More coverage of the looted Afghan artefacts, which were returned by the UK earlier this year.

From:
Museums Association Journal

Hundreds of stolen items returned to Kabul | Museums Association
Patrick Steele
01 September 2012

Some of the 825 stolen objects returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul in July, with the assistance of the British Museum and Ministry of Defence, were saved by a London-based philanthropist.

The British Museum’s Middle East curator, John Simpson, said the philanthropist offered to acquire the objects for the Afghan museum if the British Museum could “advise on legality and process” and act as an intermediary.
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In yet another example of the peculiarities of museum collection ethics, the British Museum can hang on to carious items taken by indisputably hostile means, while at the same time searching out the possible owners of items found in the UK today. I’m not saying that doing the latter is bad, but it is unclear at what point the magical split occurs between collections that must be repatriated & those that must not.

From:
Art Daily

April 19, 2011
The Hackney Hoard: Coroner to Rule on Unique and Historic Treasure Case Found in Garden

LONDON.- On 18 April 2011 the Coroner for Inner North London resumed an inquest in relation to a hoard of American gold dollars found in Hackney in 2007. The hoard consists of 80 coins which were minted in the United States between 1854 and 1913. They are all $20 denominations of the type known as ‘Double-Eagle’ and the find is totally unprecedented in the United Kingdom.

The hoard was discovered in the back garden of a property in Hackney and reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme but in a unique twist to the story a likely descendent of the original owner of the coins has been found.
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Further coverage of the decision taken by the Metropolitan Museum in New York to return nineteen artefacts to Egypt. The items were all originally located in the tomb of Tutankhamen. Return of two of the artefacts & acknowledgment of Egypt’s ownership of them was first mooted prior to the World War Two.

From:
Wall Street Journal

Egypt Hunts Ancient Artifacts
New York’s Metropolitan Museum Says It Will Give Back 19 Items as Archaeologist Lobbies for Returns
By ASHRAF KHALIL

CAIRO—Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s larger-than-life antiquities chief, is hunting for treasures from some of the richest known troves—the world’s prominent museums.

In an increasingly public campaign, Dr. Hawass is lobbying international museums to return some of Egypt’s most important archaeological artifacts. These include the Rosetta Stone, displayed for more than 200 years in the British Museum, and the Zodiac of Dendera, housed in the Louvre in Paris.
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Despite attempts to publicise the fact that most classical Greek sculptures were originally coloured, in the eyes of the public, they are still very much perceived as pristine & white. Nowhere has this problem of misconstrued opinion been more apparent, than in the 1930s cleaning of the Elgin Marbles under the instruction of Lord Duveen.

A new exhibition in Germany hopes to change people’s understandings of the sculptures, with numerous coloured reconstructions to give people a better idea of how they might have originally looked.

From:
Artdaily

Friday, October 24, 2008
Gods in Color Opens at Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung

FRANKFURT.- Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung presents Gods in Color, on view through February 15, 2009. Antique marble sculpture was not white, but colored. This is amply and overwhelmingly attested to by ancient literary sources. Whereas the incontestable fact that ancient sculpture was colored was suppressed during the Italian Renaissance, it was recalled in the nineteenth century; in the twentieth century, it once again paled into insignificance, giving way to an aestheticism directed at clarity. Numerous traces of the original polychromy in antique sculpture have survived. They bear testimony to Greek and Roman statues having worn elaborately ornamented garments painted with precious pigments. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite reports that there are secret talks between Britain & Greece about the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, the British Museum has strongly denied that this is the case.

From:
Art Daily

Monday, August 4, 2003
Marbles will not be returned

The British Museum yesterday categorically rejected a claim that it was to give back the Parthenon marbles for next year´s Olympic Games in Athens. Nor were secret talks going on about their long-term loan to a £30m museum being built on the Acropolis, its trustees insisted.

Last year the Greek government dropped its claim to own the 2,500-year-old sculptures – taken from the Parthenon frieze by Lord Elgin in 1801 – in the hope that the British Museum might one day be persuaded to give them back.
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