Washington’s Smithsonian Institution has become the first US institution to return human remains at the request of Australian aboriginal groups, following the lead set by various museums in the UK in recent years.

From:
The Australian

Bones return to Arnhem Land
Natasha Robinson | August 06, 2008

THE remains of 33 indigenous people taken by American researchers 60 years ago touched down in Australia yesterday to be repatriated to Arnhem Land.

A delegation of four traditional owners returned home after travelling to Washington DC to collect the remains from the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History.
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Kenya has issued a request for the return of over two thousand artefacts removed from the country during its colonial era. The artefacts are currently held in various institutions around the world, including the British Museum.The fact that such a request has been issued suggests that the previous agreements with the British Museum don’t go anywhere near far enough towards resolving the situation.

From:
The Independent

Kenya tells museums: give our history back
Smithsonian and British Museum among institutions facing Nairobi’s demand for repatriation of nationally important artefacts
By Steve Bloomfield in Nairobi
Sunday, 3 August 2008

Kenya is demanding the return of more than 2,000 historical artefacts currently on display in the British Museum, claiming they were taken during the country’s colonial period. Skulls, spears and fossils are among the items that it wants back.

Officials in Nairobi are beginning to compile lists of objects held abroad that are considered of significant national importance. Apart from those at the British Museum, they are tracking down thousands of other items held by US museums and in private collections around the world. As many as 10,000 could be earmarked for repatriation, according to Kenyan museum officials. Kenya’s President, Mwai Kibaki, said: “These are crucial aspects of our historical and cultural heritage, and every effort must be made to bring them back.”
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Museums of the west come up with many different explanations to justify why items in their collections should not be returned to the location where they were first (re)discovered. It is stated for instance that the The Code of Hammurabi in the Louvre should not be returned, as the location where it was (re)discovered in 1901 was not the location where it was originally created. This fact is true – the Code was created in Babylon in 1760 BC & at some point in the following six hundred years ended up in the Persian town of Susa. If we apply this rationale however, it is equally legitimate for someone else to take it from the Louvre today with no fear of reprisals. This on case is far from an isolated incident – the details may change in each case, but the overall attitude does not.

From:
Modern Ghana

BABYLON: MYTH AND TRUTH OR SUMMIT OF THE CULTURAL PROPERTY OF OTHERS?
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Mon, 11 Aug 2008

The striding and perhaps, growling, lion is surely an appropriate symbol for the power and influence of the three countries, France, Great Britain and Germany at the time that most of the valuable cultural objects were removed from Mesopotamia and other parts of the world.

The objective of the current exhibition (26 June – 5 October 2008) in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, entitled “Babylon: Myth and Truth”, is, according to the official website, “to explore the myth of Babel and the true facts surrounding the ancient city of Babylon: two worlds – one exhibition”. (1) A related Babylon exhibition has already been held in Paris (14 March – 2 June 2008) and another one will be held in London (13 November 2008 – 15 March 2009). The legends and symbolism arising from the myths of Babylon – Sodom and Gomorrah, myths of unrestrained hedonism, Tower of Babel – linguistic multiplicity and confusion, imprisonment and racial oppression, are no doubt very interesting and important and will be discussed by many commentators on the exhibition.(2) Not all visitors to the exhibition may be aware that Bob Marley and the Wailers, echoing Rastafarian beliefs and reflecting the views of many Africans and people of African descent, designated as Babylon the oppressive economic system and political hegemony of the West:
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Blogs can now be added to Facebook. You can add yourself as a reader of Elginism here.

It might be worth at this point also explaining (following various queries from people), what the link on the left hand side of the main page of this website saying Entries RSS is for. This link is actually a very handy way of keeping track of what has been posted on this website (or for that matter on others, as many sites now have this feature). The RSS link leads you to a news feed (essentially the text of the posts, without all the formatting & site surrounding them). The clever part though, is that there are various programs that can download the new items from the site, so that you don’t have to keep going back to it to see if there is anything new.

I won’t try & explain all the details of how to use it here – the BBC’s website has a good tutorial on the subject. Websites such as Bloglines allow you to look at a variety of new feeds online without having to add a separate program for viewing them.

When the New Acropolis Museum was being designed, the artefacts within it were considered as the factor that would define its eventual form. In this respect, the building is an anti-Bilbao – the form of the building is generated from the function, rater than a form being defined with the function them examined to see how it can fit within.

From:
Spero News

A vision for the new Acropolis Museum
The museum at the Acropolis is no mere shell. According to architect Michael Photiadis it was designed from “the inside out” to highlight the artifacts over architectural considerations.
Friday, August 01, 2008
By Danylo Hawaleshka
Article Tools

It somehow seems fitting that a museum built to showcase the architectural legacy of a temple honouring the warrior goddess Athena should itself be the outcome of numerous battles, some as yet unresolved.

For instance, Greek authorities required not one but four bare-knuckled design competitions – the first held more than 30 years ago – before deciding architects Bernard Tschumi of New York and Athens-based Michael Photiadis would bear the responsibility of creating the New Acropolis Museum.
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A new book looks at the story of the Rosetta Stone as being the most important artefact from Egypt, as it was this which helped the modern world to begin the process of understanding much of the background behind ancient Egypt. If a piece is this important though, setting aside issues of ownership & acquisition, should it not be located in the context of the other stories that it helped to unlock? Its impact and significance could be understood far better for those visiting Egypt than those visiting London.

From:
Newsday

The artifact that explained the other Egyptian artifacts
By MARY FOSTER | Associated Press Writer
5:05 PM EDT, July 31, 2008

“Discovery at Rosetta” (W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. 288 pages. $22.95), by Jonathan Downs: It’s the most important Egyptian artifact ever discovered — the key to the tale of the astonishing ancient civilization and its many accomplishments.

Egypt has always intrigued. The civilization with its pyramids, monuments, burial practices, pharaohs and deities was a mystery for generations. People wondered at the marvels left behind, but could only guess at the meanings they held.
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Inspired by Kwame Opoku’s writings on the Benin Bronzes, David Gill looks at the story of how the Benin Bronzes ended up in the great museums of the western world & how this relates to James Cuno’s analysis of the importance of artefacts such as these within an Encyclopaedic museum.

From:
Modern Ghana

Some Thoughts on the Benin Bronzes
By David Gill
Feature Article | Wed, 30 Jul 2008

James Cuno (in Who Owns Antiquity? [2008]) takes six objects from the holdings of the Art Institute of Chicago to demonstrate its character as an “encyclopedic museum”. The third piece is a bronze plaque from Benin that was acquired in 1933; Cuno speculates that it probably “left” the kingdom of Benin following the punitive raid by the British in 1897.

Kwame Anthony Appiah (Cosmopolitanism [2006]) also uses the Benin bronzes as he asks the question, “Whose Culture Is it, Anyway?”
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