Following Andrew Marr’s interview with James Cuno earlier this week, Dr Kwame Opoku recently alerted me to an amusing satire of the Universal Museum concept, posted on the Artnose website. Cuno has been making his own efforts to re-brand the maligned Universal Museum concept as the Encyclopaedic Museum. Despite the humour of this article though, it does highlight important points – not least that the creation of a Universal Museum is impossible without colossal amounts of funding – a way of keeping it out of reach of all but the wealthiest western nations.

From:
Kwame Opoku (by email)

A Satirical Approach to the “Universal Museum”.
18th June 2008

There has been a lot of publicity these last days for James Cuno’s book, Who owns Antiquity? including several radio discussions on the British radio station, BBC where the author presented his views and was questioned by expert participants. Cuno repeated his well-known views about antiquities belonging to all and his criticism of those he calls “nationalist retentionists”. The tone of the discussions was very polite but it was also clear that most of those who spoke were not fully convinced by the arguments in his book. Some referred very briefly to the demands for the return of the cultural objects taken during the imperial days – Elgin/Parthenon Marbles, Benin Bronzes and the Rosetta Stone. Indeed, a former museum director expressed the view that it was time to return some of these objects. He also remarked about the fact that some museums bought objects without asking too many questions about their provenance. Despite Cuno’s insistence that the speaker mentions specific institutions known for such a practice, the participant remained unspecific. But it was clear to all that the prestigious museums involved in deals with looters are too well-known and did not need to be mentioned in the small circle of discussants.
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I mentioned before that James Cuno was due to appear on BBC Radio 4’s Start The Week programme. The recording of this programme can now be downloaded from the BBC’s website here. The relevant section starts about 23 minutes 30 seconds into the recording & lasts for about 10 minutes.

To some archaeologists, there are few in the antiquities collection business who shouldn’t be classed as criminals. James Cuno of course disagrees with this point of view.

From:
The Economist

Antiquities
The great heritage war
Jun 12th 2008
From The Economist print edition

“THEY are all criminals, especially the Americans,” an eminent archaeologist declares. The evidence? They collect antiquities. This sort of remark is a typical attack in the long battle over who should or should not possess or trade in ancient objects. The combatants include governments, museums, art dealers and auction houses as well as archaeologists and private collectors.

James Cuno examines the underlying causes of this conflict, reporting on the wounds it is inflicting and proposing a route to a workable truce. He spotlights a single theatre of operations. Though the museums of his subtitle suggest that they are his focus, specialist institutions (showing ceramics, say, or Islamic art) are excluded. Encyclopedic museums—devoted to the exhibition and study of “representative examples of the world’s artistic legacy”—are what he concentrates on.
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Christopher Hitchens has just released a revised & updated edition of his book on the Parthenon Sculptures: The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece?
As any who have read this book will know, it takes pretty much the opposite viewpoint to James Cuno’s new book on the ownership of cultural property.
In this review, the two books are compared together. Whilst the reviewer seems to follow Cuno’s viewpoint, comments posted afterwards correct some of the inbalance in this piece.

From:
The New Statesman

Books
Losing our marbles?
Robin Simon
Published 05 June 2008

It is one of the most controversial issues in the art world today – should museums disperse their collections and return antiquities to their original sites? In particular, should the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum be restored to Athens?

With the opening of its glamorous new Acropolis Museum, the Greek campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles appears to have shot itself in the foot. A few years ago, the remaining pieces of the great frieze of the Parthenon in Athens – those not on display at the British Museum – were taken down from the long-suffering temple for conservation. It is now clear that they will never be put back. They have gone on display in the museum, mounted in a gallery that has the identical dimensions of the Parthenon. Joining them, set in their correct locations, are replicas of the originals in London. So far, so good, one might think. But hang on. The replicas are covered in wire mesh veils to represent, it seems, some kind of mourning. This is not didacticism: this is propaganda.
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James Cuno seems convinced (maybe because himself) that the power of museums to good in the world is all important & it should over-rule any minor things like who is the actual owner of artefacts & where they were acquired…

From:
Chicago Reader

Who Owns Antiquity?
In a controversial new book, Art Institute president James Cuno argues that museums should trump nations.
By Deanna Isaacs
June 5, 2008

When I was a kid, the public library in my hometown of Minneapolis had a pair of real Egyptian mummies. They were displayed in glass cases and one was partially unwrapped, his head exposed. He was small (about my ten-year-old size) and shriveled, with gaping sockets where his eyes had been. A card said he’d been a priest who lived more than 2,500 years ago, and explained that during the mummification process his brains had been pulled out through his nose. I was mesmerized. Out of time and place, his eternal rest horribly violated (even by my gaze), he seemed to me to be an emissary from an amazing and previously unimaginable culture.

Those mummies, now on loan to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, came to mind as I was reading James Cuno’s controversial new book, Who Owns Antiquity?, in which he rails against cultural property laws that have made it nearly impossible to legally export not only mummies but almost any relics from the countries in which they’re found. Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, contends that these laws, though regularly rationalized as a means to protect archeological sites, are actually about something else.
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James Cuno, Director of Chicago’s Art Institute, is a person who’s outlook on archaeology takes the opposite view from that of this website. His new book has just been released & is getting a lot of press coverage – in many cases though, on reading it, it opens people’s minds to the fact that they should be asking more questions rather than accepting his point of view as the only way things should happen.

On the morning of 16th June, he will be one of the guests on Andrew Marr’s Start the Week programe on BBC Radio 4 a 9:00 AM.

The programme’s details are here, but are not updated until nearer the broadcast date.

Popularised as a concept in recent years by the British Museum, is the concept of the Universal Museum in the todays world anything more than a marketing strategy for the continued retention of artefacts by the worlds most powerful museums?

From:
Modern Ghana

BENIN TO CHICAGO: IN THE UNIVERSAL MUSEUM?
By Dr. Kwame Opoku
Sat, 17 May 2008
Feature Article

“And I am left thinking that the “Enlightenment principles on which public museums in the United States were established” have perhaps contributed to the irreversible destruction of our universal, or cosmopolitan, cultural heritage”.

David Gill, Collecting Antiquities and Enlightenment Principles (1)

…The exhibition, Benin: Kings and Rituals Court Arts from Nigeria, goes to the Art Institute of Chicago (A.I.C.) from July 10 – September 21, 2008 as the final station of this travelling exhibition which, starting in Vienna, generated debates about restitution of stolen art, went to Paris and Berlin. It is to be noted that the exhibition which is the biggest ever held on Benin art will not be seen in Nigeria. It goes next to Chicago. But what kind of institution is the Art Institute of Chicago?
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Following the Athens UNESCO conference, Tom Flynn has concluded that litigation may be the only way to make the British Museum take the Parthenon Marbles issue seriously. This echoes the view of various other comentators who have been observing other similar (but successful) cases that have occurred in recent years.

From:
Artknows

Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Parthenon Marbles: Time to litigate?

The case of the Parthenon Marbles has been simmering away for decades. Every now and then an event occurs which prompts the Greeks to half-heartedly drag it forward onto the media front burner. For a few weeks everyone watches it let off steam until it gradually slides onto the back burner again.

The last time the Marbles issue moved up the news agenda was in 2003, just prior to the Olympic Games in Athens. But thanks to British Museum intransigence (it was also the BM’s 250th anniversary) the Greek appeals came to nothing. Now the temperature has risen once again due to the planned opening later this year (or more likely early next) of the new €94 million Bernard Tschumi-designed Acropolis Museum.
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Yet again, in discussions about the Parthenon Marbles (amongst other things), Neil MacGregor reverts back to his favourite Universal Museum argument. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Universal Museum idea – but at the same time, it is only one premise (out of many) that a museum could be based on. Just because the British Museum happens to fit within this (largely self created) category, it does not mean it is the only option, nor does it mean that it is the right option. Many archaeologist would convincingly argue, that seeing site specific historic artefacts within the context they were created for is far more important than seeing them within the context of other tenuously related artefacts from different times & cultures.

From:
Time Out (London)

Neil MacGregor: interview
By Ossian Ward. Photography Gautier Deblonde
Posted: Tue Apr 1 2008

You may think you‘re in London when you visit the British Museum but according to its acclaimed director Neil MacGregor you are actually walking the corridors and galleries of a global institution. As the record-breaking ’First Emperor‘ exhibition comes to an end, MacGregor tells Time Out why he‘s excited about the future
Neil MacGregor: interview

Neil MacGregor loves talking about the world, because most of it is on display at the British Museum, where he’s been director since 2002. ‘The museum was set up in 1753 to be a comparative world collection. One that should be usable by the world and free to people of all nations.’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone repeat one word so often in the space of an hour. ‘In order to make citizens equipped for the world, they’ve got to study the world. There was no equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge in London at that point, so in a way this became the Open University. In fact, it’s like the World Service, helping to build global citizenship and community.’
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With his much espoused ideas about the Universal Museum & talk about how it represents all of humanity, it is clear that museum directors have a lot of power in shaping our view of history – and in some cases re-writing history to serve their own points of view.

From:
Guardian

Behind the scenes at the museum
Forget marches and party politics. If you really want to change the world, become a museum director
Charlotte Higgins
Thursday November 27, 2003

What is the purpose of the British Museum? Or, for that matter, any of the “universal” museums built in the wake of the Enlightenment – those living encyclopedias that once, many moons ago, could claim to contain the whole of human knowledge?

It’s hard to know, even when you get the museums’ own directors to tell you, as happened at a conference at the British Museum last week. Despite these great institutions’ apparent commonality of purpose, you’ll get a different answer depending on whom you ask.
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The declaration on “Universal Museums” has been met with trepidation by many, who think that it exhibits an out of date approach to cultural property & international diplomacy.

From:
The Art Newspaper

“A George Bush approach to international relations”
ICOM and lobby groups react with hostility to appeal by leading museum directors to view collections acquired in earlier times as important to “universal museums”
By Martin Bailey

LONDON. In our January issue we published the declaration on “universal museums”, signed by the directors of more than 30 of the world’s greatest museums. These included the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Berlin State Museums and the Rijksmuseum (The Art Newspaper, no. 132, January 2003, pp.1,6).

The statement argued that “objects acquired in earlier times must be viewed in the light of different sensitivities and values, reflective of that earlier era.” Despite demands for repatriation, the directors stressed the importance of the “universal museum”, where world culture is on display.
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The so called “Universal Museums” claim to represent the whole world, but it must be borne in mind, that this is an entirely self-appointed role, which comes at the expense of many specialist local museums. Proclaiming that they are in a different category of institution, to which the rules don;t apply in the same way as they do to others, raises far more problems than it solves.

From:
The Art Newspaper

We serve all cultures, say the big, global museums
Leading institutions seek to shift focus of debate on restitution
By Martin Bailey

LONDON. The world’s leading museums have for the first time united to issue a declaration. Their statement on “the importance and value of universal museums” follows increasing concern about the politicisation of Greek claims against the British Museum (BM) over the Parthenon Marbles.

Although the declaration released in December does not specifically mention the marbles, it points out that the acquisition of classical antiquities from Greece by European and North American museums “marked the significance of Greek sculpture for mankind as a whole and its enduring value for the contemporary world.”
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