Another success story, a few days after Greece secured the return of illegally acquired artefacts from a prominent US collector.

From:
Associated Press

Hungary to return looted antiquities to Greece
By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS – Sep 11, 2008

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Hungary has offered to return a collection of antiquities on display in a leading Budapest museum that were illegally exported from Greece, the Hungarian foreign minister said Thursday.

Kinga Goncz said Greek and Hungarian experts would meet to study the 22 pieces and discuss which would be repatriated.
Read the rest of this entry »

Greece has secured the return of two artefacts from a US collector after lobbying for their return based on the fact that they had been removed illegally from Greece. Following the successes of Italian efforts, Greece has in recent years stepped up their campaign for the return of any artefacts looted from the country.

From:
Reuters

Greece gets antiquities back from U.S. collector
Wed Sep 3, 2008 3:10pm BST

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece celebrated on Wednesday the return of two rare smuggled antiquities from a prominent U.S. collector and expressed hope other ancient Greek treasures housed overseas would one day be sent home.

A fourth century B.C. bronze vase and the upper part of a marble tombstone were returned by U.S. collector Shelby White in August, a year after the Culture Ministry started lobbying to get them back on evidence they had been smuggled out of Greece.
Read the rest of this entry »

James Cuno, Neil MacGregor, Phillipe De Montebello & Thomas Gaehtgens represent the astonishingly one sided collection of speakers lecturing in Chicago on the concept formerly known as the Universal Museum. (details of each lecture follow the main article).

From:
Chicago Art Institute

NEWS: The Art Institute of Chicago Presents: 360 Degrees: Art beyond Borders
22 Aug 2008

The Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois

27 September 2008–16 June 2009

[...]

Join us for a wealth of insightful and exciting 360 Degrees programming.

# Lectures: Four engaging lecture series occur throughout the season. In “The Fate of Encyclopedic Museums,” directors from the Art Institute, the Getty, the British Museum, and the Met discuss the role of the encyclopedic museum. Noted scholars also explore current and historical perspectives on globalization and Art Institute curators give their take on the encyclopedic nature of their collections.
Read the rest of this entry »

Maurizio Fiorilli has in recent years been no stranger to restitution cases in his work for the Italian Government. Here he talks about some of the issues he is dealing with, as well as the way that the problems of looting are exacerbated by the policies of many of the museums that receive the stolen artefacts.

From:
Sunday Telegraph

Maurizio Fiorilli: scourge of the tomb raiders
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 10/08/2008

Bad news for the art thieves who for years have been selling Italy’s ancient treasures to foreign museums: ‘Il Bulldog’ is on your case. Alastair Smart meets the resolute attorney demanding their return

Pasquale Camera didn’t do light lunches. After a third plate of veal Napolitano, washed down by his nth glass of Barolo, the 25-stone ex-police captain galumphed his way out of a Naples restaurant, climbed into his Renault 21, and set off north for Rome. The August heat was intense, and just a few miles up the motorway, he fell asleep at the wheel, smashed into the guardrail and overturned his car. He died instantly.
Read the rest of this entry »

Nicolas Mottas writes about some of the current developments in the campaign to reunite the Parthenon Marbles in Athens, along with some of the reason why it is imperative that this happens.

From:
OpEdNews

July 8, 2008 at 07:49:17
Restore the Parthenon Marbles
by Nicolas Mottas Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

“We say to British goverment: you have kept those sculptures for almost two centuries. You have cared for them as well as you could, for which we thank you. But now, in the name of fairness and morality, please give them back. I sincerely believe that such a gesture from Great Britain would ever honour your name”. Melina Mercouri, Greek actress and politician, Oxford Union, June 1986.

With pleasure I was informed that the British-based Greek enterpreneur Sir Stelios Hadji-Ioannou is willing to participate actively in the campaign for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles. The case of Marbles reunification’s effort is, less or more, known. Information about the historical backround of the ancient sculptures, their removal from the Athens Acropolis and transfer to London, can be found in various sources, including the internet. On that issue there has been a decades-long concern which is connected with the restoration of the Marbles to their homeland, Greece. However, as it is mostly known, no progress has been done on the issue, mainly due to the continual denial of British Museum’s administrations to discuss such a possibility. Yet, the question still remains: should the Parthenon Marbles return to their natural environment, in the place where they were created, or they should remain in the place where Lord Elgin moved them in the early 19th Century?
Read the rest of this entry »

Depending on who you speak to, freer circulation of cultural property is either a great idea, or a terrible thing. It all hangs on whether they think they will benefit or not from such a move. Those who argue against help to prop up the anti-deaccessioning clauses in the charters of many of the UK’s leading museums. Maybe people need to accept that there is no right or wrong answer – what is good in some situations may be bad in others – so it should not be the role of the law to put blanket regulations in place that stifle any efforts at interpretation based on the case in hand.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Do we really want the freer circulation of cultural goods?
Kavita Singh | 5.6.08 | Issue 192

A few years ago, I received a grant from the Getty Foundation for a project on museums in South Asia. I was just about to send 12 researchers to around 100 museums all over India, to get a sense of what place museums occupy in the social landscape of the country today. I asked the Secretary of the Department of Culture for a letter of support, but when I met her, I got an earful. She said, you are going to send people to museums in remote places that have valuable artefacts and very poor security. You will submit your reports to the Getty, and then all our things will begin to disappear.

I dismissed this bureaucrat’s remarks as an aberration, but in 2007 the same sorts of anxieties surfaced next door to India, as the Bangladesh National Museum made preparations for a loan exhibition to the Musée Guimet in Paris.
Read the rest of this entry »

Often, when an artwork in the UK comes up for sale, much is made about how it must be saved for the nation – to prevent it falling into the hands of a collector of museum abroad. When countries such as Greece request the return of their artefacts however, their statements are criticised as being purely nationalistic.

From:
Guardian

Tate chief attacks ‘save for the nation’ art policy
Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent
Wednesday November 12, 2003
The Guardian

Sir Nicholas Serota, the most powerful man in the museum world, dramatically broke ranks with his colleagues yesterday to challenge the idea that vast sums of money should be spent to stop important works of art leaving Britain.

The director of the Tate museums delivered a devastating indictment of the reflex to blindly save treasures “for the nation” when foreign collectors or museums try to buy them, a sacred cow of cultural policy until now.
Read the rest of this entry »