Yet again, we see an example, where campaigns to keep items in the area where they were found are praised as a great thing, whereas campaigns for the return of looted artefacts are decried as cultural nationalism.

I have no particular objection to the first part – but if we follow this path, then we must somehow find a way to stop objecting to the second part – there is no reason why the cases should be treated in a completely different way depending on which side of the fence we find ourselves in the argument. M any of the cases like this that crop up are within a country – but this still makes them not much different from the Lewis Chessmen, the Mold Cape, or the Lindisfarne Gospels.

What makes the whole situation even less logical, is that many of the items that have been the subject of cultural regionalism have very little to actually tie them to the region where they were found. Often, they are lose items like coins or jewelry that could have been transported anywhere. We have little idea of who they belonged to, or quite how they ended up where they did. Compare such cases to that of the Parthenon Marbles – purpose designed and carved to be seen in a specific way on a specific building in a specific location. The context in their cases was everything – they were never like a painting or small statue to be moved around, but as much a part of the building as the columns, walls, floor or roof.

From:
Redditch Advertiser

Worcestershire Hoard will come back to the county for good
2:50pm Tuesday 27th November 2012 in News

MUSEUMS Worcestershire is delighted that the appeal to raise funds to acquire the Worcestershire Hoard has been successful and the hoard will now come back to the county where it belongs.

Efforts to raise funds to conserve and display the coins will continue into the New Year.

Just over a year ago Worcestershire hit the headlines with the discovery of the largest haul of treasure ever found in the county, a stash of almost 4,000 Roman coins discovered by two metal detecting enthusiasts, including Jethro Carpenter from Redditch, in the Vale of Evesham on Bredon Hill.
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Something that seems to happen often in Britain today (& i presume many other countries), is that when new artefacts are discovered, great efforts are made to ensure that they are saved for the nation, that they can be kept in the area where they were discovered, and that at all costs, they must not leave the country to a foreign museum or collector. When another country (whose artefacts have ended up in Britain) makes any sort of move to requests their return, this is decried as being a terrible example of “cultural nationalism“.

So – why do we not want to share our own stuff, but enjoy borrowing everyone elses?

From:
Tewkesbury Admag

Evesham Vale
How your coins can keep these coins in county
By Sarah Taylor
6:30pm Tuesday 9th October 2012 in Evesham Vale

A YEAR after a hoard of Roman coins was discovered in Worcestershire, a campaign to ensure the important find stays in the county has raised nearly £9,000.

Museums Worcestershire has been trying to raise £40,000 to acquire, conserve and display the hoard, which was discovered on Bredon Hill last October.
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Following their requests for the return of the Samsat Stele, Turkey is blocking the planned loan of an artefact to the UK. The author of this article, feels that they should be focussing first on protecting the heritage that they already have in their country, before trying to retrieve items such as this. I still can’t understand though, why when we want an artefact to stay in the UK, this is completely acceptable, but when someone else asks for their (in many cases stolen) artefact to be returned, it is decried as “cultural nationalism.”

From:
New York Times

April 11, 2012, 9:33 am
Treasure Hunters
By ANDREW FINKEL

ISTANBUL — “Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam,” the British Museum’s recreation of Islam’s holy pilgrimage, has attracted much praise and a dash of controversy, as Huma Yusuf recently wrote on Latitude. Meanwhile, another interesting story related to the exhibit has percolated down to Turkey, the successor state to the empire that ruled over Mecca and Medina for centuries and once controlled the major pilgrimage routes.

Turkey was founded in the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, and its great museums – the Topkapi Palace and the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum – hold many of the important historical artifacts associated with the Hajj.
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This article identifies the duplicity I noticed earlier in the year with the Staffordshire Hoard. Whenever artefacts are found in the UK, efforts are made to keep them in the area where they were discovered, to the extent of organising fundraising appeals & comments are made by prominent politicians. On the other hand, when a foreign country asks for their artefacts to be returned, so that they too can keep them close to the area where they belong, they are frequently accused of having an argument that is nothing more than jingoistic cultural nationalism.

From:
News and Star

Is it our history?
By Stephen Blease
Last updated at 12:47, Friday, 01 October 2010

There’s no doubt about it. The Roman helmet unearthed in Crosby Garrett deserves to return to Cumbria.

It was found here. It’s as much a part of our history as that other great Roman relic, Hadrian’s Wall. It is great news that the campaign has got political backing from MPs John Stevenson and Rory Stewart – and financial backing from an anonymous donor offering £50,000.
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This (& many other articles) talk about the importance of the fight to keep the Staffordshire Hoard in Britain. When other countries ask for the return of their artefacts for similar reasons though, this is regularly described in a derogatory way with terms such as cultural nationalism.

From:
The Times

March 14, 2010
The long battle for the Staffordshire treasure hoard
For 1,400 years, a stash of Anglo-Saxon artefacts remained buried — until it was found last year by a man with a metal detector. It throws fascinating new light on clashes in the Dark Ages, but now we must win the fight to keep this precious hoard in Britain

It’s a misty dawn in Middle England, some time in the 7th century. A small band of armed men struggle up a wooded hill. At the summit they pause. While one keeps watch, the others tip their loot on to the ground. They divide up the jewels and coins, then they turn to the rest of the booty: swords, crosses, saddle fittings, which are mostly gold and exquisitely made. They hammer at them with stones and the hilts of their knives, they rip the pommels from the swords and stuff the blades into their jerkins, smash the helmets and bend the arms of the crosses until they look like nothing more than twisted pieces of metal. They stuff the small gold and bejewelled fragments into leather pouches, grub out a hole in the earth, and bury their cache. Then they disappear over the hill as swiftly as they came.
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Mary Beard has regularly spoken about the Parthenon Sculptures & about her views on their return. Here in an interview, she clarifies some of her thoughts on the issue.

You can watch the interview with her here.

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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Some such as James Cuno, see reunification requests for looted artefacts as cultural nationalism. It is always implied that this is an inherently bad thing, although the issue is never fully discussed. If a country lost part of its national identity, surely it should be allowed to rebuild it, rather than only being defined by what was left behind by the museums & institutions of the west?

From:
Modern Ghana

IS NATIONALISM AS SUCH A DANGEROUS PHENOMENON FOR CULTURE AND STOLEN/LOOTED CULTURAL PROPERTY?
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Sun, 28 Sep 2008

“The charge of nationalism (whether outdated or au courant) is frequently levelled at those seeking the repatriation of cultural treasures to those nations and communities from which they were extracted. But nations have always used their own material culture as a means of constructing and expressing their national identity. There is nothing implicitly damaging or divisive in that. However it becomes so when the objects being used are not indigenous to that country but instead material extracted from other nations during periods of imperial conquest or colonial adventure.” Tom Flynn (1)
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James Cuno has taken part in a long radio conversation to promote his new book.

Tom Flynn speculates on his site, why Cuno’s book is being treated as credible.

Listen to the radio interview on KCRW here.

Tom Flynn’s response is here.