Two recent auctions of disputed cultural property have drawn media attention to items that few people knew about previously. In both cases though, an added dimension has been created by attempts by the selling party to agree some sort of conditions under which they might be able to solve the dispute. This could be seen as an implicit acknowledgement that the restitution claims carry a level of validity, but in each case it has been used as a means to try & push a political agenda.

Standing back from the cases & temporarily setting aside the way in which the artefacts were acquired, it comes across as artefacts being taken, but then they can be returned to the original owners if they meet certain conditions. One has to ask, whether it is right for these selling parties to try & grab some small chunk of moral high ground (that they are prepared to negotiate – return the artefacts) where in reality they are holding the pieces to ransom as a means of trying to resolve other entirely unrelated issues. Whether or not the issues need to be resolved should not be the question & the setting of arduous preconditions to negotiations is merely a means of avoiding discussions that the sellers were never really interested in in the first place. The British Museum has in the past tried to attach similar preconditions to entering negotiations on the Elgin Marbles – as a barrier to prevent any sort of negotiations taking place.

From:
MSNBC

Chinese bronzes, Gandhi’s glasses in art tussle
updated 8:47 p.m. ET March 8, 2009
Art auctions becoming battlegrounds over rights to world’s culture

LONDON – A bronze rabbit’s head was the first to go under the hammer, then came Mohandas Gandhi’s glasses and sandals.

Auctions are becoming a new battleground for art dealers, activists and aggrieved countries dueling for plundered antiquities and lost pieces of heritage.
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Some more information on the return of the lekythos to Greece yesterday from Switzerland. Looting Matters also discusses this event in more detail, looking at the secrecy that seems to surround some of the coverage of it.

Greek Culture Minister Mihalis Liapis has also used this event to highlight again the need for the Elgin Marbles to be returned.

From:
MSNBC

Ancient urn returns to Greece
Campaign underway to reclaim illegally exported antiquities
Associated Press

updated 3:41 p.m. ET April 21, 2008ATHENS, Greece – A 2,400-year-old funerary urn has been returned to Greece and put on display, part of a campaign to reclaim illegally exported antiquities from museums and art dealers around the world.

The marble urn was displayed Monday at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
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The Greek Prime Minister has been overheard pleading with Tony Blair while at a conference, asking him to try & sort out the Parthenon Marbles situation, as it would boost his ratings in the polls.

From:
Macedonian Press Agency

FRIDAY, 17 OCTOBER 2003
ELECTORAL BATTLE FOR THE RETURN OF THE MARBLES
Athens, 17 October 2003 (12:44 UTC+2)

The issue of the return of the Parthenon Marbles prior to the 2004 elections was raised by Prime Minister Costas Simitis in a meeting with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, in the margin of the informal EU Summit in Brussels. “Mr. Simitis confessed he is losing the elections”, commented ND Spokesperson Thodoros Roussopoulos, who accused Mr. Simitis of “using a national issue for party and electoral interests”. “The event that the return of the Marbles is being discussed by the Greek and UK Prime Ministers should be greeted by all Greeks, without a party reflex”, stated Minister of Culture Evaggelos Venizelos. However there is information that there had been prior discussion between the two PMs on the return of the Marbles in correspondence between them, while Mr. Blair’s last letter “left room for hope”, according to “Flash” radio.

“The Prime Minister’s first and foremost goal is that the Marbles be back before the 2004 Olympics”, stated Government Spokesperson and Minister of the Press Christos Protopapas, in response to ND’s criticism.
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Work has now begun on the project to return the Axum Obelisk from Italy to Ethipia.

From:
MSNBC

Stolen obelisk heading home to Africa raises issue of looted art worldwide
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROME, Nov. 8 — An ancient obelisk that Italian Fascist forces hauled out of Ethiopia in the 1930s is being disassembled in central Rome for its journey home — a rare restitution that comes amid international debate over the rightful ownership of looted works.

A major step in the complicated return of the fragile yet weighty Axum Obelisk came Friday, when workers removed a 22-foot-long chunk from the top that weighs about 40 tons.

Seeing part of the 1,700-year-old monument swinging from a crane — and headed home — prompted a group of Ethiopians to burst into cries of delight.
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The British Museum is 250 years old. In the time since it opened, a lot has changed – the means of acquiring artefacts, which were once acceptable, are no longer seen in the same light.

Perhaps now, in celebration of this anniversary, the time is right for the British Museum to re-invent itself, but repatriating the disputed artefacts in its collection, by negotiating new deals & exchanges, by looking forward rather than backward.

From:
Guardian

National treasure
In praise of the British Museum
Leader
Saturday June 7, 2003
The Guardian

This nation has too few monuments to the mind. Quite the grandest can be found in the capital – the British Museum, which is 250 years old today. A project of the 18th-century English enlightenment, it offered an education to the masses at a time when the country’s monarch, and much of its ruling classes, were indifferent to the public’s need for scholarly nourishment. It took an act of parliament to set up, was paid for by a public lottery and was founded in Bloomsbury in 1753 where it still stands. The first national public museum in the world opened for “all studious and curious persons” two years later. Dickens, Marx and Orwell all passed through its neo-classical portals in the pursuit of knowledge.

The British Museum made its name by collecting and cataloguing the world. It has sensibly abjured the trend for many public places to be an arm of the entertainment industry. This can be deeply unfashionable, but there is a place for it – highlighted by the need to repair Iraq’s cultural heritage, a task which the British Museum’s curators and conservators are uniquely equipped to help. Of course one person’s accumulated wealth can be viewed as another’s loss. Plunder may have brought the Elgin Marbles to Britain, but it is undeniable that they remain free for anyone to see. These arguments should be put to one side today. The British Museum’s repository of knowledge instead should be celebrated.
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Greece’s courts have ruled against the legality of the planning permission for the New Acropolis Museum. The government has however vowed to ensure that the project can continue & is attempting to rectify the issues that led to this decision.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Monday May 19, 2003
New blow to Acropolis Museum?
Court reportedly rejects plan

The much-delayed project to build a new Acropolis Museum under the ancient citadel before the 2004 Olympics appears to have suffered a new blow, according to weekend reports that Greece’s highest administrative court has rejected initial plans for the 94-million-euro building.

Sources quoted by the Athens News Agency on Saturday and the Sunday Ethnos said the plenary session of the Council of State unanimously decided that the initial study for construction of the building, on the basis of which the construction permit was issued, illegally allowed the destruction of antiquities on the site that had been set aside for preservation. The ruling, which will not be officially made public for several weeks, also reportedly mentions that the Culture Ministry’s Supreme Archaeological Council has not sanctioned the destruction, as it is legally bound to do.
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