The Indianapolis Museum of Art has recently announced a moratorium on any acquisitions of artefacts who’s provenance is questionable. Here, the director of the museum explains the justification for this decision.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Why Indianapolis will no longer buy unprovenanced antiquities
By Maxwell Anderson | Posted 30 April 2007

The Indianapolis Museum of Art recently decided to impose a moratorium on acquiring antiquities that left their probable country of modern discovery after 1970, unless we can obtain documents establishing that they were exported legally.

The decision to declare this moratorium was an extremely difficult one. The short-term result will be to prevent our curators, particularly those in the fields of Asian and classical art, from soliciting or accepting gifts from generous donors who bought works of art in good faith. It will adversely affect dealers who have heretofore been able to count on IMA as a regular buyer of significant works. But we hope it will be a small step towards stemming the tide of illegal excavation or clandestine removal of accidentally discovered objects from countries the world over.
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Following some coverage a few months ago, the issues for & against the restitution of an Etruscan chariot to an Umbrian village.

From:
New Jersey Times

New Jersey Times
Carry the chariot home
Saturday, April 28, 2007
BY MICHAEL ROVELLO

When Hamilton Township Mayor Glen Gilmore visited the village of Monteleone Di Spoleto, the people of the village at a public meeting pleaded for help in getting back an ancient Etruscan chariot, a priceless work of art found in their village (“Relic sparks a family affair,” April 11). The chariot is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where officials claim that they paid for it. They have since refused to make further comment.
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Another success for Australian Aboriginal groups in their challenges to the Natural History Museum’s retention of human remains.

From:
The Age (Melbourne)

British museum hands over Aboriginal remains
Julia May, London
April 28, 2007

THE Tasmanian Aboriginal community is claiming a partial victory in its 20-year battle to bring home the remains of its ancestors, as Britain’s Natural History Museum has agreed to hand over four of the 17 remains it holds.

But the Tasmanians have another fight ahead as they take on Britain’s two most famous universities and a second national museum for Aboriginal remains they possess.
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Chris Price, Deputy Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles responds to Neil MacGregor’s article in The Guardian.

From:
The Guardian

Monday April 23, 2007
The Guardian
Letters

Neil MacGregor, in his analysis of the Britishness of the British Museum (Comment, April 19), says it was an 18th-century “emporium” which enabled ordinary people to look at artefacts from around the world. At an emporium you buy things. A large proportion of thing in the BM were imperial loot. He then goes on to talk of British values. One of these has been generosity – in restoring dignity to nations which Britain once looted. Some of these are today quite capable of looking after their own heritage; why should they not have their own cultural artefacts restored to them? Or does Britishness involve hanging on to a cultural empire to replace its old economic and political one?
Christopher Price
London

Following news articles suggesting that the British Museum was planning to discuss the Elgin Marbles issue with Greece, they have issued a press release that attempts to clarify this. At the same time they restate their existing position on the issue.

From:
British Museum press office

PARTHENON SCULPTURES
21 April 2007

In the light of recent statements from the Greek Embassy in London and in order to avoid misunderstanding, the Trustees of the British Museum wish to restate their position on the Parthenon Sculptures in the Museum’s collection.

The Trustees have for years been looking to see if there is any reasonable ground on which a way forward with Greek colleagues might be constructed. To date, this has sadly not proved possible. Among many problems has been that successive Greek government have publicly disputed the Trustees’ unquestionable legal ownership of the Sculptures. This has made any meaningful discussions virtually impossible.
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More coverage of the planned talks between Greece & Britain about the issues surrounding the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
BBC News

Last Updated: Saturday, 21 April 2007, 10:14 GMT 11:14 UK
Talks due on Elgin Marbles return

A lengthy dispute between Britain and Greece may move a step closer to a resolution when sides meet to discuss returning the Elgin Marbles to Athens.

Talks in two weeks’ time will be the first serious negotiations after years of resistance by the British Museum.
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Leader of the opposition in Australia, Martin Hamilton-Smith, has called for the restitution of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece.

From:
Adelaide Now (Australia)

Return Elgin marbles, UK told
GREG KELTON, STATE POLITICAL REPORTER
April 20, 2007 02:00pm

OPPOSITION Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith has moved to build Liberal connections with the multicultural community by calling for the Elgin Marbles to be returned to Greece.

He has written to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the marbles, currently in the British Museum, to be returned to their homeland.
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Greek & British officials have publicly admitted that they will be holding talks in London to discuss the issue of the Elgin Marbles. One wonders what exactly the purpose of this is from the British government’s point of view, as they always continue to insist that only the British Museum has any say in what happens to the Marbles.

From:
International Herald Tribune

Greek, British officials to hold new talks on Elgin Marbles
The Associated Press
Published: April 19, 2007

ATHENS, Greece: Greek and British officials will hold new talks in London next month on Greece’s long-running bid to reclaim the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, the government said Thursday.

The announcement came as the London museum indicated it could lift its refusal to let the 2,500-year-old marbles — also known as the Parthenon Sculptures — travel back to Athens, even as a loan.
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Have the various returns of artefacts to Athens weakened the British Museum’s case for the retention of the Elgin Marbles?

From:
Guardian Blogs

Parthenon marbles one step closer to Acropolis?
As more ancient treasures are returned to Greece, it seems the British Museum is losing its hold on its most famous disputed antiquities.
April 19, 2007 8:04 AM

Six Greek Golden Age utensils have been unveiled in the idyllic confines of Athens’ ancient agora, thanks to the largesse of their former owner, the late and great classical historian Martin Robertson.

After years of being beseeched by Greek officials to hand over the fifth-century BC wonders – objects that adorned the sitting room of his Cambridge home for years – the British scholar has finally met the demand from beyond the grave. As of today, the black glazed wine jars are back in the place where they were excavated, gleaming in a glass case in the museum beneath the Acropolis.
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Further coverage of Neil MacGregor’s statements in an interview suggesting that a return of the Elgin Marbles might be possible.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Elgin Marbles could be returned to Greece
By Richard Holt
Last Updated: 8:39am BST 19/04/2007

There is a possibility that the Elgin Marbles will be sent back to Greece, according to the director of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor said the Marbles could be taken back to Athens on a temporary basis provided the Greeks acknowledge British ownership of the ancient sculptures.
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Following the Bloomberg interview with Neil MacGregor, other papers have spotted the story & are focusing on the aspects of it that suggest that the Elgin Marbles could be returned. The British Museum seems somewhat ill informed with its facts though, as since early 2000, Greece has no longer claimed ownership in their requests for the return of the sculptures.

From:
The Times

April 19, 2007
Greeks could be allowed to borrow the Elgin Marbles
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

The British Museum has intimated that the Elgin Marbles could be lent to Athens.

Neil MacGregor, its director, said that, like any object in its collection, a loan would be possible if the Greek Government acknowledged the museum’s ownership of the sculptures.

The Greek authorities hailed his comments as unprecedented. One source told The Times: “This is the first time they’ve ever said they’d let them out of the museum. We’ve said we’re not disputing the ownership.”
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Neil MacGregor writes in the Guardian about how important he believes the British Museum’s status as a Universal Museum is. It still isn’t clear though what in this gives the British Museum to so regularly ignore the wishes of the original owners of many of the items in its collection.

From:
Guardian Blogs

Britain is at the centre of a conversation with the world
The British Museum is still the repository of its founders’ ideals of global community, rather than querulous nationhood
Neil MacGregor
Thursday April 19, 2007
The Guardian

It is a standing source of astonishment and amusement to visitors that the British Museum has so few British things in it, that it is a museum about the world as seen from Britain rather than a history focused on these islands. There is, though, one part of the collection that is both very rich and very British indeed – the 18th-century caricatures. Ephemeral, brilliant and cruel, they sum us up as we saw ourselves at the very moment the museum was founded: the pushy and sententious Scots; the high-minded, garrulous and quarrelsome Welsh; the Irish feckless, but so charming they carry all before them; the English grumbling, perversely content in their gin-sodden xenophobia. And all of them mixed up together, somehow rubbing along, with the grudging affection that only long familiar irritation can generate.
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