Through the country’s almost perpetual status as a war zone in recent years, Afghanistan’s heritage has suffered greatly at the hands of looters. Many of the artefacts taken from the country, then end up on sale through art dealers & auction houses in the West. Operation Syenite is the name being given to a new initiative in Britain, which hopes to focus on this problem. The largest part of the problems though, as it has been throughout history, is that there will always be unscrupulous collectors who are willing to purchase the looted artefacts by whatever means. Whilst there remains a market for the looters to sell to, it seems likely that the looting will continue in some form.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Police to clamp down on trade in looted Afghan art
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/10/2008

Police to clamp down on trade in looted Afghan art Unscrupulous art galleries that deal in looted Afghan art could face prosecution under a new police initiative.

The Metropolitan Police has just started Operation Syenite to clamp down on the sale of art stolen from Afghanistan.
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Kwame Opoku comments on yesterday’s news, that after sixty years, if may become legally possible for Britain’s national museums to return some artefacts that are known to have been taken illegally.

From:
Modern Ghana

WILL BRITAIN JOIN OTHER NATIONS IN RETURNING STOLEN/LOOTED ARTWORKS TO THE RIGHTFUL OWNERS?
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Mon, 20 Oct 2008

It looks as if Britain is finally coming to the conclusion that stolen/looted cultural objects should be returned to their rightful owners. According to a report in the Telegraph, new legislation is on the way to allow the British Museum and other national museums to return artworks that were stolen/looted by the Nazis. The legislation will be specifically limited to works stolen/looted during the Nazi era that are now in the possession of many British national galleries and museum. The position until now has been that even if one had all the necessary evidence that a particular piece of work hanging in the British institutions was stolen, confiscated by the Nazis or sold under intimidation to the evil men of Hitler, they could not return them to the owners. They could offer compensation to the owners.
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As each day goes by, more & more demands are made for the reunification of looted artefacts. Many institutions continue to ignore such issues, hoping that they will go away – whilst rather than disappearing the campaigns are getting stronger with each day that they are ignored.

From:
Modern Ghana

MORE DEMANDS FOR THE RESTITUTION OF STOLEN/LOOTED BENIN ARTEFACTS

Hardly a day passes by without some call for the return of the stolen cultural objects of Benin. In the whole of Africa people are incensed when they hear about the unjustified invasion of Benin by the British in 1897 and above all, the looting and burning of Benin City. Most Africans cannot believe that the Europeans who preached Christian morality could at the same time have been involved in stealing cultural objects of Africans, who according to European propaganda had an inferior culture. Many an African is even more infuriated to realize that the so-called primitive objects are on show in respectable museums in the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France that refuse to contemplate the return of these objects. One starts wondering about the relations between the museums and the plunderers.
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The British Government is after long deliberations planning on altering existing legislation, to allow the countries national museums & galleries to return artefacts that were looted during the Nazi era.

This move to allow further selective deaccessioning (following the decision to allow return of human remains) is an important step. It does however highlight the fragmented nature of legislation on this issue, creating various special case scenarios, rather than defining a policy that applied more comprehensively to all restitution claims based on merit. Whilst few would object to the decision to allow return of Nazi loot from Britain’s institutions, as I have highlighted before, there are many other equally worthy cases that fall outside the parameters of the proposed legislation.

From:
Daily Telegraph

National galleries to hand back Nazi art
By Jasper Copping
Last Updated: 11:53PM BST 18 Oct 2008

Artworks looted by the Nazis during the Second World War and now held in Britain’s national museums and galleries are to be handed back to their owners.

The Tate, the British Museum, and the British Library are all known to hold looted items but are currently prevented by law from giving them back to the families that once owned them.
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Greece has now officially designated April 19th to honour Lord Byron. The poet was known for many things, one of which was the vilification of Lord Elgin’s actions in the poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

From:
Balkan Travellers

Greece to Officially Honour Lord Byron
BalkanTravellers.com
16 October 2008

Greece decided on an official day on which it will honour Lord Byron and other foreigners who participated in the war for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

A decree, signed by Greek President Karolos Papoulias, declared April 19 as the Day of Greekophilia and international solidarity.
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Following the use of laser cleaning techniques on the Greek Parthenon Sculptures, similar techniques are now going to be used on some of the buildings on the Acropolis site. The restoration of the Acropolis is probably the most technically advanced large scale projects of its type anywhere in the world – showing that although mistakes may have been made in the past, Greece is now very serious about preserving its most important monument.

From:
International Herald Tribune

Greek scientists use lasers to clean Acropolis
Reuters
Published: October 17, 2008
By Deborah Kyvrikosaios

In the past two and a half thousand years, the temples of the Acropolis have suffered fire, bombing and earthquake. Now, scientists are trying to save them from a new modern enemy: pollution.

Standing on a hilltop at the centre of Athens, a city of 4 million people, the Acropolis’ elaborately sculptured stones have fallen prey to a film of black crust from car exhaust fumes, industrial pollution, acid rain and fires.
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Zahi Hawass has championed the cause of cultural property restitution in Egypt in recent years. What can other countries learn from his approach?

From:
Afrikanet

Written by Dr. Kwame Opoku
Friday, 17 October 2008
SHALL WE LEARN FROM ZAHI HAWASS ON HOW TO RECOVER STOLEN/LOOTED CULTURAL OBJECTS?

We may not all agree with Zahi Hawass in his style and manner of approach to the issue of restitution of stolen or looted artefacts but there is no denying that the famous Egyptologist, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, has been extremely effective in his tasks and knows his job. This is no mean feat in a period where some of those having the fate of millions in their hands do not seem to have mastered their jobs.
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Mary Beard, author of a book on the Parthenon who has regularly voiced her views on the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, is to lecture on Saturday 1st November in Chicago as part of their Humanities Festival.

From:
Chicago Tribune

Originally posted: October 16, 2008
Making no little ideas: Five architecture-related programs you shouldn’t miss at the Chicago Humanities Festival

With the Chicago Humanities Festival fast approaching–it’s titled “Thinking Big” in honor of next year’s 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago–here are five recommendations for architecture-related programs. The number in parentheses is the program number in the festival.
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Almost anyone who has seen the New Acropolis Museum, now believes that its opening will represent the start of a significant new chapter in the campaign for reunification of all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in Athens.

From:
The Times

From Times Online
October 14, 2008
Inside the New Acropolis Museum
Athens finally has a suitable home for the Parthenon sculptures and – British marbles or not – you should go, says Ginny McGrath

The opening of the New Acropolis Museum will almost certainly reignite the debate over the Elgin Marbles.

The museum, which is expected to open in early 2009 after 30 years in conception, has even reserved a space for the missing sculptures in optimistic anticipation of their return.
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Dora Bakoyanni, Greece’s Foreign Minister, has spoken about the Elgin Marbles at an important conference & highlighted how resolution of the issue might bring about increased cooperation between Britain & Greece.

From:
Athens News Agency

10/13/2008
Modern History of Greece con’f

Foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis noted on Friday the historic ties between Greece and Britain, which celebrate this year their 175th anniversary of diplomatic relations, and stressed as their modern-day “mature and precious” bilateral cooperation, as well as their cooperation as EU partners and NATO allies “in a turbulent and uncertain world”, while she also called for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to be housed in the state-of-the-art New Acropolis Museum.

Addressing representatives of the British intellectural elite at a conference titled “The Study of the Modern History of Greece: An Oxford Perspective”, held at the Old Parliament building in central Athens, she said: “I am fully aware that I am touching on a sensitive chord for everyone. The return of the Marbles is a just demand for the culture of the City of Athens”.
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Jonathan Downs, the author of Discovery at Rosetta, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, has kindly sent me the text of the concluding chapter of this book. This chapter looks at the case for the return of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt – both its legality & the arguments surrounding it. The case for the restitution of the Rosetta Stone has a lot of parallels with the Parthenon Marbles – their acquisitions were roughly contemporaneous, they both came from outposts of what was at that time the Ottoman Empire, They both ended up in the British Museum.

The author has also offered to respond to any queries that people make in the comments on this message.

From:
Jonathan Downs (by email)

The following is an extract from Discovery at Rosetta (by Jonathan Downs, Constable, 2008, pp.210-215) outlining the current status of the Rosetta Stone, the facts governing its legal ownership and its possible repatriation to Egypt:

THE ROSETTA STONE: A PROUD TROPHY?

Despite the Rosetta Stone’s public profile, historically its status as an exhibit in the British Museum has not been nearly as contested as that of the ‘Elgin’ or Parthenon Marbles. To many it is immediately recognizable and more memorable than the sculptures that were formerly part of the Athenian Acropolis. This is understandable; until the end of the 1990s the Rosetta Stone rested on an angled frame close to the entrance of the museum – unavoidable, it was one of the first objects to be encountered, and crowds of visitors have gathered round it for the past two hundred years. Cleaned by conservators, it now occupies an equally prominent position in the centre of the Egypt collection by the Great Court entrance, upright within a protective case, still one of the most famous objects in the world. Before the arrival of the antiquities from Egypt in 1802, the British Museum contained little grand sculpture, its halls filled chiefly with smaller curiosities. The acquisition of the Rosetta Stone and the cargo from the Alexandria victory was an important step in the development of the institution.
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Dr Alexandros Mantis is lecturing at King’s College, London on New finds from the sculptures of the Parthenon

From:
Apokrisi

New Finds from the Sculpture of the Parthenon
On: Wed 22 October 2008 – 19:00

Lecture by Dr Alexandros Mantis, Director of the Acropolis Ephorate on the new finds from the Sculpture of the Parthenon. Organised by the Greek Archaeological Committee (UK) this event is open to the public. Further information and bookings on 020 7935 2020. Venue: King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R