A religious icon stolen 30 years ago from a Greek monastery has been returned following a British court ruling earlier this year. I’m mused to see the use of the word Elginism at the end of the article.

From:
World Bulletin

Britain returns stolen Byzantine icon to Greece
The painting of Christ being taken down from the Cross was snatched from a monastery in the city of Serres in 1978 and discovered in 2002.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008 16:15

Britain returned a 14th century Byzantine icon to Greek authorities on Wednesday, 30 years after it was stolen from a monastery in northern Greece, the Culture Ministry said.

The painting of Christ being taken down from the Cross was snatched from a monastery in the city of Serres in 1978 and discovered in 2002 in the hands of a Greek collector in London.
Read the rest of this entry »

Following the return of the Heidelberg fragment in 2006 & the Palermo fragment earlier this year, the Vatican has now also returned a fragment from the frieze on a one year loan. The Vatican still holds two other fragments from the Parthenon sculptures in their collection on which negotiations are still continuing.

From:
Reuters

Vatican lends Parthenon Marbles fragment to Greece
Wed Nov 5, 2008 7:30am EST
By Daniel Flynn

ATHENS (Reuters) – The Vatican returned a small fragment of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece on Wednesday on a one-year loan, fuelling calls for the British Museum to hand back its own priceless sculptures from the ancient temple.

The loan of the fragment, one of three in the Vatican Museum’s vast collection of antiquities, follows a request for its return by Greece’s late Orthodox Archbishop Christopoulos at a meeting with Pope Benedict in 2006.
Read the rest of this entry »

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”.
Read the rest of this entry »

Following on from their successes in Scotland, the Ngarrindjeri have also collected skulls of their ancestors from Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum to be returned to Australia.

It is worth remembering again, that the current reunifications of Aboriginal artefacts only happened after a change in the law allowed many of the countries larger museums to over-rule the anti-deaccessioning clauses in their own charters & return these pieces. Once various key institutions had returned pieces, many smaller museums and galleries followed their example.

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 09:48 GMT, Wednesday, 9 July 2008 10:48 UK
Aboriginal skulls returning home

Four Aboriginal skulls, which have formed part of a British museum’s collection for more than 100 years, are to be returned to Australia.

The 19th century human remains were donated to Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum by someone who claimed to have been given them.
Read the rest of this entry »

Despite setbacks along the way, after ten years of campaigning, the Ngarrindjeri tribe are accepting the return of a number of Aboriginal artefacts from institutions in Scotland. Like many other such repatriations made in recent years, this has only been made possible by a change in the law in the form of the Human Tissue Act 2004.

From:
The Times

From The Times
July 8, 2008
Scotland hands back Aborigine relics
Charlene Sweeney

With a simple but symbolic whorl of smoke, a group of Aborigines began the long-awaited process of repatriating their ancestors’ remains from a Scottish museum to their homeland.

The Ngarrindjeri, who have been campaigning for the return of the relics for ten years, sent a delegation to Edinburgh to accept ownership of six Aborigine skulls from the National Museums of Scotland, and a fragment of a woman’s skull from the University of Edinburgh.
Read the rest of this entry »

A new website aims to show the Parthenon frieze in its entirety online, so that people can see the parts from separate museums joined virtually into a single image.

From:
Cordis

Technology project enables public to view Parthenon frieze online
[Date: 2003-06-24]

An information technology project funded by the Greek government has enabled archaeologists and the wider public to take an online tour of the complete Parthenon frieze, whose blocks themselves are held in three separate museums in Greece, the UK and France.

The Greek Ministry of Culture, together with the national documentation centre and first ephorate of prehistoric and classical antiquities, decided to digitalise the frieze on account of its cultural importance, and exploited new technologies in order to maximise the projects appeal and impact.
Read the rest of this entry »