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.

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.

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.

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.

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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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book – this time in the Australian Press.

From:
The Australian

Pillagers called to account
Rosemary Sorensen
January 08, 2009

AFTER Michael Brand took on the directorship of the J. Paul Getty Museum in California and inherited the ugly mess of its acquisitions history, he suggested that being an Australian was an advantage.

“I went in (to negotiate with the Italian government the return of looted artworks the Getty owned) with no background in antiquities, no history at the Getty, a neutral person,” Brand told author and journalist Sharon Waxman last year. “It might even have helped that I was Australian — who knows?” Waxman, in her recently published book Loot, concurs, calling Brand a “blank slate”.
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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book on the looting of the ancient world by museums of the West.

From:
Forbes

Book Review
Give Me Back My Ancient Art
Judith H. Dobrzynski, 12.12.08, 12:00 AM EST
A battle rages between museums and countries of origin.

From time to time, the battle for antiquities that rages between museums, collectors and dealers on one side and governments and archaeologists on the other breaks into the headlines–“Bail Set in Greece for Ex-Getty Curator,” “Antiquities Trial in Rome Focuses on London Dealer” and the like.

The coverage rarely lasts long or goes deep; it tends to sympathize with the countries making claims. Most people probably shake their heads in disapproval of the looters, smugglers, museums and collectors, and turn the page.
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Kwame Opoku gives some thoughts on Colin Renfrew’s review of James Cuno’s book.

From:
Afrikanet

Datum: 04.12.08 14:54
Kategorie: Kolumnen
Von: Dr. Kwame Opoku
COMMENTS ON LORD RENFREW’S STATEMENTS ON LOOTED ARTEFACTS
CAN WE CONDEMN CONTEMPORARY LOOTING OF ARTEFACTS WITHOUT CONDEMNING COLONIAL LOOT AND PLUNDER? COMMENTS ON LORD RENFREW’S STATEMENTS ON LOOTED ARTEFACTS

In his review of Cuno’s Who owns Antiquities?, (www.savingantiquities.org) Lord Renfrew sees as a weakness in Cuno’s argument a confusion between antiquities looted in recent times and plunder by imperial powers and declares:

“But the issues in the two cases – modern, clandestine looting, versus colonial or imperial appropriation, mainly during the nineteenth century and by the leading world powers of the day – are not the same”.
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Colin Renfrew has published his review of James Cuno’s book in The Burlington Magazine, reproduced here by SAFE.

From:
The Burlington Magazine

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over our Ancient Heritage. By James Cuno.
228 pp. incl. 6 b. & w. ills. (Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2008), £14.95. ISBN 978–0–691–13712–4.
Reviewed by COLIN RENFREW
McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge

THE POLEMIC OVER what antiquities should be acquired by museums, and which ones they should decline in order to discourage the illicit traffic in them, has become much louder in recent months, with the reluctant return to Italy of antiquities, worth many millions of dollars, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. These, it was claimed, had been illicitly excavated and illegally exported in recent decades, a charge tacitly accepted by the museums which agreed to their return. In this readable and lucidly argued book James Cuno sets out what might, ten years ago, have been described as the art museum director’s case on the proprieties of ownership and acquisition. His position is still indeed held by the collection of which he is Director (the Art Institute of Chicago) along with such other influential institutions as the Metropolitan Museum or the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. But the times have moved on, and other museums, including now the Getty itself, have shown themselves willing to adopt more careful acquisition policies and to avoid buying antiquities which might have been the product of looting. Cuno here, thoughtfully and with well-chosen examples, reasserts the traditional view.
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Sharon Waxman’s book Loot continues to receive large numbers of reviews in the US. Even if people only read the review & do not buy the book, this will still increase awareness on the issues of looted artefacts & help to keep the subject on the radar.

From:
The Payson Roundup (Arizona)

Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Reviewed by Larry Cox
December 3, 2008

For the past two centuries, the treasures of the ancient world have been shamelessly plundered. One of the most graphic examples involves the tomb of Amenophis III in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Looters in the 19th century hacked the head out of the pharaoh in three murals. Those fragments are now on display in the Louvre, leaving behind the original mural, which is permanently defaced.

Other ancient treasures also were looted and are now scattered throughout the world. The Elgin marbles originally crafted for the Acropolis are in London, dozens of Etruscan masterworks now reside in American collections, and there are now almost as many mummies in France as in Egypt.
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This interview with Sharon Waxman indicates that the Getty’s reaction to her recent book on looted artefacts has not been particularly positive, due to her coverage of some of the institution’s practises.

From:
Boston Globe

Sharon Waxman: On the trail of ‘Loot’
Posted by David Beard, Boston.com Staff December 2, 2008 07:22 AM

Sharon Waxman, a former Washington Post and New York Times culture reporter, appears in Cambridge on Wednesday to speak about “Loot” (Times Books), her account of the US and European plunder of Third World antiquities — and the return home for some of the art. She spoke from her home in Los Angeles.

Q: Your last book, “Rebels on the Backlot,” was about six Hollywood bad boy film directors of the 1990s. Could “Loot” be any more different?
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Sharon Waxman’s new book seems now to have been reviewed in almost all the major news publications in the US – perhaps an indication of the current level of interest in the subject.

From:
San Francisco Chronicle

Nonfiction review: ‘Loot’ by Sharon Waxman
Reagan Upshaw, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, November 29, 2008

Loot
The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
By Sharon Waxman
Times Books; 414 pages; $30

The title, stamped in gold capital letters on the dust jacket, gives away the author’s agenda: This is a muckraking book about art objects from ancient cultures that have found their way into major museums of Europe and the United States. Sharon Waxman has a nose for scandal and spends much of the book following up on reports of thefts by grave robbers, smuggling by dealers and sexual hanky-panky between museum personnel.
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Sharon Waxman’s new book looks at both sides of the arguments over looted artefacts held in museums. Museums come up with increasingly tenuous arguments to justify their positions – but public mood is shifting in favour of making sensible agreements to repatriate artefacts with source nations.

From:
Los Angeles Times

BOOK REVIEW
‘Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World’ by Sharon Waxman
As museums battle nations of artifacts’ origin, the author weighs both sides in a sane manner.
By Wendy Smith
November 25, 2008

Journalist Sharon Waxman’s “Loot,” a cogent survey of the conflict over classical antiquities, is notable for its common sense, a rare quality in a debate generally characterized by high-pitched rhetoric. As Italy, Greece, Egypt and Turkey attempt to reclaim ancient artworks, their government officials depict Western museums as predatory institutions working hand-in-glove with tomb robbers, crooked dealers and shady collectors to strip vulnerable nations of their patrimony. In response, the beleaguered directors and curators of the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum proclaim that they are repositories of universal culture, the places best qualified to conserve masterpieces that, if returned to their countries of origin, would languish in institutions that no one visits.
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