Cleveland museum’s recent purchase of the Apollo Sauroktonos has been criticised by many archaeologists, because of the uncertain provenance of the work. The Museum has however, agreed to work with Italy to further research the sculpture.

From:
Cleveland.com

Conference at the American Academy in Rome illuminated the changing climate for Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions that collect antiquities
Published: Saturday, December 03, 2011, 12:30 PM

Rome — The images of ancient Roman mosaics found and preserved recently in south-central Turkey were stunning.

Unfortunately, they flashed across the screen in a darkened auditorium at the American Academy in Rome too quickly. One had the impulse to shout at the lecturer, “Slow down!”

But the two-day symposium last month on “Saving Cultural Heritage in Crisis Areas” was running late, and Italian archaeologist Roberto Nardi had a lot of ground to cover in his dramatic tale of rescuing the mosaics from the rising waters of a lake created by the Birecik hydroelectric dam along the Euphrates River.
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For some artefacts, museums hold onto the excuse that at the time, it was accepted practice. But for many more recent artefacts that are looted, that excuse holds no water. Who should be blamed for this though – the dealers or the collectors? Are too many people / institutions willing to accept items with fairly questionable provenances that if investigated properly would clearly not be valid?

From:
Financial Times

December 2, 2011 12:02 am
Lost treasures
By Feargus O’Sullivan

In March this year, a statue of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty, left the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, its home since 1988, to return to the Sicilian town of Aidone, where it was discovered.

Six months later, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts returned the Weary Herakles to Turkey, so the torso of the mythological Greek hero could be reunited with the legs and pelvis of a statue discovered near Antalya in the early 1980s.
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Belzoni, along with Bernardino Drovetti were perhaps the two people, who more than any others started the raiding of Egypt’s antiquities, to fill the museums & palaces of the west. Were they just doing, what was accepted at the time, or was a lot of history plundered to their reckless methods?

Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate
Author: Ivor Noel Hume
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813931401

From:
Wall Street Journal

A Pre-Digital Tomb Raider
Sifting sand, opening crypts, raising fallen statues and scooping up anything marketable—and transportable—to Britain.
By GERARD HELFERICH

In the Egyptian gallery of London’s British Museum stands a 3,400-year-old statue carved from polished black stone. Lifted from the city of Thebes, the figure depicts Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from about 1386 B.C. to 1350 B.C., when the kingdom was at the peak of its power and prosperity. Sitting erect but serene, his hands resting on his thighs, Amenhotep seems every inch the pharaoh. But one detail disturbs the regal impression: Beside the king’s left foot, with all the subtlety of a Times Square billboard, appears the crudely carved name “Belzoni.” How this Italian commoner came to be forever linked with an Egyptian pharaoh is now the subject of a lively, witty biography by Ivor Noël Hume.

Though Giovanni Battista Belzoni is not generally recalled today, he is still infamous among archaeologists. Born in 1778 in Padua, Italy, Giovanni worked in his father’s barbershop until age 16, then left to study in Rome. After Napoleon Bonaparte captured the Eternal City in 1797, Belzoni wandered Europe for a time, ending up in London, where he hoped to secure work as a hydraulic engineer. But the only job the 6-foot-6 Italian could find was as a circus performer, billed as “the Patagonian Sampson” and toting a dozen lesser men about the stage.
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Islanders living in the Torres Strait, between Australia & New Guinea have won their case to have ancestral bones held by London’s Natural History Museum returned.

From:
BBC News

23 November 2011 Last updated at 13:17
Torres Strait islanders reclaim their ancestral bones
By Pallab Ghosh

Representatives of the Torres Strait islanders collected bones of their ancestors from the Natural History Museum in London.

The development is the latest step in a long campaign by the islanders to have the human remains returned to them so they can be properly buried and – in their view, allow the spirits of their ancestors to rest in peace.
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Greek culture minister, Pavlos Geroulanos, has met with the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles while on a visit to London.

From:
Greek Reporter

Greek Culture Minister Meets with British Committee for Restitution of Parthenon Marbles
Posted on 08 November 2011

A meeting was held among representatives of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles and the Greek Minister of Culture and Tourism Pavlos Geroulanos, who travelled to the United Kingdom in order to attend the London Tourism Exhibition.

The meeting’s attendees included the British Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, Andrew George, who promotes the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.
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More coverage of the newly published letters relating to the history of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. The letters are particularly interesting, as they reveal how long standing Greece’s attempts to secure the return of the sculptures have been.

From:
GR Reporter

21 Documents About the Return of the Parthenon Marbles Revealed after 200 Years
By Areti Kotseli on March 22, 2012

Since its establishment in 1821, the Greek state has declared its intentions to return to Athens the sculptures from the Parthenon held by the British Museum. This is what twenty-one documents, under the title “The Acropolis of Athens”, revealing the correspondence between the ministers of education and foreign affairs, and reports of the Greek Ambassador in London at that time, have proved. The publishing house “Alitia” has published the documents for the first time and the luxury collection is available only in the souvenir shop of the Acropolis Museum.

“This record is a great weapon in the hands of the Greek state in the negotiations with the British Museum, because it shows the earliest efforts to restore and protect the Athenian Acropolis and to clear it of any foreign intervention,” said the publisher Kostas Tsaruhas.
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More coverage of the new Manga comic book, with a storyline involving the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.

Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure
Author: Hoshino Yukinobu
Publisher: British Museum Press
ISBN: 0714124656

From:
New Scientist

British Museum gets the manga treatment
17:17 1 November 2011
Cian O’Luanaigh, contributor

Missing artefacts, a 200-year-old conspiracy, and a mysterious airship over London. Oh, and someone’s nicked Stonehenge…

Folklore and ethnology expert Professor Munakata Tadakusa certainly has his work cut out in Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure, the latest collection of comics from acclaimed manga artist Hoshino Yukinobu. Invited to give a talk at London’s British Museum, he soon finds himself investigating a plot to steal museum artefacts and return them to their “rightful” owners.
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A ridiculous proposal (I know its intended as part of a humorous article – but unfortunately, it is not that far from the xenophobic approach advocated by certain sectors of the British Press too), that reuniting all of the Parthenon Marbles in London (I.e. shipping the ones in the New Acropolis Museum over to the UK), is the best possible proposal for a way forward.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Welcome to misery tourism – a Gap Yah for Lefties
By Damian Thompson Politics Last updated: October 28th, 2011

[...]

I’ve never been moved by the Elgin Marbles, despite their grand setting in the British Museum. If they were all in one piece, they’d be breathtaking, but those missing heads spoil it for me.

On the other hand, I’ve always enjoyed the fits of self-righteous rage that our ownership of the marbles has provoked in modern Greeks. First, I’ve never believed that they’re the descendants of the people who carved the marbles. Second, I’ve never trusted Greek assurances that they’d look after them. At any rate, the whole debate is now academic. Far from returning the marbles, perhaps this is the time to take the whole Parthenon off their hands in return for our contribution to the bail-out. Think how splendid it would look in the middle of Bloomsbury.

[...]

At a lecture at UWA in Perth, British Museum director, Neil MacGregor insists that artefacts should not be returned by museums to their countries of origin. Instead, he proposes that travelling exhibitions will become more popular in future, allowing some of the artefacts in question to be exhibited around the world.

This idea sounds fine in practice – but it doesn’t help to correct the many perceived and actual injustices that led to large amounts of the artefacts being in museums such as his in the first place.

From:
WA Today

Museum boss defends keeping of precious artefacts
Jenna Clarke
October 27, 2011 – 5:57AM

Artefacts of historical and cultural significance which are displayed in major museums around the world should not be returned to their country of origin, according to art world leader Neil MacGregor.

During an address at the University of Western Australia this week the British Museum director came to the defence of museums around the world where indigenous and ancient objects are displayed.
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The return of the Euphronius Krater to Italy a few years ago appears to have been far from the end to the Met’s problems over looted artefacts in their collection.

Further information on this story is available here and a more detailed description of the artefacts involved including photos is here.

From:
Artinfo

More Antiquities Woes for U.S. Museums Loom, As Turkey Demands 18 Artifacts From the Metropolitan Museum
by Benjamin Sutton
Published: March 20, 2012

Former Metropolitan director Phillipe de Montebello famously faced one of the greatest challenges of his career over looted Greek antiquities in the museum’s collection, ultimately diffusing it with his ingenious “returns-for-loans” strategy. Now, new director Thomas Campbell faces a fresh battle over dodgy antiquities, this time from Turkey. And it’s heating up.

At the beginning of the month the Turkish government made aggressive moves to assert its claims on supposedly looted objects, banning its own institutions from loaning antiquities to museums including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Met, until artifacts held in those museums’ collections were returned. While the Art Newspaper reported that 12 unidentified items at the Metropolitan were in dispute, the blog Chasing Aphrodite is now claiming that the number has escalated to 18, and has even offered a specific list of the contested artifacts.
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Following the cancelled auction of a Tjuringa stone in Kent, the current owner hopes to be able to hand it back to the Arunta Aboriginals in Australia.

From:
Independent

Row over sale of sacred Aboriginal stone
Rob Sharp
2011-10-28 00:00:01.0

A cultural conflict between Britain and Australia sparked by the attempted sale of a sacred Aboriginal artefact in Kent looks set to be reignited.

The etched stone “tjuringa”, which only Aboriginal male elders are permitted to handle, was withdrawn from sale after provoking international demands for its return to Australia. But its elderly seller is said to be still considering the future of the priceless item.
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Letters reveal that between 1834 & 1842, Greece’s king Otto considered purchasing the Parthenon sculptures back from the British Museum, or exchanging them for other artefacts that were less culturally significant to Greece. I’m interested to know what the British response at that time was & the reasons given for not proceeding with the proposal.

From:
Agence France Presse

Greece mulled buying Acropolis marbles from Britain
(AFP) – 3 hours ago

ATHENS — Greece’s Bavarian-born King Otto considered offering Britain cash or antiquities in the 19th century in exchange for marbles removed from the Acropolis, previously unpublished historical files have shown.

“There is a document to the foreign ministry, subsequently forwarded to Otto’s minister in London, with instructions on how to request the marbles back,” Acropolis Museum director Demetrios Pantermalis told a conference on Monday.
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