Dean of the School of Architecture at Columbia University.

From:
Columbia Spectator

New museum in Athens inspires exhibit at Wallach Gallery
“The New Acropolis Museum” incorporates architectural models, casts of classical Greek pottery and sculpture, and rare books and prints in Wallach Gallery.
By Kat Balkoski
Published Tuesday 10 November 2009 07:17pm EST.

“It is my profound belief that an exhibition in an educational institution should do more than please the eye and present ‘originals,’” said Ioannis Mylonopoulos, a professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology and curator of “The New Acropolis Museum,” on view at the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.

The exhibit contains little in the way of what would traditionally be considered “fine art”—instead, it incorporates architectural models, casts of classical Greek pottery and sculpture, and rare books and prints from Columbia’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. This selection of media gives the impression that the exhibit is more focused on the work that goes into the creation of art spaces and art appreciation than on art itself.
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Egypt’s successes in regaining antiquities from abroad have increased in recent years. There is still a long way to go however, before all the cases listed by Egypt are resolved (or for that matter even seriously discussed).

From:
BBC news

Page last updated at 05:47 GMT, Wednesday, 11 November 2009
The quest to regain Egypt’s antiquities

Later this month Egyptian archaeologists will travel to the Louvre Museum in Paris to collect five ancient fresco fragments stolen from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the 1980s, but there are many other “stolen” antiquities which they also want back, reports the BBC’s Yolande Knell in Cairo.

One of the first artefacts that visitors see on entering the pink neoclassical facade of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is a fake.
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More coverage of Andrew Dismore’s bill to allow museums to over-ride their governing charters & return artefacts looted during the Nazi era.

From:
Hendon & Finchley Times

Looted artwork from the Second World War could be returned under new bill tabled by Hendon MP Andrew Dismore
12:31pm Tuesday 10th November 2009
By Kevin Bradford

A LAW allowing artwork looted by the Nazis to be returned to families is set for royal approval this week.

A number of historic items, which were taken by the regime from homes during the Second World War, are on display in galleries and museums in Britain, but are prevented by current laws from being handed back to those families.
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In addition to this site, for some time now it has been possible to follow Elginism on its associated Twitter feed & Facebook page. In an attempt to increase the multimedia aspects of the site, you can now also join Elginism’s Flickr photostream. At present the photostream consists of archive images – some of which I’ve already made available through other sources. In the coming months though I hope to further integrate these various aspects of the site so that they tie in more closely to the main site.

A youtube channel for Elginism will also be available soon.

View Elginism’s photostream on Flickr here.

Current photosets include:

• New Acropolis Museum opening.
• The Acropolis (including many areas not normally accessible to the public).
• Protest outside the British Museum (see original post for more details).

A follow-up to Professor Dimitrios Pantermalis’s lecture on the New Acropolis Museum organised by the Irish Museums Association.

From:
Heritage Key

Controversy Present and Absent: Dimitrios Pandermalis Introduces the New Acropolis Museum
Submitted by Brian Dolan on Thu, 11/19/2009 – 18:16

Thirty years in the making, the €130 million euro New Acropolis Museum is a stunning, if controversial, addition to Athen’s famous architectural landscape and at the same time a provocative statement of intent by the Greek people. In a fascinating talk in Dublin last night, Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, President of the new museum took an enthralled audience on a tour of the history, architecture and intentions of the spectacular building.

The talk, entitled ‘Collections Present and Absent at the New Acropolis Museum, Athens’ was hosted by the National Museum of Ireland, organised by the Irish Museums Association and was attended by the new Greek ambassador to Ireland, Her Excellency Ms. Constantina Zagorianou-Prifti.
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With cases involving artefacts with dubious provenance, every case is different & has to be handled differently. In this instance though it seems as though there may well not be a case at all. People do have to acept that like it or not, some artefacts have been acquired legitimately (or in this case, with no evidence to suggest otherwise). In many ways, people demanding that every artefact is returned to its country of origin merely serves to weaken the stronger more valid cases, along with spreading panic amongst museum directors.

Notwithstanding the above though – if auction houses always acted entirely reputably, then perhaps people wouldn’t be so quick to assume that they weren’t.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Chinese anger at sale of Qing Dynasty seal
China has reacted angrily to the sale of an 18th century Qing Dynasty seal by Sotheby’s in London.
By Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 9:31PM GMT 06 Nov 2009

The green jade seal, belonging to the emperor Qian Long (1736-1795) fetched £3.6 million, six times its estimate, at the auction on Wednesday following frantic bidding by eight competing collectors.

News of the sale was greeted with anger on the Chinese internet, where the country’s growing nationalism frequently finds its voice.
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As detailed before, the Press TV programme on Who really owns stolen and looted artefacts? has now been broadcast. Presented by Yvonne Ridley, guests on the panel included: Tim Schadla-Hall (Reader in Public Archaeology), Julian Radcliff (Chairman of the Art Loss Register), Dr Caroline Goodson (Birckbeck College, University of London) & Matthew Taylor (editor of Elginism.com).

Watch it online on the Press TV website, or view the embedded version below.

Various Australian MPs with Greek origins are campaigning to raise awareness of the campaign to reunify the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in Athens.

From
Hellenic News of America

AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS TAKE ACTION ON RETURN OF PARTHENON SCULPTURES

The annual meeting of the World Hellenic Inter-Parliamentary Association (WHIA – Oceania Region) in Perth resolved to increase public awareness of the issue of the return of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British Museum to Greece, said WHIA President, John Pandazopoulos MP.

Mr Pandazopoulos said that the opening of the new Acropolis Museum removes a major obstacle in Britain’s argument that there was no suitable venue to exhibit the famous sculptures.
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Andrew Dismore’s bill on looted art from the Holocaust now looks increasingly likely to become law – this is very significant for UK museums as like the Human Tissue Act before it, it opens up another hole in the anti-deaccessioning clauses that govern them, making clearer the need for a complete rethink of these issues rather than piecemeal legislation that only gets passed by sidestepping some of the other big issues.

From:
Totally Jewish

Fri, Nov 6, 2009
My Bid to Change the Law on Looted Art in the UK
Andrew Dismore

Once a year, Parliament is like the New Year sales, as we’re forced to queue for the remaining slots for Private Members Bills, after the best slots are taken by those who win the ballot.

So, early one evening a year ago, I unrolled my sleeping bag on the Public Bill Office’s floor to be first in line to table my proposed new laws the following morning. Against the odds, one of my Bills has got all the way through and will come into force in a couple of months time – the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Bill.
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The annual lecture of the Irish Museums Association is this year being presented by Dimitrios Pantermalis, director of the New Acropolis Museum, on the topic: Collections present and absent at the New Acropolis Museum.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday 18th November – further details below.

From:
Irish Museums Association

MUSEUM NEWS – IMA EVENTS
[…]

2009 (November) – IMA Annual Lecture: Held in memory of Dr James White. Collections present and absent at the New Acropolis Museum, Athens will be presented by Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis Director, New Acropolis Museum in the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology, Kildare Street, Dublin 2 on Wednesday 18 November 2009 at 6.30pm. See our poster for details, admission is free but booking is essential. To book a place contact Ms Carla Marrinan, IMA Administrator at +353-1-4120939 or office@irishmuseums.org

[…]

You can view the poster for the lecture here.

Next week’s episode of The Agenda, a programme presented by Yvonne Ridley on Press TV is on the subject of Treasure: Who really owns stolen and looted artefacts?. I am appearing on the show, along with three other guests, to discuss various aspects of this issue. The programme isn’t specifically about the Parthenon Sculptures, but covers them along with many other similar cases.

The programme is on Friday 13th at 19:05 GMT for 55 minutes. If you are in the UK, Press TV is available on Sky Channel 515. It should also be available on satellite or cable in most other English speaking countries.

You can watch the channel live online here. You can also watch it after the show has been broadcast on this archive page for the programme.

Zahi Hawass’s requests for the return of the bust of Nefertiti by Germany has generated large amounts of publicity, encouraging people to enter into discussion on why the artefacts is in Germany & whether it should be returned to Egypt.

From:
Christian Science Monitor

Germany: Time for Egypt’s Nefertiti bust to go home?
A German museum has a bust of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti as its centerpiece. But should Germany and other Western nations keep or return Egypt’s cultural artifacts?
By Isabelle de Pommereau | Correspondent 11.02.09

BERLIN – Queen Nefertiti, who lived 3,500 years ago, was a wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. In 1912, German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt found her on the banks of the River Nile – her bust that is, made of stucco and lime. Her new home became Berlin’s Neues Museum. But World War II annihilated the museum and the German Democratic Republic’s communist government let it decay.

This past October, seven decades later, Queen Nefertiti found her home again, as the centerpiece of a new, €200 million (about US$300 million) restored Neues Museum.
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