The British Museum sees the importance of displaying finds within their local context – but only when it suits them to do so & the artefacts are not already in their collection.

From:
The Gazette (North East England)

Gem of a campaign
Posted by Fiona – Administrator on January 24, 2008 1:20 PM

SUPPORT is mounting to keep a spectacular treasure hoard on Teesside.

Redcar and Cleveland Council is planning to apply for grant aid to ensure the unique Anglo Saxon finds from East Cleveland are given a permanent home at Kirkleatham Museum.

And Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Ashok Kumar, who raised the matter in the Commons, is “greatly heartened” by Arts and Heritage Minister Margaret Hodge’s support.
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It appears that the problem of illegally obtained antiquities in California’s Museums runs a lot deeper than the problems at the Getty. The artefacts potentially involved are not such high profile pieces, but the due diligence & integrity of these acquisitions by the institutions has to be called into doubt by events such as this.

From:
San Francisco Chronicle

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Museums raided in fraud probe
Southeast Asian antiquities allegedly obtained, smuggled
Greg Risling, Associated Press
Friday, January 25, 2008
(01-25) 04:00 PST Los Angeles —

Federal agents raided several Southern California museums Thursday in a search for Southeast Asian antiquities that authorities believe were illegally obtained, smuggled into the country and sold at inflated prices so sellers could claim fraudulent tax deductions.

Search warrants were executed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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The Euphronios Krater has now left the Met. While people might be sad to see it go, most see it as an inevitable event, the righting of a wrong. This article looks at the history & future of this & other similar disputes, including that of the Elgin Marbles.

From:
Yale Daily News

Now you see it, now you don’t
cultural property: past, present and future
Summer Banks
Senior Reporter
Published Friday, January 25, 2008

A tight knot of people crowd around one edge of the new Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A woman in beret and riding boots, a father with his young sons and other visitors to the New York museum quietly jockey for position to snatch a last glimpse of a fallen warrior carried to his rest by winged Sleep and Death.

The famous Euphronios krater left its former home at the Met last week after a steady stream of pilgrims paid their respects on Jan. 13, its last day on view. The Greek red-figure vase, which dates to the sixth century B.C., was probably used to mix wine and water — serving as the ancient version of a cocktail shaker — and became part of the permanent collection at the Met in 1972. But the Italian government suspected that the vase had been looted from its soil before the museum acquired it and launched a series of investigations into the krater’s past. In Feb. 2006, after years of research and negative publicity, the Met signed an agreement with the Italians to return the object.
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The articles in The Times about the Zachopoulos attempted suicide in relation to the Elgin Marbles have stirred up controversy on The Times’s own website, as well as in Athens News. John Carr (the writer of the original article) has since had a response published that is littered with inaccuracies & preconceptions.

The story is covered in more detail here.

From:
Athens News

FRIDAY , 11 JANUARY 2008
No. 13269
Press watch
GEORGE GILSON

THE SCANDAL surrounding sacked culture ministry official Christos Zahopoulos continued to preoccupy the Greek press, with opposition parties and newspapers using it as a potent ramming rod against the government. But the reporting of the once-venerable Times of London stirred almost as much press ire as the scandal itself. The paper’s Athens correspondent declared that the scandal “called into question the moral authority of the culture ministry as it presses its case for the return of the ancient masterpieces”. Of course, Greeks believe it is the entire Greek nation that has the moral authority of a people whose patrimony was expropriated (most would say stolen) when they were under foreign occupation. From the Greek point of view, two centuries after one of the greatest monuments of Western Civilisation was mauled and hacked apart by a Briton, it is the Parthenon itself that cries out to be reunified. The labyrinthine details of the Zahopoulos case continued to unravel in the press, with bombshell charges by rightwing LAOS party president George Karatzaferis. He charged that the head of the PM’s press office received four audio CDs with conversations of Zahopoulos that were so serious that they were unfit to be broadcast (some journalists hint it is because they are enormously embarrassing for the PM himself). Moreover, Karatzaferis charged that for years the culture ministry has issued bogus receipts worth billions to ghost companies. That could mean huge graft and money to political coffers. He said 4 billion euros was disbursed this way under New Democracy rule and 2 billion under Pasok (1996-2004), but no concrete evidence was offered for any of the allegations.
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A look back at some of Italy’s restitution successes against US galleries & institutions. It has created a shift in opinion that has helped many other cases to be seen in a more credible light, but there is still a lot of addition work to do.

From:
Wanted in Rome

Margaret Stenhouse,
23/01/2008
CULTURE: Italy’s lost treasures return

Thanks to government efforts antiquities excavated illegally and smuggled out of the country for sale to complaisant foreign museums are now making their return.

Ever since he took over as Italy’s minister of culture in May 2006, Francesco Rutelli has been engaged in a bitter battle with several museums, mainly in the United States, to have illegally exported Italian works of art and antiquities returned to their country of origin.

By threatening to boycott any collaboration with museums guilty of purchasing cultural property suspected of having been smuggled out of Italy by dishonest dealers, Rutelli managed to win his first victory with the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston. In September 2006, the MFA pledged to return 13 important antiquities to Italy, including a marble statue of Vibia Sabina, wife of the Emperor Hadrian, believed to have come from Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, and a series of magnificently decorated Etruscan vases dating from the fifth to the third century BC. In return, Italy agreed to loan significant works to the MFA for special exhibitions and displays and to give the Boston museum the benefit of its know-how in the fields of scholarship, conservation, archaeological investigation and exhibition planning.
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New Acropolis Museum designer Bernard Tschumi is giving a talk at the Royal College of Art in London on the crossover between Architecture & Film – a them the he has developed in many of his buildings.

From:
Royal College of Art

Double Take Architecture Talk

Series of talks looking at the crossover between architecture and film. John Maybury (pictured) began his career as an artist, experimental filmmaker, and influential music-video director. Yet he was to achieve cult acclaim as a director with his 1998 film about Francis Bacon, ‘Love is The Devil’. His next film, ‘The Edge of Love’, is about the poet Dylan Thomas and stars Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley.

Bernard Tschumi’s numerous writings continue to shape a whole generation of young architects. He successfully drew together theories of film and architecture through projects like the Manhattan Transcripts. He is currently completing the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece.

Talks are free and open to the public but tickets must be booked in advance by email: architecture@rca.ac.uk

Venue: Lecture Theatre One

Tuesday 12 February 2008 7pm-8pm

The thirty-second Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art was held in Melbourne last week. Amongst other things, they discussed the mindset behind people’s perception of restitution claims.

From:
Sydney Morning Herald

At odds on the art of possession
January 19, 2008

It is argued that repatriation of works undermines cultural understanding, writes Gabriella Coslovich.

The movement of people across borders, be they migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, has been a constant of history – a course fruitful and fraught. Newcomers are not always readily accepted and debates rage about the relative benefits and tensions created by immigration, none more so than in our times.

Yet a markedly different attitude is frequently shown towards art objects that have moved from their place of origin to a new home. Cultural objects that have crossed borders are often hotly contested – coveted by their new owners as greatly as by their countries of origin. The most famous example is the case of the Elgin Marbles, the ancient Athenian sculptures, which continued to be owned by the British Museum despite persistent calls for their repatriation by the Greek Government.
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The National Museum of Scotland has agreed to return an Aboriginal skull to Australia, leaving Cambridge & Oxford universities as the only two British institutions to still resist all claims on the repatriation of human remains. Cases that do not involve human remains are unfortunately not progressing anywhere near as rapidly.

From:
The Age (Melbourne)

Scots give up Aboriginal skull
Julia May, London
January 19, 2008

CAMBRIDGE and Oxford universities will become the last two British institutions to resist repatriation requests for Aboriginal remains, after National Museums Scotland agreed to return a Tasmanian Aboriginal skull.

The decision by the Scottish museum is another step in the 20-year battle by the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, which, through the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, has also successfully lobbied the British Museum and the Natural History Museum for the return of ancestral remains.
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Headline writers who had already perfected plays on words involving the Elgin Marbles (have the Greeks lost their marbles), have now moved onto variations on the theme using chess playing analogies when describing the demands for the return of the Lewis Chessmen to Scotland. It is interesting to see that now that there is more political will behind it (in Scotland), this particular argument is being forced to the forefront rather than popping up occasionally only to be forgotten again soon afterwards.

From:
The Scotsman

Published Date: 20 January 2008
Source: Scotland On Sunday
Location: Scotland
Fabiani plays next move in SNP’s battle for return of Lewis Chessmen
By Murdo MacLeod
Political Correspondent

CULTURE Minister Linda Fabiani will this week take demands for the “repatriation” of the Lewis Chessmen to the British Museum in London.
Fabiani will see the chessmen, which were found in Lewis in the 19th century, on display in London and will lay out the Scottish Government’s campaign to have them brought north of the border.

The British Museum is forbidden by law from giving away or selling its assets, and ministers in Whitehall have said that they have no plans to change that, stressing that being in the British Museum means that the artefacts, also known as the Uig Chessmen, can be seen by millions of international visitors every year.
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This New York Times piece takes a similar line on the fallout of Zachopoulos’s attempted suicide to the article in the Times a few days ago. My previous thoughts on the matter still apply though. Why should the actions of one person involving their private life, have any direct bearing on the morality of decisions made by others to return items (that they presumably know were not acquired legitimately, otherwise they would not have agreed to return them).

From:
New York Times

Scandal Steals Spotlight in Greek Culture Ministry
By ANTHEE CARASSAVA
Published: January 19, 2008

ATHENS — Even as Greece lauds its success in reclaiming ancient classical treasures from museums abroad, a scandal has arisen over its oversight of its archaeological past.

This week Greece’s culture minister, Michalis Liapis, pruned the powers of the country’s new archaeology chief, Theodoros Dravillas, after the dismissal and suicide attempt of the politician who preceded him in that post.
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Following successful claims against the Met, Getty & Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Italy has now made an agreement with Shelby White, the first time that they have entered into such an arrangement with a private collection rather than an institution. Shelby White & her late husband were also linked to a number of the other claims against museums & galleries made by the Italian Government.

From:
Time Magazine Blogs

January 18, 2008 12:45
Out the Door
Posted by Richard Lacayo

After successfully re-claiming scores of Greek and Roman antiquities from American museums, the Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli has made his first agreement to retrieve works from an American private collection. Shelby White, the New York philanthropist, agreed to return ten pieces from the collection that she assembled with her late husband Leon J. Levy.

White is, of course, also a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She and her husband donated $20 million to finance the Met’s newly expanded Greek and Roman galleries, parts of which bear their names. Some of the pieces she’ll be returning to Italy were until recently on long term loan to the Met, which has already returned scores of ancient works from its permanent collection. Earlier this month it removed from its galleries the Euphronios krater — its last disputed treasure — or is it just the last for now? — and packed it home to Italy.
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There are many high profile international restitution claims against museums or private collections, which regularly get extensive press coverage. Perhaps less known though are other intranational disputes which in many ways occupy a completely different legal position as the campaign is normally only led by local people rather than a government. The Lindisfarne Gospels is one such case against the British Library that is regularly revived by the people of Northumberland.

From:
Northumberland Gazette

Wednesday, 16th January 2008
Published Date: 16 January 2008
Location: Northumberland
Give us our Gospels – MP

By ROBERT BROOKS
ALAN Beith has renewed calls for the British Library to look again at returning the Lindisfarne Gospels to the North East.
The Berwick Liberal Democrat, whose constituency includes Holy Island, has been supported by other MPs over bringing the priceless cultural treasure back to its native home.

And he has sponsored an Early Day motion in the House of Commons following press reports about the British Library withholding information and putting forward “spurious arguments for not allowing the Gospels to be returned to the North East”.
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