This review compares four different books all covering the field of looted cultural property, from different perspectives. The fact that there are so many current books on the subject proves that it is an issue that is definitely on the radar – museums should think twice before dismissing it as an irrelevancy that the public aren’t bothered about.

From:
The Nation

Tales from the Vitrine: Battles Over Stolen Antiquities
By Britt Peterson

This article appeared in the January 26, 2009 edition of The Nation.
January 7, 2009

On a 1984 visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Turkish journalist named Ozgen Acar noticed a group of fifty artifacts labeled “East Greek treasure” that resembled a collection that had gone missing some twenty years before. The treasure, Acar suspected, had been snatched by grave robbers from Sardis, an ancient city in western Turkey, which served as the capital of the Lydian empire at its peak in the sixth and seventh centuries BC. (Herodotus tells us that its last king, the affluent Croesus, was the first person to mint coins of pure silver and gold, hence the saying “as rich as Croesus.”) Acar, who had spent the previous decade tracking antiquities looters in the small towns surrounding Sardis, took his suspicions to the Turkish Ministry of Education. It turned out that the Lydian Hoard had passed through a number of smugglers and semireputable dealers before reaching the Met in the 1960s, and there was plenty of evidence that the Met had known something of the provenance of the objects at the time and willfully ignored it. The Turkish government sued the Met for the unconditional return of the cache and, after a six-year legal battle, finally won. In 1995 the Lydian Hoard was returned to the small town of Usak, in Sardis, sparking an outpouring of national pride and a flurry of copycat lawsuits.
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Further coverage of yet another decision to return Aboriginal remains to Australia by a British institution.

From:
International Herald Tribune

British museum to return Aboriginal remains
The Associated Press
Published: January 8, 2009

LONDON: Local officials say a British museum has agreed to return two Aboriginal skulls and thigh bones to Australia.

Council officials in Brighton, southern England, say the remains are due to be taken back to Australia but has not said when. They say the Australian government has agreed to meet the bill for their transport.
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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book – this time in the Australian Press.

From:
The Australian

Pillagers called to account
Rosemary Sorensen
January 08, 2009

AFTER Michael Brand took on the directorship of the J. Paul Getty Museum in California and inherited the ugly mess of its acquisitions history, he suggested that being an Australian was an advantage.

“I went in (to negotiate with the Italian government the return of looted artworks the Getty owned) with no background in antiquities, no history at the Getty, a neutral person,” Brand told author and journalist Sharon Waxman last year. “It might even have helped that I was Australian — who knows?” Waxman, in her recently published book Loot, concurs, calling Brand a “blank slate”.
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George Hajifanis, a member of the Management Committee of Marbles Reunited unfortunately died suddenly a few weeks ago.

George worked tirelessly for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, using his connections within London’s Greek Cypriot community, as well as via other organisations involving the diaspora in Europe. His contributions & level headedness will be sorely missed.

From:
London Greek Radio

LGR – 22 December 2008

The funeral for George Hajifanis will be held today (23/12). The service will take place at St Sophia’s Church, Moscow Road, Bayswater and the burial will follow at Hendon Cemetery, Holders Hill Road.

George Hajifanis, Secretary of the National Federation of Cypriots in Britain, died suddenly in hospital on 15th December. He had suffered a stroke while he was visiting, together with his wife and two daughters, relatives in Maidstone, Kent.
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Yet another return of human remains from a UK museum to an Australian aboriginal community. A sign that where there is a will to do so, Museums & other institutions are able to see the requirement to return artefacts to their original owners.

From:
Sydney Morning Herald

UK to return more Aboriginal remains
January 7, 2009 – 6:52PM

Another set of Aboriginal remains held at a British museum for almost a century are to be returned to Australia.

Two skulls and two thigh bones kept by the Booth Museum of Natural History, in Brighton, East Sussex, are expected to be repatriated within days.
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Seeing the successes of other countries such as Egypt & Italy, in recent years, Turkey has become more vociferous in its requests for the return of artefacts by foreign institutions.

From:
Today’s Zaman

03 January 2009
Smuggled Turkish artifacts adorn world museums

A number of historical artifacts originally from Anatolia that were smuggled to foreign countries in the late 1800s and 1900s are now either exhibited in leading museums or auctioned.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry’s General Directorate on Cultural Assets and Museums notes that there are a number of historical works and artifacts smuggled from Turkey and currently based in other countries, including the US, Germany, Russia, Croatia, Denmark, Italy, France, Switzerland, Serbia, Montenegro, Ukraine and England.
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Kwame Opoku reponds to the news that Neil MacGregor has been named Briton of the Year by The Times.

From:
Modern Ghana

CAN NATIONALISM BE SOLD AS INTERNATIONALISM VIA THE BRITISH MUSEUM? SANCTIFICATION OF BRITISH SPOLIATIONS AND LOOT
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
03 January 2009

The choice of a personality as “Briton of the year” is clearly a matter for British nationalists and a non-Briton has no business examining the basis of such a choice. It is up to the British to indulge in such a game if they consider it worthwhile. However when a leading British newspaper, The Times, making such a designation for the first time, writes in this connection that the “British Museum is the best in the world”, that it is a museum for the world and refers to an “international society” and “global society”, calls its director whom it has selected as Briton of the year”, “Saint Neil” and declares that “his most profound belief is that the British Museum was established for the benefit of all nations”, then non-Britons are provoked to comment.

The respectable British newspaper is repeating what it must know to be incorrect, namely that the British Museum is there for the world or humanity.
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