The implementation of Section 47 of the Human Tissue Act 2004 has been covered extensively by the international press, although there has been surprisingly little about it in the British media. The following two articles cover a few details that were not in the previous post.

From:
artdaily.com

Friday, October 7, 2005
UK National Museums Get New Powers

LONDON, ENGLAD.-Nine national UK museums, including the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, have this week acquired powers to move human remains out of their collections as the Government brought section 47 of the Human Tissue Act 2004 into force.

The nine national museums listed in section 47 now have the power to move out of their collections human remains which are reasonably believed to be under 1,000 years in age. This means that these national museums can respond to claims for the return of human remains by indigenous communities.
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Section 47 of the Human Tissue Act 2004 came into force in the UK last week. Although most of the act deals with storage of human tissue by hospitals, this specific section covers a change in the law that gives nine specified museums the discretionary right to de-accession human remains in their collections if it is believed that these remains were less than one thousand years old at the time the act came into force. In short, museums will be allowed to return items such as Aboriginal remains to their place of origin, without being prevented from doing so by the Museum’s Act 1964, which this act now supersedes (where human remains are involved).
Whether or not any human remains are returned as a result of this change in the law remains to be seen. However, no longer can institutions avoid the issue by suggest that they would love to return the items if they were allowed to.
Gradually cases such as this, that of the Feldmann paintings & the Benevento Missal. are highlighting how flawed the Museums Act is in its anti de-accessioning provisions. Rather than tacking individual issues (human remains, Nazi looting) as they become a problem, surely the whole act needs to be reconsidered as a whole & rewritten in a way that is more appropriate for the values of today’s society?

From:
Sydney Morning Herald

UK museums to return Aboriginal remains
October 6, 2005 – 8:54PM

British museums have welcomed a change in law that is expected to lead to Aboriginal remains being returned from their collections to Australia.

Implementation of the 2004 Human Tissue Act will allow nine museums to repatriate remains, superseding the British Museums Act of 1964 which forbade such returns even if the museums believed the remains to be of little scientific value.
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The Welsh political party; Plaid Cymru has called for the Mold Golden Cape to be returned to Wales, rather than being held in the British Museum as it is at present.

From:
News Wales

Call to give golden treasure back to Wales
26/9/2005

Plaid Cymru called today for the permanent return to North Wales of a priceless Bronze Age relic – the Mold Golden Cape – as it is displayed in public for the first time in Wales.

The ceremonial solid gold cape was discovered by quarrymen in Mold in 1833, later purchased by the British Museum in London, and forms the centrepiece of an exhibition opening at Wrexham Borough Museum today.
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It is hard to overstate the impact that Lord Duven of Millbank had on the world of art dealing & collecting in the first half of the twentieth century. For many people however, his name is closely associated with the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, firstly with the gallery which takes his name & secondly for the controversial cleaning for which he was responsible.

Duveen: A Life in Art
Author: Meryle Secrest
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226744159

From:
Courier Journal (Louisville, Kentucky, USA)

Sunday, September 25, 2005
Book Review
The godfather of the modern art world
By Alfred R. Shands
Special to The Courier-Journal

We recently read about a Modigliani masterpiece that for many years was part of the Wendell Cherry art collection in Louisville, sold at auction for a cool $31 million. That event takes us directly back 60 years or more to Joseph Duveen, the most famous art dealer of all time, and the man who was godfather of the present day art world.

Duveen, with his practiced eye. incredible visual memory, charm and charisma (“like drinking champagne,” proclaimed an admirer) amassed a fortune selling expensive, top-of-the-line art to the rich. He was born in 1889 in England and died in 1939, just before the start of World War II. In that time, he selected and sold to the new-made American millionaires, the diamonds in the rough, like Mellon, Altman, Widener, Kress, Huntington, Morgan and Frick (to name just a few) hundreds and hundreds of Old Master paintings and decorative art pieces to help them achieve the aristocratic social status for which they longed. Read the rest of this entry »

Internationally renowned star of many action films, Jackie Chan speaks out about the injustice of items kept by the British Museum rather than in their countries of origin.
In an interview with the Malay Mail, the Hong Kong based actor stated “No one can go to another country and steal their national treasures and say that they are temporarily keeping them. They are actually claiming it as their own and this is a despicable act.” He went on to say “After watching my movie, the British Museum might decide to return all the exhibits from China back to its homeland. That would be great.” Both these statements are relating to the story behind his new film The Myth, but this is not the first time that Chan’s films have made references to artefacts from other cultures held in the museums of the west. A couple of examples that instantly spring to mind are Jui Kuen II (In The Legend of the Drunken Master) where there are scenes where The British are trying to steal Chinese artefacts to sell them to the British Museum. Around the World in 80 Days contains a scene where Chan takes a jade Buddha from the British Museum to return it to his village in China.

From:
Malay Mail (Malaysia)

Cover Story: Myth with a message
Chow Ee-Tan
Sept 16:
Hong Kong heavyweight Jackie Chan returns to the screen in ‘the myth’…, pens CHOW EE-TAN.

A JACKIE Chan movie is always entertaining and full of action. But hardly thought-provoking.

Perhaps he’s getting wiser as he gets older – in his latest movie The Myth, Chan has a message he wants the world to hear.
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A pair of articles here highlight an interesting aspect of international loans of artefacts by the British Museum. The British Museum has just arranged a groundbreaking deal with China to exchange artefacts between the two countries for temporary exhibitions. The question this raise though, is whether this agreement entered into by the British Museum is in some ways condoning China’s ongoing destruction of artefacts in Tibet. While the arrangement of cultural exchanges by the British Museum if in theory an admirable approach to introduce its collections to a wider audience, should it be arranging such exchanges with a country that has a record of continuing to destroy its own culture?

From:
The Guardian

London and Beijing to exchange archaeological treasures
John Ezard
Tuesday September 6, 2005
The Guardian

London and Beijing capped their status as Olympic cities yesterday by announcing an unprecedented exchange by loan of archaeological treasures over the next five years.

This could lead to one or more of China’s world-famous terracotta warriors going on show at the British Museum and to Chinese crowds having their first chance to see Egyptian mummies and cuneiform tablets from London.

The directors of the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, who are in China with Tony Blair, unveiled the exchange deals after two years of secret preparations.
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Scotland’s National Museum is opening its archives to allow the public a greater level of access to them than ever before. This is a very positive move, which puts this institution many steps ahead of the British Museum. If a museum is publicly funded (as most in Britain are) then surely all of their collection should be visible to the public?

From:
Scotland on Sunday

Museum to open Aladdin’s cave of treasures to the public in £4.6m project
WILLIAM LYONS
ARTS CORRESPONDENT

THE National Museum of Scotland is preparing to permanently throw open its doors to let the public discover its unseen collection.

Regarded by historians and scholars as one of the finest in the world, the collection is presently housed in a series of warehouses on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It contains more than three million objects and specimens from across the globe which, because of a lack of space, cannot be displayed in the museum.
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After many years of refusing the sign up to the treaty, the British Government finally decided last year to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention. This is an act, that is designed to protect valuable artefacts during wars & is in many ways a precursor to the later UNESCO conventions dealing with cultural property & its destruction / trafficking within a much wider scope.
If only we took as much care in preserving other countries culture in-situ, as we are in protecting our own.

From:
The Guardian

In case of war: nominations sought for list of cultural treasures to be saved at all costs
Owen Bowcott
Wednesday September 7, 2005
The Guardian

Ever considered saving for the day after Armageddon? That opportunity has now arrived. To preserve the nation’s heritage in the event of war, the government yesterday launched a consultation process.

Nominations for the country’s most valuable cultural treasures are being sought so they can be protected by a blue shield emblem – theoretically powerful enough to ward off marauding enemies.
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Amid extensive publicity, that has been building up in recent months, the British Museum’s latest exhibition Forgotten empire: The World of Ancient Persia will open next week.
The exhibition raises a number of interesting points about the operation of the museum & the creation of major exhibitions. Firstly, in exchange for the many artefacts that Iran is lending to the British Museum, the museum is lending the Cyrus Cylinder (possibly the earliest declaration of human rights) to Iran’s National Museum. A loan that conveniently skims over what the Cylinder is doing here in the first place.
Next, there is always the issue with temporary exhibitions of organisation & co-operation. For many people, these exhibitions are what keep them returning to the British Museum – to see something that they have not already seen. Not only this, but they are the one part of the museum that charges, so are potentially a major source of revenue for the museum. Read the rest of this entry »

The argument is often put forward that artefacts are safer in the British Museum than they would be in their countries of origin. This article looks at it from a different perspective though, where the larger a museum is, the more appeal it might have to terrorists as a relatively easy target – destroying parts of a culture. So are smaller regional museums or those for specific collections safer than the universal museum in today’s world?

From:
The Boston Globe

MICHAEL O’HARE
Are museums safe from terrorism?
By Michael O’Hare | August 27, 2005
THE MUSEUM of Fine Arts is planning a $100 million expansion. Exciting, but all in all, maybe not such a good idea to further concentrate cultural treasures in one place.

Disagreeable as it is, let’s try to think like a terrorist, especially an Islamic terrorist, flying over Boston in a stolen corporate jet with a load of fuel, who wants to deliver it where it will create the most damage to the evil society below it.
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There are Many African items in the British Museum’s collection over which the ownership is disputed. A few of these artefacts are now being lent to a temporary exhibition that is going on display in Kenya, Tanzania & Uganda, giving a chance for these the people of these countries to see their own Heritage (albeit only for a short period of time).

From:
The East African

UK to lend stolen artefacts to EA for six months
BY JOHN KARIUKI
The EastAfrican

The British National Museum has agreed to return on a six-month loan hundreds of artefacts taken away from the three East African countries during the colonial period.

The collection of historical and cultural material will be used for an exhibition based on the history of East Africa which will be held in April next year at the old Nairobi PC’s office.
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The argument is often put forward by the museums of the west, that they are keeping artefacts safer than they would have been in their original locations. Italy’s moves to guard against terror attacks in their monuments or museums make you wonder how much safer the artefacts really are over here after all. Although institutions such as the British Museum ask people to leave large bags in the cloakroom, there is no control over who is wandering in & out of the building & what they are bringing in with them.

From:
The Guardian

Italy moves to protect its heritage from terror
Colosseum to be cordoned off as threat of attack forces authorities to increase security around monuments and galleries
Barbara McMahon in Rome
Saturday August 20, 2005
The Guardian

The Colosseum in Rome is to be cordoned off to the public behind metal barriers as Italy moves to protect its cultural heritage from the threat of terrorism.

Heightened security at the 2,000-year-old amphitheatre is among a number of preventive measures being implemented across the country after last month’s terror attacks in London.
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