Showing results 49 - 60 of 131 for the tag: Egypt.
November 11, 2010
Posted at 2:22 pm in Events, Similar cases
Tiffany Jenkins (who was also one of the organisers of this event) is giving a talk this evening at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery about the ethical issues surrounding human remains in museums.
From:
Bristol City Council
Human Remains: objects to study or ancestors to bury?
Thursday 11November 2010 7.30 –9pm
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Speaker: Dr Tiffany Jenkins
FULLY BOOKED
Cultural sociologist Dr Tiffany Jenkins explores the ethical questions surrounding museums and the holding and display of human remains. What is respectful treatment? How should they be displayed? Should human remains be repatriated?
Dr Tiffany Jenkins is arts and society director of the Institute of Ideas. Her book ‘Contesting Human Remains: Museums and the Crisis of Cultural Authority’ is out Autumn 2010.
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October 21, 2010
Posted at 6:30 pm in Similar cases
I have long argued that the argument about museums outside the west being unable to look after artefacts securely is entirely disingenuous. Unfortunately institutions such as Cairo’s Mahmoud Khalil Museum make it a lot harder to persuade people that this is the case though, as they perpetuate the stereotype of mismanaged underfunded institutions where thieves can just walk in & help themselves to valuable works of art.
From:
Current Intelligence
Cairo’s Thomas Crowne Affair
25/08/2010
Vincent van Gogh’s 1887 painting Poppy Flowers (Vase with Flowers) was stolen from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in the Giza area of Cairo on Saturday. The roughly one-foot-square work, valued at $50 million, was cut from its frame after robbers borrowed a near-by sofa and used it as a makeshift ladder; not exactly the work of professionals. Shortly after news of the theft broke, Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosni, issued a statement claiming that an Italian couple seen suspiciously“visiting a toilet” and then “rapidly leaving the premises” had been detained in connection with the crime. Alas, it turns out that the tale of international intrigue proved to be untrue, and Hosni retracted the statement a few hours later.
As the narrative of the theft continues to unfold it’s beginning to sound more and more like the plot to The Thomas Crowne Affair (the Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway version, of course). Not long after accusing the Italian tourists, the deputy culture minister, Muhsin Sha’lan, and four of the museum’s security guards were detained on suspicion of neglect and delinquency. Professional delinquency might be an understatement: the museum had an abysmal attendance of only ten people that day, none of the museum’s alarms were working, and only seven of the 43 surveillance cameras were functioning at the time of the robbery.
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August 19, 2010
Posted at 8:02 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
Egypt’s Zahi Hawass has already secured the return of over 30,000 looted artefacts in recent years – he is still aiming higher though at some of the most well known items that hold an iconic status internationally & for him, define Egypt’s identity.
From:
Free Internet Press
Zahi Hawass – Egypt’s Avenger Of The Pharaohs
2010-05-28 15:20:10
Posted By: Intellpuke
Egypt, plagued by tomb raiders and art dealers, has lost large portions of its pharaonic heritage to Europe and the United States. The head of the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities is waging a bitter moral campaign against the West, and he is now demanding the return of six of the most beautiful masterpieces.
It is 5 a.m. and Zahi Hawass is sitting in his SUV, freshly showered, about to drive out to the Bahariya Oasis for a press appearance. The streets are still empty as Cairo shimmers in the rose-colored morning sun. Hawass must hurry to avoid the morning traffic.
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August 12, 2010
Posted at 12:44 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases
Following their attendance at the recent conference in Egypt, Indian officials want to make a major push to apply pressure to other countries that hold disputed artefacts from India.
From:
Telegraph (India)
Tuesday , May 18 , 2010
India in global bid to get back treasures
SEBANTI SARKAR
Calcutta, May 17: India has joined a global initiative to restore antiquities back to their countries of origin for the first time after decades of unsuccessfully trying to reclaim stolen treasures like the Koh-i-Noor diamond and the Birmingham Buddha.
“The legal process for restitution of antiquities is not only time-consuming but also expensive. An international campaign with Unesco’s backing is certainly the better option for us,” the director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Gautam Sengupta, said today, on the eve of International Museum Day.
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August 11, 2010
Posted at 1:09 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum
Kwame Opoku looks at the somewhat peculiar assertions made by Michael Kimmelman, about the Parthenon Sculptures being split between different countries that: The effect of this vandalism on the education and enlightenment of people in all the various places where the dismembered works have landed has been in many ways democratizing.
From:
Modern Ghana
DEMOCRATIZATION THROUGH VANDALISM: NEW ANSWER TO DEMANDS FOR RESTITUTION OF CULTURAL ARTEFACTS?
Columnist: Kwame Opoku, Dr.
“You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are the supreme symbol of nobility. They are a tribute to democratic philosophy. They are our aspiration and our name. They are the essence of Greekness”.
Melina Mercouri (1)
After a long period of studying the question of restitution of cultural artefacts, I thought I had heard all the arguments that could be advanced for or against restitution. However, I received a jolt of surprise when I saw an article by Michael Kimmelman entitled “Who Draws the Borders of Culture?” in which, among other contestable statements, he wrote concerning the dismemberment of the Parthenon and its scattering outside Greece, the following:
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August 10, 2010
Posted at 1:06 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
Perhaps as one of the areas of the world that has lost the largest quantities of artefacts, Africa is rapidly becoming one of the loudest voices in the campaigns for the return of artefacts from the museums & institutions of the west.
From:
Afrik.com
African cultural heritage fight with the West fuelled by national identity
Wednesday 12 May 2010 / by Alicia Koch
The question of African cultural heritage in the West is still hanging in the balance. Should their valuable artifacts remain in European and North American institutions that possess the necessary preservation techniques and means or should they be returned to their country of origin where they could forge a much needed sense of national identity? Shock waves created by the international conference on the protection and restitution of “looted” Cultural Heritage which took place in Cairo, April 8, and led by Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the powerful Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, has revived a debate that has long been relegated to furtive whispers.
At a time when the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, known for its remarkable collection of primitive art, has decided to give back a Makonde mask that has been in its possession since 1985 to Tanzania, the issue of the restitution of sacred African artifacts could not be more sensitive. Stolen from a museum in Dar Es Salaam, in 1984, the mask found its way into the prestigious Swiss museum where it was kept for 25 years! Given back to the Eastern African country officially as a “gift” at a formal ceremony held under the auspices of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in Paris on Monday, the mask is well on its way back to its ancestral abode. This marks a further step in the process of the restitution of looted artifacts to Africa.
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Posted at 12:48 pm in British Museum, Similar cases
It is a few years now since the Declaration of Universal Museums. Whilst many have declared that the concept (as portrayed at the time) is dead in the water, this powerful group of institutions still have the potential to manipulate popular opinion & to over-rule the more democratic backbones of the museum community such as ICOM.
From:
Guardian News (Nigeria)
Fatwa of Cairo gathering on looted artefacts
By Tajudeen Sowole
COLLECTIVE attempt made last month – perhaps for the first time – by countries demanding for restitution of disputed cultural objects is though laudable. However, it is an uphill task and capable of rattling existing conventions on the issue.
The two-day conference tagged International Cooperation for the Protection and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage and held in Cairo, Egypt came eight years after keepers of these artefacts gathered under the name, Bizot Group and declared a concept of universal museum. The ownership of such works, Bizot argued in France, should not be confined to geographical boundaries.
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August 9, 2010
Posted at 9:33 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases
Many who are against the restitution of various artefacts to their countries of origin, argue that the countries today are completely different ones (in many cases with different names) to those from which the artefacts originated. To argue this though it to lose track of the geographical connection itself – artefacts are a product of a time & place. Even if the times have changed, the place is still where it always was.
From:
Egypt Today
May 2010
Whose Heritage?
Repatriating ancient treasures seems like a noble cause, but history might end up the loser
By Michael Kaput
Forget bailouts. Part of the possible solution to Greece’s economic woes is 2,500 years old and sits in the British Museum.
It makes sense to Daniel Korski, who wrote a March 4 article, “Why we should give the Elgin Marbles back to Greece,” in the British magazine The Spectator. Korski was referring to the sculptures and friezes originally mounted on the Parthenon, which were removed from Ottoman-administered Greece by Lord Thomas Elgin from 1801 to 1812. Currently in the British Museum, the marbles have been a long-standing slight to Greek national pride. Finally returning them, suggests Korski, could give Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou the political capital he needs to sustain unpopular economic reforms in his bankrupt country.
The suggestion is not as crazy as you might think. Antiquities are an effective weapon in any country’s political arsenal. But the furor generated over who owns which antiquities is swiftly superseding the appreciation of their cultural and historical value.
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June 11, 2010
Posted at 8:45 pm in Elgin Marbles, Similar cases
More coverage of the conclusions of the conference in Egypt on the restitution of cultural property.
From:
Reuters
Egypt urges states to cooperate on artefact return
Wed Apr 7, 2010 5:49pm GMT
CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt and other states which say artefacts have been illegally taken abroad should work together and list items they want returned from Western museums, Egypt’s top archaeologist said on Wednesday.
Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, was speaking to representatives from 21 countries, some like Greece and Syria, seeking the return of artefacts and others like the United States which have returned stolen antiquities.
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June 7, 2010
Posted at 9:00 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases
At the conclusion of the conference in Egypt on the restitution of looted artefacts, Zahi Hawass re-iterated a point that he has made in the past, that Museums that he has the power to make life very difficult for institutions that refuse to co-operate to try & resolve cases involving disputed artefacts.
From:
Bloomberg News
Egypt’s Hawass Sees ‘Miserable Life’ for Museums With Relics
By Daniel Williams
April 8 (Bloomberg) — Egypt’s chief antiquities administrator wrapped up a two-day conference among countries that want valuable relics held abroad returned by threatening to make “life miserable” for museums that keep them.
“We will decide together what to do,” said Zahi Hawass, who heads the Supreme Council of Antiquities, at the end of the Cairo conference that attracted 16 delegates and nine observers from abroad. “We will make life miserable for museums that refuse to repatriate.”
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Posted at 8:53 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases
Further coverage of the recent conference in Cairo on the restitution of looted antiquities.
From:
BBC News
Page last updated at 23:31 GMT, Wednesday, 7 April 2010 00:31 UK
Egypt calls for antiquities unity
States which say artefacts have been stolen and displayed overseas should unite to recover their stolen heritage, Egypt’s top archaeologist has said.
Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), urged culture officials from around the world to draw up lists of missing items.
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Posted at 8:45 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases
The recent conference in Egypt, highlights yet again that pressure for the return of cultural artefacts is growing from many parts of the world.
From:
Daily Telegraph
British Museum under pressure to give up leading treasures
by Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Published: 7:39PM BST 07 Apr 2010
The British museum is to come under renewed pressure to give up leading treasures as 16 countries plan to sign a declaration that demands the return of artefacts sent overseas generations ago.
The demand, issued in Cairo at the end of a two-day conference, is addressed to every country that holds ancient relics.
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