More than sixty years on, vast numbers of artworks looted by the Nazis still haven’t been returned to their original owners (or their descendants). A new database which lists these items hopes to make it a lot easier for people to track them down.

From:
PR Newswire

More Than 10,000 Unrestituted Nazi-Looted Art Objects Now Listed on Internet; Call to Museums, Dealers to Check Holdings
NEW YORK, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/

The Nazi records and photographs of the looting of more than 20,000 individual art objects from Jews in France and Belgium are now online in a searchable database, which shows that at least half the objects have not been restituted to their original owners. This new listing – searchable by item, artist, owner, and whether items have been returned – should be consulted by museums, art dealers, and auction houses to determine whether they hold any Nazi-looted art, and by families seeking long-lost valuable heirlooms.

Many families know or believe that relatives killed in the Holocaust owned artworks, but may do not know the pieces’ names or artists; this list can help them search family holdings. However, there is no centralized claims process for unrestituted works in this database. Unlike previous attempts to identify looted art, which have focused on museum collections or lists of claims from individual victims or their heirs, this new database aims to reconstruct the totality of what was seized and from whom, as well as what has been restituted, so as to produce a listing of looted art objects still believed to be “at large.”
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The Bring Them Back campaign for the reunification of the surviving Parthenon Marbles in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, hopes to collect one million signatures on the petition on their website by the end of this year.

From:
PR Newswire

E – Petition for the Return of the Parthenon Sculptures (With Video)
ATHENS, Greece, October 21, 2010 /PRNewswire/

After an impressive start of 134.000 citizens from around the world having singed the e-petition for the return of the Parthenon sculptures, initiatives and actions are now being intensified to inform the public and enhance participation. The aim of the campaign is to collect 1,000,000 signatures by December 31st, required to set the matter in the European Parliament and thus create international pressure for the return of the sculptures.

The petition voting page along with the promotional video can be found at: http://www.bringthemback.org/.
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Looting of artefacts is not a recent phenomenon – but despite every more stringent international laws, it continues to be a problem – leading to potential new disputes between countries in the future that no one yet knows about.

From:
PR Newswire

Looting Matters: Why Do Antiquities From Iraq Continue to Surface on the Market?
SWANSEA, Wales, July 17 /PRNewswire/

David Gill, archaeologist, considers how antiquities derived from Iraq continue to appear on the antiquities market.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the loss of some 15,000 items from the archaeological collections in Baghdad. This alerted the international community to the scale of the problem and as a result some 6000 objects have been handed over to Iraqi authorities. These have been seized in a range of countries across the Middle East as well as in Europe.
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Neil MacGregor talks about the digital future of museums & tries to suggest that the issue of the Elgin Marbles is “yesterday’s question”. This seems more like wishful thinking on his part however, as it is very much a current issue – particularly with the opening of the New Acropolis Museum. Furthermore, if he believes that the future of museums is digital, then why doesn’t the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles & keep a digital copy for themselves so that they can be taken care of by people who still see the value in the physical as well as the virtual.

The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles have also published a response to this article.

From:
Guardian

Museums’ future lies on the internet, say Serota and MacGregor
Museum chiefs paint multimedia future for institutions
Wednesday, 08 July 2009

Two titans of the British museum world, Sir Nicholas Serota and Neil MacGregor, last night sketched out their visions for the museum of the future.

Both said that the relationship between institutions and their audiences would be transformed by the internet. Museums, they said, would become more like multimedia organisations.
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With assistance from the Marbles Reunited campaign, a group of children from a school in Kefalonia have visited the UK & staged a protest outside the British Museum.

From:
PR Newswire

Students, Supported by Marbles Reunited, Stage a Peaceful Protest at the British Museum
LONDON, May 6 /PRNewswire/

Forty five secondary school students and five teachers from the 2nd General Lyceum in Argostoli (Kefalonia), visited London in order to stage a peaceful protest for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures to Athens at the British Museum on Sunday 03 May 2009. This protest was supported by Marbles Reunited.

Marbles Reunited is a British campaigning organisation and Friends of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.
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