Various sources in the press have criticised a fall in the budgets that museums can use for acquisitions of new artefacts. Some sources complain that more money is now being spent on making the museums more accessible which was once spent on acquisitions. This is blamed on a culture of political correctness & people suggest that museums are loosing sight of their original core aims.
I would present an alternative point of view however – at present most of the major museums in Britain have far more works in their collections than they can ever manage to display – so should they really need large budgets to acquire yet more artefacts to push others into a store somewhere. I would suggest that budgets should only be increased at a point in time when the anti-deaccessioning rules governing most of the nation’s largest museums are relaxed to the extent that they can actually have collections of a more manageable size before they think about making more acquisitions. An even more radical notion might be that some of money from the sale of artefacts could be used to fund new acquisitions, or that exchanges could be made between museums so that they could enhance & re-focus their collections.

From:
The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times
May 07, 2006
Richard Brooks: Biteback

[…]

On Thursday, the Art Fund, which helps raise money for works of art, will produce some alarming figures about acquisitions from a survey of 300 galleries and museums.
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More details on the request by Greek worshipers of the Olympian gods to be allowed to worship them in the ancient temples which were originally dedicated to them.

From:
The Guardian

Greek gods prepare for comeback
Helena Smith in Athens
Friday May 5, 2006
The Guardian

It has taken almost 2,000 years, but those who worship the 12 gods of ancient Greece have finally triumphed. An Athens court has ordered that the adulation of Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Athena and co is to be unbanned, paving the way for a comeback of pagans on Mount Olympus.

The followers, who say they “defend the genuine traditions, religion and ethos” of the ancients by adhering to a pre-Christian polytheistic culture, are poised to take their battle to the temples of Greece.
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Philippe de Montebello’s seemingly unrepentant attitude to the acquisition of looted antiquities, particularly since the agreement to return the Euphronios Krater, has highlighted the problems of the way in which many museum directors perceive restitution problems. The Art Newspaper speculates on who might succeed him when he retires. Neil MacGregor, current director of the British Museum is suggested as a possible contender.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Who’s to replace de Montebello at the Met?
Posted 04 May 2006

NEW YORK. No one wants to see him retire, least of all the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But museum director Philippe de Montebello turns 70 this month, a milestone that inevitably raises questions about departure and succession. According to museum spokesman Harold Holzer, senior vice-president for external affairs, Mr de Montebello is unlikely to retire soon. “My belief is that he has no such plans, and no plans to make plans about his retirement,” says Mr Holzer. “The question does not exist at this institution.”

But were the unthinkable to occur, who would be likely to succeed him? The odds are that it would be the director of another museum, and, in these increasingly globalist times, not necessarily an American one. With that in mind, here is a snapshot look at possible contenders.
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Recently, the trade in looted, unprovenanced artefacts has come under close scrutiny in the USA, with the two highest profile cases involving the Metropolitan Museum & the Getty.
A symposium is being held in New York to discuss the issues associated with the collecting of antiquities. The format of the symposium is slightly confrontational, in that they are starting with museum directors in the morning outlining the reasons why they feel that in some cases they should be able to acquire unprovenanced artefacts. Then, in the afternoon those who are against this approach & feel that museums are fueling the trade in unprovenanced pieces (mainly archaeologists) are able to respond to what has been discussed earlier.
Neil MacGregor, the British Museum’s director will be one of the speakers.

From:
New York Sun

Symposium Will Examine Collecting of Antiquities
By RUSSELL BERMAN – Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 4, 2006

Leading museum directors and archaeologists from around the country will gather at the New York Public Library today for a major symposium on the collecting of antiquities.

The trade in ancient art has been scrutinized in recent months amid investigations into looting and demands by several countries that disputed pieces in American museums be returned. While the controversy has sparked a feud among many archaeologists and museums over the ethics of antiquities collecting, the debate has largely played out in the press. Today’s day-long forum, organized by the Association of Art Museum Directors, will bring more than a dozen prominent scholars to the same stage.
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Zimbabwe is gradually loosing much of its heritage as people leave the country & take their belongings with them. At the end of the article, they suggest hopefully that all the scattered heritage should perhaps one day in an institution such as the British Museum, but surely Zimbabwe’s culture would be better off still in Zimbabwe. Maybe one day when the situation in the country is less problematic, a new museum can be built so that Zimbabweans can visit it to see their own heritage.

From:
The Zimbabwean

Zimbabwe’s priceless, scattering heritage
BY FARAI KASHIRI

Every society creates art and images that become a unique ‘library’ of cultural memory, reflecting passages of time, changing values, movements within a society and its relations with other cultures. Zimbabwe’s visual culture is currently being scattered, even more than previously, as people move. Many Zimbabweans took their much-loved sculptures and paintings with them when they left and some of the artworks inevitably find their way onto the market. Five artworks are being put up for auction in the UK, including one piece in stone by master sculptor, Nicholas Mukomberanwa (1940 – 2002). I met him at the National Gallery in Harare in the 1970s, when he was a policeman and only able to sculpt in his spare time. Gentle, warm and principled, he was the sort of policeman one would hope for and respect – so very different from the debased role being forced on our ordinary policemen today.
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Possibly the earliest records we have of written laws are the Code of Ur-Nammu, inscribed on cuneiform tablets dating back four thousand years. Due to the unprovenanced origins of one of the most intact version of the code, many scholars have refused to look at this version – asserting their feelings about the effect that illegal excavations & looting have on archaeology.

From:
International Herald Tribune

Looted relics inflame scholars’ ethics debate
By Hugh Eakin The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2006

Inscribed on Sumerian clay tablets more than 4,000 years ago, the Code of Ur-Nammu may be the earliest known recorded set of laws in the world: dozens of rules written in cuneiform about commerce and taxes, family law and inheritance.

But many scholars will not go near the one largely intact version of the code, and the top American journal of cuneiform research will not publish articles about it. The reason? The tablet was bought by a private Norwegian collector on the open market and does not come from a documented, scientific excavation. According to the ethics policies of the leading associations for antiquities scholars, that means it is off limits.
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When we hear about looted artefacts, generally the cases are large high profile ones involving pieces which have been illegally exported from another country & are often now held in a museum. Illegal excavations of a different kind happen all the time in this country though, where people discover pieces buried in the ground & break the law by selling them surreptitiously, rather than following reporting their finds to the authorities. A new agreement between metal detector users & archaeologists aims to help define the non-destructive ethical behavior that people should be following. It is worth noting that some of the most important British artefacts in the British Museum were discovered by Amateur treasure hunters working alone, rather than large organised archaeological digs.

From:
BBC News

Wednesday, 3 May 2006
Watching the detectorists
By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News website Magazine

Many archaeologists believe they are a vital part of their work, while some dismiss them as mere treasure hunters. Now a new code of conduct is recognising the role of metal detector enthusiasts in mapping the UK’s history.

For anybody who encountered one in childhood, the strange whistles and beeps of a metal detector conjured up a special kind of magic.
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Zahi Hawass has been creating a lot of publicity about restitution cases involving Egyptian artefacts. What is interesting here, is the sentiment that Egyptians tolerated some of the pieces being in foreign museums, until they saw them being treated in ways that they felt were culturally unacceptable. If, as some museums claim, they are creating a universal display of the world’s cultures, then shouldn’t the cultures from where these artefacts came have more say in what is done by the museums with the artefacts?
Hawass also re-iterates his previous sentiments – that parties who refuse to negotiate over the return of artefacts will no longer be welcome to carry out other work in Egypt. While this is a powerful tool to use to force negotiations, it is an approach that the Greek government has always avoided. The British School of Archaeology is one of the oldest of the foreign schools operating in Greece & the Greek government has always been co-operative with them & not let their dealings be influenced by the dispute with the British government over the Elgin Marbles.

From:
Art News

May 2006
Descendant of the Pharaohs
Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s antiquities council, is mounting a campaign to repatriate artistic icons from museums around the world
By Sylvia Hochfield

Men still fight over the legendary Egyptian beauty Nefertiti, 3,300 years after her death. In 2003, when the director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin allowed two Hungarian artists to briefly unite the famous bust of the ancient queen with a new bronze body, Egyptian cultural officials reacted as if the lady had been violated. She was no longer safe in German hands, said culture minister Farouk Hosni.

Zahi Hawass, who had become secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities a year earlier, was incensed by what he called “an insult to Egypt’s heritage.” Not long after the event, he demanded the return of the bust to Egypt, along with four other objects in European and American museums. In a recent interview at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Hawass told ARTnews that he plans to ask UNESCO to support his demand. He does not charge that the five objects he is asking for were looted. He calls them “icons of our Egyptian identity”—unique artifacts of Egyptian cultural patrimony. “They should be in the motherland,” Hawass insists. “They should not be outside Egypt.”
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