Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book. Another new book by Nina Burleigh looks at one of the side effects of the endemic trade in de-contextualised unprovenanced artefacts.

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

From:
Washington Post

Fool’s Gold
How stolen ancient artifacts have turned up in famous museums around the world.
Reviewed by Roger Atwood
Sunday, November 16, 2008; Page BW02

LOOT - The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
By Sharon Waxman | Times. 414 pp. $30

UNHOLY BUSINESS - A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land
By Nina Burleigh | Smithsonian/Collins. 271 pp. $27.50

Early this year, officials at the Metropolitan Museum of Art trussed up one of the prizes of its collection, an ancient vase known as the Euphronios krater, and sent it back to Italy. Italian authorities had presented evidence that the piece had been looted from a tomb near Rome less than a year before the Met paid $1 million for it in 1972. Faced with the prospect of a lawsuit and a ban on receiving any future loans from Italian museums, the Met, writes former Washington Post and New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman, “stalled, stonewalled, and would not be swayed — until it was forced to do so.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Sharon Waxman’s book on the looted artefacts filling some of the world’s greatest museums is getting quite a bit of media attention. Its position is almost completely the opposite of that taken by James Cuno in his book published earlier this year. In many ways it could be said that Cuno represents the view of the museums whilst Waxman ’s view is more closely aligned to that of the general public. In countries such as Britain though, a large amount of the funding for the largest museums comes from tax payers via the government - so surely these institutions should be doing more to reflect what the public expects of them?

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

From:
New York Times

Art of the Steal
By HUGH EAKIN
Published: November 7, 2008

Loot is an ugly word. Derived from ­Hindi and Sanskrit, it emerged in British India, where it no doubt proved useful in describing some of the more sordid transactions of empire. In the 20th century, it was applied to Jewish art collections systematically plundered by Hitler and, later, to electronics pilfered from shop windows during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Most recently — and perhaps most provocatively — it has been wielded against well-to-do American museums whose pristine specimens of ancient civilizations have with shocking frequency turned out to be contraband.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another review of Sharon Waxman’s book on the looted antiquities that fill many museums of the West.

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

From:
Boston Globe

Golden fleeces
For centuries the West has plundered the treasures of the ancient world; now some nations are fighting back
By Michael Kammen
November 9, 2008

LOOT:The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
By Sharon Waxman
Times, 414 pp., illustrated, $30

Have you ever wondered why the Rosetta stone (so crucial to our understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics), discovered by Napoleon’s army in 1799, is situated in the British Museum? Or why a Babylonian stele called the Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known legal code in human society (”an eye for an eye”), is located in the Louvre in Paris? Or how the beautiful bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti ended up as the showpiece of a Berlin museum?

Read the rest of this entry »

Further coverage of yesterday’s return of a fragment of the Parthenon Sculptures by the Vatican following previous requests. The British Museum state that this does not alter anything - they continue to follow this line though, despite events carrying on outside their reach suggesting that the rest of the world is moving in a different direction.

It is notable, that whilst the Palermo & Heidelberg fragments already returned were from relatively small museums, the Vatican Museums are a vast collection by any standards - this shows that larger institutions which tend to be less flexibly governed are also able to return pieces of the sculptures.

From:
International Herald Tribune

Vatican returns Parthenon fragment to Greece
The Associated Press
Published: November 5, 2008

ATHENS, Greece: The ancient marble head of a youth was fitted into place Wednesday at a museum in Athens in a deal that Greek officials hope will serve as a model for returning other treasures.

The one-year loan from the Vatican’s Museo Gregoriano Etrusco could be used as a way to regain other iconic Parthenon sculptures that have been systematically removed from Greece in the past. Several European museums — especially the British Museum in London — hold Parthenon artifacts and Greece has long campaigned for their return.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sharon Waxman’s book questions the ideology that many of the West’s great museums are based on. Should we accept now that the world has moved on & that it is time start rethinking our museums?

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

From:
Time

The Skimmer
Who Owns Ancient Treasures?
By Gilbert Cruz Thursday, Nov. 06, 2008
Loot by Sharon Waxman

Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Sharon Waxman
Times Books; 414 pages

The Gist:
The great museums of the world are stuffed with spoils of war. They’re crammed with stolen relics and permanently borrowed treasures, beautiful icons obtained through shady means and cultural riches that their countries of origin want back — right now. In her look at the debate over who owns ancient art, Waxman, a former Hollywood reporter for the New York Times profiles four museums—the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum—and poses the question, “Shall we empty [them] because one source country after another seeks the return of treasures past?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Following the return of the Heidelberg fragment in 2006 & the Palermo fragment earlier this year, the Vatican has now also returned a fragment from the frieze on a one year loan. The Vatican still holds two other fragments from the Parthenon sculptures in their collection on which negotiations are still continuing.

From:
Reuters

Vatican lends Parthenon Marbles fragment to Greece
Wed Nov 5, 2008 7:30am EST
By Daniel Flynn

ATHENS (Reuters) - The Vatican returned a small fragment of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece on Wednesday on a one-year loan, fuelling calls for the British Museum to hand back its own priceless sculptures from the ancient temple.

The loan of the fragment, one of three in the Vatican Museum’s vast collection of antiquities, follows a request for its return by Greece’s late Orthodox Archbishop Christopoulos at a meeting with Pope Benedict in 2006.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book about the looting that fills the museums of the West.

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

From:
Dallas Morning News

‘Loot’ by Sharon Waxman: Author delves into the plundering of antiquities
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, November 2, 2008
By ALEXANDRA WITZE / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
books@dallasnews.com Alexandra Witze is chief of correspondents for America for the science journal Nature.

Classical scholar Marion True, a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, was a leading light in the museum world, until her passion for antiquities landed her in court in Italy.

In a bizarre series of events starting in 2005, Italian prosecutors pursued her for allegedly covering up earlier transactions in which the Getty had bought looted artifacts for its collection. Yet Ms. True had long fought against the murky underworld of smuggled antiquities, and many now feel she became a scapegoat in an ongoing battle between august Western institutions and the often-poorer countries from which the world’s great artifacts were taken.

Read the rest of this entry »

The British Museum has in recent years made much of its global reputation, arguing that it represents the best place for artefacts such as the Elgin Marbles to be seen in the context of artefacts from other cultures. From these recent letters in The Times though, it would appear that not everyone is completely sold on the current approach taken by the Museum.

From:
The Times

October 27, 2008
British Museum gripe
Commercialisation of British Museum needs to be stopped

Sir, Passing the British Museum last Thursday, I decided to pop in during normal opening hours. What an awful shock. Tickets for the Hadrian exhibition had sold out, and when I tried to visit the Reading Room it was shut — because the Hadrian exhibition was in there. When I asked when the Reading Room would be open again I was told perhaps in 2012.

It turns out that this famous iconic heart of the British Museum, recently restored at public expense, has been hidden and refitted as exhibition space. Why? Because so much exhibition space has been handed over to shops and cafés.

Read the rest of this entry »

The New Acropolis Museum represents Greece’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
CNN

New Acropolis Museum ready for Marbles
By Eleni Gage
29 October 2008

It’s an incongruous sight: a super-modern, glass-walled building set at the foot of the ancient Acropolis.

But while the New Acropolis Museum, designed by New York-based architect Bernard Tschumi, may appear to defy Athens’s great history, it is, in fact, the city’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim its cultural patrimony: built to hold archaeological finds spanning 2,500 years, including the absent Elgin Marbles (portions of the Parthenon frieze), which the Greek government has been trying to recover from the British Museum since the mid 1800s.

Read the rest of this entry »

The British Museum continues to hang onto the Elgin Marbles, but many in Greece are now suggesting that the 2012 Olympics in London should be used a a deadline for return, with the Olympic flame being handed over in exchange for the Marbles.

From:
American Chronicle

Britain must rethink the case of Parthenon Marbles Restitution
Nicolas Mottas
October 26, 2008

It was in 1801 when the then British ambassador in Constantinople, Thomas Bruce (the known as Lord Elgin), obtained a firman from the Ottoman authorities taking permission to remove sculptures from the Athens’ Parthenon.

Two centuries later - in fact 207 years later - the British capital, London, is preparing to host the 30th Olympiad in 2012. The ancient masterpieces of the Parthenon still remain in the British Museum, around 2440km far from their original place, as long as the Greek demand for the Marbles restoration has been collided to the years-long denial of the Museum’s administration. However, two facts create a new dynamic in favour of the campaign for the restitution of the Parthenon sculptures: the construction of the New Acropolis Museum and the 2012 London Olympics.

Read the rest of this entry »

The town of Datça in Turkey is asking for the return of the Knidos Lion & a statue of Demeter, artefacts from the area currently in the British Museum. This request follows on from others that Turkey has made in the past for artefacts that have been taken from the countries ancient sites.

From:
Today’s Zaman
23 October 2008, Thursday

Datça to seek return of ancient sculptures
The town of Datça, in Muğla province, is planning to apply to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the return of a sculpture known as the “Knidos Lion” and a statue of Demeter. The pieces are currently being exhibited at the British Museum in London.

Speaking to the Anatolia news agency, the mayor of Datça, Erol Karakullukçu, said they want to take back the carvings, which were found in the ancient city of Knidos near Datça and that they will petition the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for their return. Karakullukçu said, “In order to keep the public aware that these sculptures were made in Datça thousands of years ago, and that they were taken to be exhibited in Britain, we made marble replicas of the original sculptures and exhibit them at the city park.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The winds are starting to change for the reunification of cultural property held in the West, as evidenced by high profiles cases involving Italy, Greece, Ethiopia & others. So far though, Nigeria has not secured the return of any artefacts, despite the fact that the heritage of the kingdom of Benin sits in many of the West’s great institutions & was typically acquired in circumstances of questionable legality.

From:
Modern Ghana

DISSATISFACTION WITH LACK OF PROGRESS IN RESTITUTION OF BENIN ARTEFACTS
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Tue, 21 Oct 2008

The lack of reaction from Western holders of Benin artefacts to the several calls
by Nigerians for restitution is causing anger in many circles.

The report below deals with the renewed calls by the Benin National Council for restitution and a declaration of intention to resort to legal proceedings and what is described as “self-help”.

Read the rest of this entry »