Museums (generally those wanting to avoid repatriating artefacts in their collections) regularly talk about giving high quality replicas to the original communities that artefacts came from.

This example uses holographic technology – but, as with every time this issue crops up, if it is good enough for the original owners, then why isn’t it good enough for the current owners to keep the digital replica & return the original?

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 08:03 GMT, Thursday, 6 May 2010 09:03 UK
Hologram artefacts go on display at Llangollen museum

A museum is displaying holographic images of artefacts made using a new imaging technique pioneered in Wales.

The holograms and 3D computer images will be shown at the Llangollen Museum in Denbighshire.
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Vasiliki Savvidou-Mihalarea, an English teacher from Rhodes, has sent me a poem that she has written about the Elgin Marbles.

SILENT AWAITING

Marble pieces lie about
burdened with century- old dust
and great deeds of the past,
polished with sweat and labour
AWAIT the return of
their counterparts, lost and gone
to faraway lands.
Handicapped the Parthenon stands
with a bright amputated sun
casting its light, always bright
on this axed colossal cradle.
The great Greek spirit immortal,
hovers restlessly above, seeking
the pieces of this great monument.
The parade of life-depicting figures,
so elaborately carved on marble,
are now sad, a vehicle of the past
they have now become.
The pilgrims to the gentle spirit
stand in awe before the Parthenon
and a sudden sadness fills their heart
when they see the Temple
handicapped and so brutally attacked.

Vasiliki Savvidou-Mihalarea
Teacher of English
Translator/Interpreter
Rhodes, Greece.

On 8th – 9th July 2010, Manchester University’s Centre for Museology is organising a two day conference on Museums & Restitution.

For more details of the conference & to book a place on it, go to their website.

A provisional programme of the conference is also available to download.

From:
Centre for Museology

Museums and Restitution – International Conference
Museums and Restitution is a two-day international conference organised by the Centre for Museology and The Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester. The conference examines the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject.

Restitution is one of the most emotive and complex issues facing the museum world in the twenty first century. Its current high profile reflects changing global power relations and the increasingly vocal criticisms of the historical concentration of the world’s heritage in the museums of the West. The 2002 Declaration of the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, which was signed by the directors of eighteen of the world’s most prominent museums, pushed the subject to the forefront of debate as never before.
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