Showing results 229 - 240 of 558 for the tag: Restitution.

April 2, 2012

An open letter to David Cameron for the return of the Parthenon Marbles

Posted at 1:06 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

A Greek based campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles have written an open letter to British Prime Minister, David Cameron, calling for their return.

From:
Global Greek World

Saturday, March 31, 2012
Open Letter to Mr David Cameron re The Parthenon Sculptures Issue and the London Olympic Games

The following is the text of the Open Letter to Mr David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, which was issued today by Mr Alexis Mantheakis, Chairman of the International Parthenon Sculptures Action Committee Inc (NZ), requesting the repatriation of the Parthenon Sculptures. We are pleased to be part of the IPSACI movement from the very first day, supporting Greece’s just demand for the return home of these unique works of art pillaged by Elgin and which remain imprisoned at the British Museum…

To The Rt. Honourable Mr. David Cameron

Dear Prime Minister,

Re – The Parthenon Sculptures Issue and the London Olympic Games

My country, Greece is currently suffering from one of the worst upheavals in its history, with its institutions and economy hanging in the balance and its people being subjected to unprecedented peacetime suffering and tensions for reasons every Greek citizen and politician knows. In the past we, of Greece, a small but inordinately proud nation, stood virtually alone at your side when Europe collapsed during the Second World War. Despite the terrible cost we would have to pay in lives and property we did not, as your allies, hesitate for a moment to stand up to the vastly numerically superior forces of Hitler and Mussolini, turning the tide of the war long enough to delay the deployment of German forces to attack on the Eastern front. The result was, as your eminent predecessor Sir Winston Churchill declared “If there had not been the virtue and courage of the Greeks, we do not know which the outcome of World War II would have been.”
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March 30, 2012

British Museum director speaks about Elgin Marbles & Indian artefacts

Posted at 8:01 am in Similar cases

The British Museum is working with the Indian Ministry of Culture, to help to improve their country’s museums. This is a great idea, & shows a useful way that museums can collaborate with one another abroad. During an interview about this, MacGregor was also asked about the Parthenon Marbles & stated that they had been offered to Greece as a loan. In much the same way though, as the British Museum claims that Greece has never in recent years made an official restitution request, it could be argued that the British Museum has never really made any sort of official offer to Greece. There have been statements in the press, but as far as I’m aware, no sort of proper discussions with high level Greek officials. The British Museum seems instead to rely on previous assertions of ownership by Greece as rejections of such as loan offer, allowing them to assume that the loan would be unacceptable on this basis & therefore never even make a proper offer…

From:
Times of India

‘Get people into your museums’
TNN Jan 15, 2012, 06.20AM IST

Indian museums badly need overhauling and who better than the director of British Museum, Neil MacGregor, to help do it. In Delhi recently on an ambitious project in collaboration with the ministry of culture to train Indian professionals, he tells Archana Khare Ghose that exchange between all parts of the world has to go up.

Your team will be training Indian museum professionals. What do you think are the disadvantages that Indian museums suffer from but could improve upon? Fortunately for India, it has two of the hardest things to acquire in a museum – scholarship and great collections. All you need now is to get people into the museums. I think Indian museums are right now focused on their collections but it would be of immense interest for the public if they were to get opportunities to see collections from say, Mexico, China, Iran, etc., in their own museums through loaned exhibitions. The collection of the British Museum is available to see for free to all those who are “curious or studious, native or foreign” and we could loan them for exhibitions.
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March 29, 2012

Can travelling exhibitions be seen as a real alternative to restitution of artefacts?

Posted at 8:04 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

Kwame Opoku has forwarded me a response to Neil MacGregor’s assertions that the artefacts should not be returned & instead substituted with travelling exhibitions to help share the artefacts.

From Kwame Opoku via email.

Travelling Exhibition as Alternative to Restitution? Comments on Suggestion by Director of the British Museum.

The Director of the British Museum has indeed a fertile mind that never tires of inventing new defences for the retention of looted artefacts of others in the major museums.

Once it became clear that the infamous Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums. (2002) and its principles were not as effective as the signatories thought, other approaches had to be considered.

One such approach is the “travelling exhibition”. This seems interesting and reasonable until one begins to consider what is being proposed. MacGregor is reported in Elginism to have told an audience at the University of Western Australia that due to globalisation, the concept of “travelling exhibitions” will become more relevant;
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March 26, 2012

The evolving moral and political climate for art museums

Posted at 8:27 am in Similar cases

Cleveland museum’s recent purchase of the Apollo Sauroktonos has been criticised by many archaeologists, because of the uncertain provenance of the work. The Museum has however, agreed to work with Italy to further research the sculpture.

From:
Cleveland.com

Conference at the American Academy in Rome illuminated the changing climate for Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions that collect antiquities
Published: Saturday, December 03, 2011, 12:30 PM

Rome — The images of ancient Roman mosaics found and preserved recently in south-central Turkey were stunning.

Unfortunately, they flashed across the screen in a darkened auditorium at the American Academy in Rome too quickly. One had the impulse to shout at the lecturer, “Slow down!”

But the two-day symposium last month on “Saving Cultural Heritage in Crisis Areas” was running late, and Italian archaeologist Roberto Nardi had a lot of ground to cover in his dramatic tale of rescuing the mosaics from the rising waters of a lake created by the Birecik hydroelectric dam along the Euphrates River.
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March 24, 2012

Why do so many looted artefacts end up in museums

Posted at 11:46 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

For some artefacts, museums hold onto the excuse that at the time, it was accepted practice. But for many more recent artefacts that are looted, that excuse holds no water. Who should be blamed for this though – the dealers or the collectors? Are too many people / institutions willing to accept items with fairly questionable provenances that if investigated properly would clearly not be valid?

From:
Financial Times

December 2, 2011 12:02 am
Lost treasures
By Feargus O’Sullivan

In March this year, a statue of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty, left the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, its home since 1988, to return to the Sicilian town of Aidone, where it was discovered.

Six months later, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts returned the Weary Herakles to Turkey, so the torso of the mythological Greek hero could be reunited with the legs and pelvis of a statue discovered near Antalya in the early 1980s.
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March 23, 2012

Torres Strait islanders reclaim their ancestral bones

Posted at 8:49 am in Similar cases

Islanders living in the Torres Strait, between Australia & New Guinea have won their case to have ancestral bones held by London’s Natural History Museum returned.

From:
BBC News

23 November 2011 Last updated at 13:17
Torres Strait islanders reclaim their ancestral bones
By Pallab Ghosh

Representatives of the Torres Strait islanders collected bones of their ancestors from the Natural History Museum in London.

The development is the latest step in a long campaign by the islanders to have the human remains returned to them so they can be properly buried and – in their view, allow the spirits of their ancestors to rest in peace.
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Greek culture minister meets with British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles

Posted at 8:42 am in Elgin Marbles

Greek culture minister, Pavlos Geroulanos, has met with the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles while on a visit to London.

From:
Greek Reporter

Greek Culture Minister Meets with British Committee for Restitution of Parthenon Marbles
Posted on 08 November 2011

A meeting was held among representatives of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles and the Greek Minister of Culture and Tourism Pavlos Geroulanos, who travelled to the United Kingdom in order to attend the London Tourism Exhibition.

The meeting’s attendees included the British Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, Andrew George, who promotes the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.
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March 22, 2012

British Museum director Neil MacGregor insists artefacts must not be returned

Posted at 8:33 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

At a lecture at UWA in Perth, British Museum director, Neil MacGregor insists that artefacts should not be returned by museums to their countries of origin. Instead, he proposes that travelling exhibitions will become more popular in future, allowing some of the artefacts in question to be exhibited around the world.

This idea sounds fine in practice – but it doesn’t help to correct the many perceived and actual injustices that led to large amounts of the artefacts being in museums such as his in the first place.

From:
WA Today

Museum boss defends keeping of precious artefacts
Jenna Clarke
October 27, 2011 – 5:57AM

Artefacts of historical and cultural significance which are displayed in major museums around the world should not be returned to their country of origin, according to art world leader Neil MacGregor.

During an address at the University of Western Australia this week the British Museum director came to the defence of museums around the world where indigenous and ancient objects are displayed.
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March 21, 2012

Turkey requests return of eighteen artefacts from New York’s Metropolitan Museum

Posted at 5:45 pm in Similar cases

The return of the Euphronius Krater to Italy a few years ago appears to have been far from the end to the Met’s problems over looted artefacts in their collection.

Further information on this story is available here and a more detailed description of the artefacts involved including photos is here.

From:
Artinfo

More Antiquities Woes for U.S. Museums Loom, As Turkey Demands 18 Artifacts From the Metropolitan Museum
by Benjamin Sutton
Published: March 20, 2012

Former Metropolitan director Phillipe de Montebello famously faced one of the greatest challenges of his career over looted Greek antiquities in the museum’s collection, ultimately diffusing it with his ingenious “returns-for-loans” strategy. Now, new director Thomas Campbell faces a fresh battle over dodgy antiquities, this time from Turkey. And it’s heating up.

At the beginning of the month the Turkish government made aggressive moves to assert its claims on supposedly looted objects, banning its own institutions from loaning antiquities to museums including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Met, until artifacts held in those museums’ collections were returned. While the Art Newspaper reported that 12 unidentified items at the Metropolitan were in dispute, the blog Chasing Aphrodite is now claiming that the number has escalated to 18, and has even offered a specific list of the contested artifacts.
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Sacred Aboriginal totem returns to Australia following cancelled auction

Posted at 9:04 am in Similar cases

Following the cancelled auction of a Tjuringa stone in Kent, the current owner hopes to be able to hand it back to the Arunta Aboriginals in Australia.

From:
Independent

Row over sale of sacred Aboriginal stone
Rob Sharp
2011-10-28 00:00:01.0

A cultural conflict between Britain and Australia sparked by the attempted sale of a sacred Aboriginal artefact in Kent looks set to be reignited.

The etched stone “tjuringa”, which only Aboriginal male elders are permitted to handle, was withdrawn from sale after provoking international demands for its return to Australia. But its elderly seller is said to be still considering the future of the priceless item.
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March 20, 2012

Global heritage – which museums have the right to own it?

Posted at 8:50 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

Many of the large museums of the west, have in recent years, laid claim to being global museums – museums of such significance that they should own artefacts from around the world (Also known as Universal or Encyclopaedic Museums). In the eyes of the museums, this serves to weaken any claims made by other countries for ownership of items in their collections. There are arguments both for & against this proposition, but I find it hard to see how institutions can become a quasi global entity, that makes decisions about what is best for an artefact, when the role is entirely self-appointed & they own the artefact in question, so are unable to make unbiased judgements on it.

From:
policymic

Which Museums Have the Right to Own World Heritage?
Janine DeFeo in Global, Europe

Issues of the ownership of history periodically assert themselves in current affairs — the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s quiet admission of wrongful possession of some ancient Egyptian artifacts was news not least because the repatriation of objects is often the less common end to these kinds of disputes. Of course, the most famous of these is probably the controversy around the so-called “Elgin marbles” in the British Museum (the sculptures Lord Elgin acquired from the ruins of the Athenian Parthenon while serving as British ambassador to the Ottoman court in the early 19th century).

Since the 1980s, Greece has been trying to get these sculptures back, an effort that received renewed attention in 2009 with the opening of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, built to prove that Greece could provide an appropriate setting for the objects. There is very little hope of success; the British Museum is, predictably, in no hurry to return the objects (the museum estimates that they are seen by about five million people per year). The British Museum firmly believes in its rights to the objects, and it seems unlikely that they will ever be returned; a blanket call for the return of all antiquities to their place of origin is unrealistic.
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March 19, 2012

British Museum publishes its first Manga title

Posted at 6:40 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

More coverage of the publication of the English language version of the Manga book set in the British Museum.

From:
The Bookseller

British Museum to publish first manga title
03.10.11 | Charlotte Williams

The British Museum Press is teaming up with Japanese star Hoshino Yukinobu to publish its first manga book, featuring the artist’s most famous character, Professor Munakata.

Marketing and publicity executive Sarah Morgan said the book came about after Yukinobu visited an exhibition of his work held at the museum in 2009, and was inspired by his surroundings. The story was first published in Japan as a 10-part serial in Big Comic magazine. The British Museum Press will publish one single volume as a £14.99 paperback on 31st October.
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