Different countries have in recent years used a wide range of techniques to try & secure the return of disputed artefacts. Some of these approaches have had more success than others.

From:
South China Morning Post

Countries go to greater lengths to get looted treasures back
5 Mar 2009
South China Morning Post

China is not the only nation that wants missing relics back and many countries employ different means to retrieve them, write Tim Johnson and Julie Sell

Cambodia, are barely able to halt the plunder of sites like the ancient Angkor temples complex.
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Three academics who have helped in the restitution of Parthenon fragments to Greece have been honoured at a ceremony at the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Athens News Agency

02/12/2008
Parthenon Marbles

Culture Minister Mihalis Liapis on Tuesday addressed an event held at the new Acropolis Museum in honour of three academics who have made great contributions to the effort for the return of the Parthenon Marbles currently held at the British Museum in London.

The three are Prof. Tonio Holscher, professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Prof. Louis Godart, advisor to the Italian President for the Conservation of Artistic Patrimony and professor of Mycenean Philology at Federico II University of Naples, and Prof. Antonia Sofikitou, who is chair of the Italian Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles and teaches Modern Greek Literature at the University of Palermo.
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Sharon Waxman, author of Loot, looks at the Metropolitan Museum’s upcoming change of director & how the museum might handle future cultural property restitution claims.

From:
New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor
How Did That Vase Wind Up in the Metropolitan?
By SHARON WAXMAN
Published: December 1, 2008
Los Angeles

THE imminent arrival of Thomas Campbell as the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is much more than a simple changing of the guard after the long tenure of his predecessor, Philippe de Montebello. Mr. Campbell, who will take over one month from today, is a 46-year-old curator from the Met’s department of European sculpture and decorative arts, and he has a unique opportunity to shift the tone of an enduring and increasingly hostile debate in the world of art and museums: Who should own the treasures of antiquity?

Up to now, the parties on either side of this dispute have stood in opposing corners with their fingers in their ears. The governments of Italy and Turkey have filed lawsuits to force the return of plundered and looted artworks. Egypt has threatened to suspend excavation permits if iconic artifacts are not repatriated. Greece has built a new museum in Athens in large part to justify its renewed demands for the return of the Elgin Marbles from Britain.
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For many years, Museums sat comfortably in the knowledge that despite turning a blind eye to the looted antiquities in their collections, the law was on their side & successful prosecutions were rare, even in relatively clear cut cases. In the past three or four years though, a constantly evolving situation has begun to shift far more rapidly.

So far, Italy has taken the lead role in spearheading the wave of restitutions, but other countries are carefully watching & learning.

From:
Cleveland.com

Analysis: Museums often pay the price for looted antiquities
by Steven Litt/Plain Dealer Art Critic
Sunday November 23, 2008, 6:30 AM

On Sept. 13, 1995, Swiss and Italian police raided a suite of offices in a warehouse on the southwest side of Geneva rented by Italian antiquities dealer Giacomo de Medici.

Behind the gray metal door of Room 23, on Corridor 17, they found shelves packed with looted vases, statues, bronzes, frescoes, mosaics and jewelry.
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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.
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The Vatican have so far only returned one piece of the Parthenon Marbles from their collection – this article however hints that another of the two remaining ones will be on its way to Greece in the coming months.

From:
Athens News Agency

11/06/2008
Vatican returns Parthenon fragment

A fragment of a Parthenon frieze returned to Greece by the Vatican’s Museum Gregoriano Etrusco was presented by Culture Minister Michalis Liapis stressing that “this gesture by one of the most important museums in Europe sets an example for others to follow and eventually restore the unity of the Parthenon Marbles”.

The special event on Wednesday was held at the New Museum of the Acropolis in the presence of Vatican’s ambassador to Greece Patrick Coveney, Greece’s ambassador to the Vatican M. Hiskakis, head of the Vatican museum’s classical antiquities department Giandomenico Spinola and Organization for the Construction of the New Museum of the Acropolis President Prof. Dimitris Pantermalis.
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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book about the looting that fills the museums of the West.

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.
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A rather late piece from the BBC on the return of the Palermo fragment of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece.

From:
BBC News

Saturday, 4 October 2008
Italy returns Parthenon fragment

Italy’s president has returned a piece of the frieze from the Parthenon temple to Greece after some 200 years.

President Giorgio Napolitano said the move was part of a campaign to restore artefacts “torn from their context”.
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A new exhibition hosted in the Colosseum, traces how Italy learned the importance of protecting its heritage & the methods used to stop its destruction, beginning in the Renaissance & continuing to the present day.

From:
ANSA (Italy)

2008-10-03 15:36
Colosseum spotlights saved art
Exhibit shows how Italy learned to save its heritage

(ANSA) – Rome, October 3 – A new show at the Colosseum highlights Italy’s strong tradition in preserving its art heritage.

The exhibition, entitled Ruins and Rebirth of Art In Italy, shows how efforts to foil tomb raiders stretch from the Renaissance to the present day, culminating in the formation of Italy’s world-famous art cops, a Carabinieri unit which has worked in Iraq and other countries targeted by traffickers.
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Kwame Opoku writes on the return of the Palermo Fragment from the Parthenon frieze earlier this week & how the British attitude differs from the that of the Italians.

From:
Modern Ghana

ITALY RETURNS PARTHENON FRAGMENT
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Fri, 26 Sep 2008

Italy has returned to Greece, a piece of the Parthenon, “Palermo fragment” which has been missing from Athens for 200 years. The fragment showing the right foot of the Greek hunting goddess Artemis and part of her robe had been in the collection of the Antonio Salinas Archaeological Museum, Palermo, Italy. (1)

How did this fragment from the Parthenon end in Palermo? It was part of the marbles removed by the infamous Lord Elgin, then British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire which was occupying Greece. Elgin gave the fragment as gift to the British Consul-General of Sicily in 1816 and took the bulk of the sculptures to London where they are now in the British Museum. Greece has been demanding their return ever since then but to no avail. (2)
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A press release from the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles following the return of the Palermo fragment of the Parthenon Sculptures earlier this week.

From:
British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles

Press Release
The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles welcomes the return of the ‘Palermo fragment’ to Athens

YESTERDAY 24 September 2008, the President of the Italian Republic, on a state visit to Greece, brought with him, to present to his Greek counterpart, the ‘Palermo fragment’ from Slab VI of the East Frieze of the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens. It had spent more than two hundred years in Sicily, after being acquired by a British consul and passed on to the Salinas Museum in Palermo. It portrays, in exquisite detail, the draped lower leg, ankle and foot of a seated goddess, probably Artemis. It will immediately take its place in an inaugural exhibition of returned artefacts, at the brilliantly-designed New Acropolis Museum.
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The return by others of artefacts that were once part of the Elgin marbles (e.g. the Palermo Fragment), can only be seen as strengthening Greece’s position & adding to the pressure on the British Museum.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Italy returns Elgin Marbles fragment to Greece
Italy has given back to Greece a fragment of the Parthenon sculptures – increasing pressure on Britain to return the Elgin Marbles.
By Nick Squires In Rome
Last Updated: 6:01PM BST 24 Sep 2008

The 2,500-year-old section of marble was presented to the Greek government by Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, as a gesture of goodwill between the two Mediterranean countries.

The 14-by-13-inch artifact consists of a foot and part of a dress hem from a sculpture of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
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