Niki Dollis who has worked with the Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum for the entire duration of the project (& will be known to anyone who visited the site before the building opened), has written a book for children about the actual process of construction of the new museum & the reasons that a new museum was needed.

The book came out earlier this year – it has currently sold out, but I’ve been told that more copies are printed & it will soon be available again in the shop at the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Greek Reporter

Greek Australian Writes Storybook: “Building the New Acropolis Museum”
Posted on 18 September 2010 by Apostolos Papapostolou

The book “Building the New Acropolis Museum” is by Niki Dollis and illustrated and designed by Elena Zournatzi. The children’s book tells the story of the realization of a dream. As Niki Dollis mentions in her introduction, it is “a book about hope, expectation… but also hard work for the construction and preparation of the New Acropolis Museum”. The storybook is published by Livanis Publishing Organization. Dollis is the Director of Mr. Pantermalis’ office, who is the head of the New Acropolis Museum.

Through the 60 pages of her book Dollis familiarizes young and all readers, with the notion of a museum. It is a very interesting subject to begin with especially when it serves as an open window to the world of ancient Greece, such as the New Acropolis Museum.
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The new edition of Mary Beard’s Book – The Parthenon, has various changes, particularly in relation to the New Acropolis Museum which was still in the early stages of construction when the first edition was published.

From:
Lancashire Evening Post

Book review: The Parthenon by Mary Beard
By Pam Norfolk
Published on Fri May 28 15:07:23 BST 2010

Travellers have braved wars and bandits to see it, politicians and superstars have competed to be photographed in front of it and some of the world’s greatest artists and designers have been inspired by it…

The ancient Parthenon in Athens has been a centre of pilgrimage since it was built over 2,500 years ago and its stunning architectural beauty has never failed to disappoint the millions of visitors.
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Jonathan Downs, author of Discovery at Rosetta, now has a website / blog, which gives more information about the stone & the claims for its return.

Make sure you view the posts section of the site, which includes articles on whether Britain really has legal ownership of what is possibly one of the most significant (in terms of our understanding of ancient Egypt) artefacts in their collection.

I came across the book Last of the Warrior Kings by Sarah Mussi recently. It is a fictional story for children, but the plot is heavily based on the story of the removal of the Benin Bronzes from Nigeria by the British, & their subsequent retention by the British Museum in London.

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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