Showing results 1 - 12 of 24 for the month of January, 2010.
January 31, 2010
Posted at 11:20 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles
On the BBC’s Desert Island Discs this morning was renowned Cambridge classicist, Mary Beard.
Those who have listened to this program before, will know that as well as the music, the guest also gets to choose a book & an object to take to their desert island with them. The object that Mary Beard said that she’d take with her was the Elgin Marbles. I wonder if she’d have any more success in borrowing these sculptures than the Greeks have had…
Listen to the full programme here. The Elgin Marbles are mentioned about five minutes before the end of the programme.
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Posted at 11:14 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum
The New Acropolis Museum which opened last year forms a gleaming new home to potentially house all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures.
From:
Los Angeles Times
A gleaming new showcase for the Acropolis
Athens finally has a place to display the hotly contested Elgin Marbles, plus statues, friezes and other artifacts from the ancient Greek site.
By Suzanne Muchnic
January 24, 2010
Reporting from Athens – For advocates of the repatriation of marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th century and long housed at the British Museum in London, the new Acropolis Museum is proof — at last — that Greece has a safe place to display the hotly contested artworks.
For Athenians who live and work near the Acropolis, the looming modern structure at the southeastern base of the hill is a mixed blessing. The $200-million, 226,000-square-foot museum has transformed the area of Makrygianni, boosting property values while dwarfing other buildings in the neighborhood.
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January 28, 2010
Posted at 2:04 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
More coverage & analysis of the continuing delays to the British Museum’s planned return of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran.
From:
Financial Times
Storm in a cylinder
Published: January 22 2010 22:44 | Last updated: January 22 2010 22:44
The row over the British Museum’s delay in honouring its agreement to lend a precious artefact to Iran is no more than a storm in a cylinder – but no less instructive for being confected.
The museum has held up the loan to Iran’s National Museum of the Cyrus Cylinder, a cuneiform document inscribed in clay in 539BC by Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, to commemorate his conquest of Babylon. The reason for the delay is the discovery of two fragments from the cylinder that could greatly elucidate its purpose.
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January 27, 2010
Posted at 2:03 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
Iran’s renewed irritation with the UK over the successive delays to the proposed loan of the Cyrus Cylinder is showing no sign of abating, as they continue to press ahead with plans to cease cooperation on other cultural issues. It is worth noting again, that Iran in the past has cooperated extensively with the British Museum – not least in the loan of artefacts to them for their recent Shah Abbas exhibition.
From:
Daily Telegraph
Iran threatens to sever links with UK in row over Cyrus Cylinder
By Heidi Blake
Published: 4:15PM GMT 21 Jan 2010
Iran has threatened to cut cultural ties with the UK after the British Museum refused to hand over a 23cm clay cylinder inscribed by Cyrus the Great, the Persian king.
The museum had promised to lend Iran the cylinder, thought to be inscribed with the first declaration of human rights, after borrowing several key works form Iranian museums for its exhibition on Shah Abbas, the Iranian emperor, last year.
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January 25, 2010
Posted at 1:58 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
More coverage of the discovery of new fragments of the Cyrus Cylinder & the delays that it is causing to the proposed loan of the artefact to Iran.
From:
The Art Newspaper
Major discovery delays Cyrus Cylinder loan to Iran
British Museum says the finding of related texts is “very significant” but Iranian cultural heritage head threatening to cut cultural ties to the UK
By Martin Bailey | Published online 20 Jan 10
The British Museum’s (BM) loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran has been delayed, because of a major discovery in London. Part of Cyrus the Great’s text has been found on two fragments of inscribed clay tablets.
The first fragment was identified on 31 December by Wilfred Lambert, a retired professor from Birmingham University, who was going through some of the 130,000 tablets at the museum. Although it had been seen by earlier scholars, no one had linked the text to the Cyrus Cylinder.
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January 22, 2010
Posted at 2:02 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
Following China’s plans to track down artefacts looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace, the first reports are now coming back of positive identifications of artefacts. What remains to be seen though is whether China is going to take any sort of action to retrieve any of them.
From:
China Daily
Experts track relics from old palace
By Lin Shujuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-19 07:47
Painting dates back to Song Dynasty in Boston Museum: expert
China has recovered significant records of the Old Summer Palace from a recent effort to trace and document relics taken from the garden that are now in foreign countries, a park official said yesterday.
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Posted at 1:31 pm in Similar cases
Along with international restitution claims, there are also many intra-national ones such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, where a local region wants artefacts returned that are typically in the country’s national museum many miles away.
From:
Western Mail (Wales)
Elgin Marbles tug-of-war repeated in Anglesey
Jan 18 2010 by Rhodri Clark, Western Mail
IT’S like the Elgin Marbles Part II – a geographical dispute about a priceless hoard of prehistoric treasure.
But this time international diplomacy is not involved – because the argument is between North and South Wales.
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January 21, 2010
Posted at 1:57 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
There has been quite a bit of coverage over Iran’s decision to block cultural events with the UK following the British Museum’s decision to further delay their planned loan of the Cyrus Cylinder.
From:
Fars News Agency
News number: 8810261670
19:10 | 2010-01-16
Official Warns British Museum against Delay in Sending Cyrus Cylinder to Iran
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Vice-President Hamid Baqaei on Saturday called on the British Museum to put an end to the delayed implementation of an agreement held earlier between the two sides and send the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran, warning that Tehran may drop all relations with the Museum in case the delay is prolonged any further.
“We are currently holding negotiations with the British Museum. We will cut all our cultural relations with the museum if we realize later that the British Museum has been wasting time and seeking excuses to shrug off our requests,” said Baqaei, who is also Head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO).
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Posted at 1:51 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
Following the latest delays to the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran, the country’s government is now threatening to break cultural connections with the UK in the hope that this will speed up resolution of the problem. The first step in this exercise is the cancellation of a British play that was due to be performed at a festival in Iran.
From:
Tehran Times
January 16, 2010
Iran threatens to cut cultural ties with Britain over Cyrus Cylinder loan
Tehran Times Culture Desk
TEHRAN — Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) director, who is also a vice president, said on Thursday that Iran would cut cultural ties with Britain if they cannot come to an agreement with the British Museum concerning the Cyrus Cylinder loan.
“We are currently talking to them about the issue and if the discussions produce the outcome that Britain doesn’t want to fulfill the previous agreement, undoubtedly, we will cut cultural ties with Britain due to our previous ultimatum,” Hamid Baqaii told the Persian service of IRNA.
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January 20, 2010
Posted at 2:10 pm in Acropolis, Elgin Marbles, Greece Archaeology, New Acropolis Museum
Anyone who read the first edition of Mary Beard’s book; The Parthenon, will be pleased to hear that a revised version of it is planned, which will take into account the fact that the New Acropolis Museum discussed in the first edition has now opened & is quite liked by the author.
From:
The Times Blogs
January 15, 2010
The “new” Parthenon, my new edition?
I wrote my little book on the Parthenon about a decade ago. It looked at the material of, and from, the temples in all its different locations — from the Acropolis itself to the diaspora of the Parthenon in London, Paris, Rome and Wurzburg and other places.
Things have changed a little since then. A small fragment of the Parthenon frieze (and I mean very small) has been sent “back” to Athens from Heidelberg (thanks, largely to a Greek then in the administration of the University of Heidelberg); another, slightly larger piece, has gone back from Palermo.
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Posted at 2:01 pm in Acropolis, Elgin Marbles, Greece Archaeology
A new website (http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr) has created a virtual representation of the surviving frieze fragments of the frieze of the Parthenon in a way that is easily accessible for anyone to view.
From:
Cordis
2010-01-14
The Parthenon Frieze
The Parthenon Frieze is presented in a new website (http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr) which utilizes new technologies to present and elevate cultural content online. This new application, which was carried out by The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism in collaboration with the National Documentation Centre (EKT), is valuable for specialists and the general public alike.
The Parthenon Frieze, a unique work of art, is presented in a new website (http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr) which utilizes new technologies to present and elevate cultural content online. This new application, which was carried out by The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism (YSMA-Acropolis Restoration Service, Department of Information and Education) in collaboration with the National Documentation Centre (EKT), is valuable for specialists and the general public alike.
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January 19, 2010
Posted at 10:04 pm in Elgin Marbles, Similar cases
As the appeal to keep the Staffordshire Hoard in the Midlands region continues, Dr David Starkey joins a growing list of supporters of this campaign all of whom claim that locating the artefacts near to where they were found gives them more of a sense of context – a historic resonance that they have wit their location. We should remember when this is mentioned that there are few cases where this contextual importance is as relevant as that of the Elgin Marbles – they were designed specifically for one location & many of them were in fact carved in-situ there.
From:
Birmingham Mail
Public appeal launched for Staffordshire Hoard fund
Jan 14 2010 by Edward Chadwick, Birmingham Mail
THE Midlands will miss out on a chance to purchase its own history if it fails to raise the cash to keep the Staffordshire Hoard in the region.
That is the view of the TV history expert Dr David Starkey who was in Birmingham to launch a public appeal to raise the remaining £2.8 million needed to secure the awe-inspiring Anglo Saxon treasure.
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