The British government is causing controversy by ordering various artefacts to be sold by liquidators to pay the tax bill of collector Robin Symes, despite the fact that, with no export licenses, it is likely that these artefacts were illegally looted from Italy.

From:
The Guardian

UK accused over sale of ‘looted’ Italian treasures to pay tax bill
Rome wants back the 3,000-year-old Etruscan artefacts that came into the hands of a dealer – but ministers aim to sell them
Dalya Alberge
Sunday 11 April 2010

Ministers have been condemned for forcing through the sale of up to 1,000 antiquities allegedly stolen from Italy, in order to pay the debts of a bankrupt private collector.

The Home Office has sparked outrage by allowing Roman bronzes, Etruscan gold and other treasures to be placed on the market by liquidators acting for the government in an attempt to recover unpaid taxes from the former owner, Robin Symes, a dealer with alleged links to the smuggling trade and a UK prison record.
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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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Kwame Opoku gives some thoughts on Colin Renfrew’s review of James Cuno’s book.

From:
Afrikanet

Datum: 04.12.08 14:54
Kategorie: Kolumnen
Von: Dr. Kwame Opoku
COMMENTS ON LORD RENFREW’S STATEMENTS ON LOOTED ARTEFACTS
CAN WE CONDEMN CONTEMPORARY LOOTING OF ARTEFACTS WITHOUT CONDEMNING COLONIAL LOOT AND PLUNDER? COMMENTS ON LORD RENFREW’S STATEMENTS ON LOOTED ARTEFACTS

In his review of Cuno’s Who owns Antiquities?, (www.savingantiquities.org) Lord Renfrew sees as a weakness in Cuno’s argument a confusion between antiquities looted in recent times and plunder by imperial powers and declares:

“But the issues in the two cases – modern, clandestine looting, versus colonial or imperial appropriation, mainly during the nineteenth century and by the leading world powers of the day – are not the same”.
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Colin Renfrew has published his review of James Cuno’s book in The Burlington Magazine, reproduced here by SAFE.

From:
The Burlington Magazine

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over our Ancient Heritage. By James Cuno.
228 pp. incl. 6 b. & w. ills. (Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2008), £14.95. ISBN 978–0–691–13712–4.
Reviewed by COLIN RENFREW
McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge

THE POLEMIC OVER what antiquities should be acquired by museums, and which ones they should decline in order to discourage the illicit traffic in them, has become much louder in recent months, with the reluctant return to Italy of antiquities, worth many millions of dollars, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. These, it was claimed, had been illicitly excavated and illegally exported in recent decades, a charge tacitly accepted by the museums which agreed to their return. In this readable and lucidly argued book James Cuno sets out what might, ten years ago, have been described as the art museum director’s case on the proprieties of ownership and acquisition. His position is still indeed held by the collection of which he is Director (the Art Institute of Chicago) along with such other influential institutions as the Metropolitan Museum or the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. But the times have moved on, and other museums, including now the Getty itself, have shown themselves willing to adopt more careful acquisition policies and to avoid buying antiquities which might have been the product of looting. Cuno here, thoughtfully and with well-chosen examples, reasserts the traditional view.
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James Cuno & Lord Renfrew discuss where ancient artefacts are best displayed, James Cuno has made his view clear on a regular basis in recent months. Lord Renfrew previously ran the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at Cambridge University.

If you go the BBC website, you can listen to the original interview.

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 09:57 GMT, Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Who owns our ancient past?

What should be done with objects from antiquity, when their provenance is uncertain?

From the debate over the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles, to the conviction of art dealer Giacomo Medici in 2004 for selling millions of pounds worth of stolen Italian antiquities on the international market, curators face a minefield when acquiring new objects.
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