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.

The Parthenon (Wonders of the World)
Author: Mary Beard
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
ISBN: 1861973012

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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Michael Gross’s new book looking behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Museum. This includes new details between the acquisition of some artefacts – & the successful restitution claims that have led to the return of these artefacts.

Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum
Author: Michael Gross
Publisher: Broadway Books
ISBN: 0767924886

From:
Buffalo News

NONFICTION
A fascinating secret history of ‘Rogues’ behind the Met
By Jean Reeves Barre
NEWS BOOK REVIEWER
August 16, 2009, 6:35 AM

Michael Gross’ audacious new book on New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is as intriguing as a brace of novels. And in bulk it rivals such in girth — 499 pages plus index, notes and acknowledgments, a total then of 545 pages — and the reader is loath to skip one of them.

“Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art” will be lambasted by critics. It’s true that it’s long on gossip and scandal and short on art. You won’t find any analysis of the fine points of color or form of a Matisse or a Monet.
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Karen Essex’s book; Stealing Athena, is a historical novel revolving around the acquisition of the Parthenon Marbles. Here, the author talks more about the inspiration behind it.

Stealing Athena
Author: Karen Essex
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN: 0385519710

From:
Daily Iowan

Writer Karen Essex brings centuries-old controversy to IC with fiction flair
BY KERY LAWSON | JUNE 15, 2009 7:26 AM

Her text traces a set of statues from ancient Greece to early 19th-century Britain, and Karen Essex’s fourth novel, Stealing Athena, will bring the centuries-old controversy to Iowa City.

Essex will travel from California to Iowa City to share the novel. She will read at Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., at 7 p.m. today.
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Spiked has predictably written a favourable review of James Cuno’s latest work on why ancient artefacts are best retained by the museums that currently hold them whether or not they were acquired by them legitimately.

Whose Culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities
Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691133336

From:
Spiked

How to preserve the future of museums
Whose Culture? – a collection of essays defending the vital importance of museums – is a welcome challenge to repatriation policies underpinned by identity politics.
by Tiffany Jenkins

There is a thirteenth century ivory casket on show at the Art Institute of Chicago. The box was made from an elephant’s tusk, probably found in southern Africa and then brought to Sicily, Italy, by Muslim traders from the Swahili coast. It was once used as a Christian reliquary and it bears an inscription in Arabic. Visitors to the Art Institute can also view the fourteenth-century German monstrance made of gilt silver around a translucent vessel. The holder for this relic was a perfume bottle made in Fatimid Egypt.

The ivory casket and the monstrance are just two of many works at the Art Institute which reflect connections between cultures. Artefacts are created through interactions between people, through exchanges of ideas and materials. Questions around who ‘owns’ such objects, where they should be and what meanings we draw from them are at the heart of a debate currently raging amongst archaeologists, museum professionals, nation states and various claimant groups. Now, the once beleaguered side of the debate is finally standing up, arguing loudly that museums are, in fact, good places to keep artefacts and art work and that sending objects back to their assumed countries of origin – which has been the dominant view until now – is not always a good idea.
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In the parliamentary debate leading up to the British Government’s acquisition of the Parthenon Marbles, the Society of Dilettanti gave various accounts. Their evidence though shows that what people then thought of as Greek sculpture was something quite different to the real thing, which they had trouble identifying.

Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England
Author: Bruce Redford
Publisher: Getty Research Institute,U.S.
ISBN: 0892369248

From:
New York Review of Books

Volume 56, Number 8 · May 14, 2009
A Silly, Very Cultured Club
By Ingrid D. Rowland
Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England
by Bruce Redford

J. Paul Getty Museum/Getty Research Institute, 220 pp., $49.95

Bruce Redford’s Dilettanti is not itself a dilettantish work, for the book’s succinctness and lightness of touch reflect skill of the highest order. Still, there is an evident link between Redford’s fine-tuned scholarship and the sense of sheer delight (Italian diletto ) that gave its name to the Society of Dilettanti, devoted to the study of ancient Greek and Roman art, when it was formed in 1734. That link is distilled in the motto of this peculiarly English gentlemen’s club, Seria Ludo; the paradoxical Latin phrase meant that in their playfulness, ludo, they also addressed serious matters, seria.[1]
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Now that James Cuno has contributed to two books trying to justify retention of cultural property, the New York Review of books has looked at both of these publications together.

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage
Author: James Cuno
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691137129

Whose Culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities
Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691133336

From:
New York Review of Books

Volume 56, Number 8 · May 14, 2009
Who Should Own the World’s Antiquities?
By Hugh Eakin
Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage
by James Cuno

Princeton University Press, 228 pp., $24.95
Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate Over Antiquities
edited by James Cuno
Princeton University Press, 220 pp.. $24.95

See the related article, The Affair of the Chinese Bronze Heads.

1.

Last June, the directors of the leading art museums of the United States agreed to limit their acquisitions of antiquities to works that have left their “country of probable modern discovery” before 1970, or that were exported legally after that date. On the face of it, the decision, issued by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), did no more than update guidelines for ancient art—one of a number of such policy refinements by the association in recent years. In fact, however, it announced a tectonic shift in museum thinking about collecting art and artifacts of the distant past, a change that was unimaginable even five years ago.
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Kwame Opoku concludes his piece on James Cuno’s new book on cultural property.

Whose Culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities
Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691133336

From:
Afrikanet

Comments on James Cuno´s “Whose culture” – Part 2 and End
Datum: 22.04.09 14:00
Kategorie: Kultur-Kunst

Von: Dr. Kwame Opoku

IV. UNFINISHED WORK

Cuno ends his introduction with a statement which many of us could easily subscribe to in so far as it appears to be a call for dialogue: “This book will not be the final word in the debate over antiquities. But we hope it will add a new angle to the frame within which the discussion henceforth takes place. Nothing is more important to the fate of the preservation and greater understanding of our world’s common ancient past and antique legacy than we resolve the differences that divide the various parties in the dispute. Warfare and sectarian violence, which is destroying evidence of the past faster and more surely than the destruction of archaeological sites by looters, is beyond our control. Differences among museum professionals, university- and museum-based scholars, archaeologists, their sympathizers, national politicians, and international agencies should not be.” (63)
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Kwame Opoku looks at James Cuno’s latest efforts to persuade the world that it is right that disputed cultural artefacts should be retained by the big museums of the western world.

Whose Culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities
Author:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691133336

From:
Afrikanet

Comments on James Cuno´s “Whose Culture” – Part 1
Datum: 22.04.09 14:36
Kategorie: Kultur-Kunst
Von: Dr. Kwame Opoku
WHOSE “UNIVERSAL MUSEUM”? COMMENTS ON JAMES CUNO’S WHOSE CULTURE?

“The restitution of those cultural objects which our museums and collections, directly or indirectly, possess thanks to the colonial system and are now being demanded, must also not be postponed with cheap arguments and tricks.”

Gert v. Paczensky and Herbert Ganslmayr, Nofretete will nach Hause. (1984)

I. CUNO SETS THE TONE

“Whose Culture? The modern nations within whose borders antiquities — the ancient artifacts of peoples long disappeared — happen to have been found? Or the world’s peoples, heirs to antiquity as the foundation of culture that has never known political borders but has always been fluid, mongrel, made from contact with new, strange, and wonderful things?
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Kwame Opoku responds to a recent piece by James Cuno about the benefits of Encyclopaedic Museums. David Gill has also responded to this article on his Blog.

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage
Author: James Cuno
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691137129

From:
Afrikanet

A response to James Cuno
Druckansicht
Datum: 09.02.09 17:03
Kategorie: Welt

“Encyclopedic museums, like the British Museum or the Metropolitan Museum or the Art Institute of Chicago, serve as a force for understanding, tolerance, and the dissolution of ignorance and superstition about the world” James Cuno

The recent article by James-Cuno “Where-do-the-great-treasures-of-ancient-art-belong?” clearly demonstrates his unwillingness to take into account valid criticisms of his viewpoints. (1) This leads him to make statements which will no doubt be subject to further comments.
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James Cuno may have other views as well as those on Encyclopaedic Museums – however, his views on that one subject seems to be his favourite topic at the moment, despite being widely discredited.

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage
Author: James Cuno
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691137129

From:
Princeton University

James Cuno on “Where do the great treasures of ancient art belong?”
by James Cuno
Jan 27 2009

Two questions dominate our consideration of the fate of the world’s ancient heritage. The more vexing and urgent one — how can we prevent the looting of archaeological sites and the illicit trade in antiquities -– is not the topic of this article. The second one is.

“Where do the great treasures of ancient art belong? In Western museums or in countries where the civilizations that created them once flourished?”
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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book about the looted ancient treasures from around the world that fill many of the great museums of the West.

Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Author: Sharon Waxman
Publisher: Times Books
ISBN: 0805086536

From:
The Star (Toronto)

That which was stolen shall be returned
The complex story of the fate of ancient artifacts in foreign museums is packed with smugglers, intrigue and Imperialism
Feb 08, 2009 04:30 AM
Hans Werner

Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
by Sharon Waxman
Times Books, 414 pages, $33

If you’ve ever stood there awestruck in front of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum (London), or the Denderah Zodiac ceiling in the Louvre (Paris), you may get a sinking feeling to imagine them gone, vanished or replaced with replicas. That goal of some powerful people is the subject of Loot: The Battle of the Stolen Treasures of the Art World by Sharon Waxman, a former culture correspondent for The Washington Post and The New York Times. Also the author of Rebels on the Backlot, about the new Hollywood, Waxman presents a lucid and intelligent investigative report into the dilemma of what the great museums of the world are to do in the face of demands to return signature artifacts to the countries of origin.
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This review compares four different books all covering the field of looted cultural property, from different perspectives. The fact that there are so many current books on the subject proves that it is an issue that is definitely on the radar – museums should think twice before dismissing it as an irrelevancy that the public aren’t bothered about.

Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Author: Sharon Waxman
Publisher: Times Books
ISBN: 0805086536

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage
Author: James Cuno
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691137129

Catastrophe! the Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past
Author:
Publisher: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
ISBN: 1885923562

Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine’s Passion to Recover the World’s Greatest Stolen Treasures
Author: Matthew Bogdanos
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 1596911468

From:
The Nation

Tales from the Vitrine: Battles Over Stolen Antiquities
By Britt Peterson

This article appeared in the January 26, 2009 edition of The Nation.
January 7, 2009

On a 1984 visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Turkish journalist named Ozgen Acar noticed a group of fifty artifacts labeled “East Greek treasure” that resembled a collection that had gone missing some twenty years before. The treasure, Acar suspected, had been snatched by grave robbers from Sardis, an ancient city in western Turkey, which served as the capital of the Lydian empire at its peak in the sixth and seventh centuries BC. (Herodotus tells us that its last king, the affluent Croesus, was the first person to mint coins of pure silver and gold, hence the saying “as rich as Croesus.”) Acar, who had spent the previous decade tracking antiquities looters in the small towns surrounding Sardis, took his suspicions to the Turkish Ministry of Education. It turned out that the Lydian Hoard had passed through a number of smugglers and semireputable dealers before reaching the Met in the 1960s, and there was plenty of evidence that the Met had known something of the provenance of the objects at the time and willfully ignored it. The Turkish government sued the Met for the unconditional return of the cache and, after a six-year legal battle, finally won. In 1995 the Lydian Hoard was returned to the small town of Usak, in Sardis, sparking an outpouring of national pride and a flurry of copycat lawsuits.
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