Zahi Hawass has praised the US for being the first country in the world that co-operated with Egypt in securing the return of looted artefacts.

I’m a little unclear about which artefacts this news article is referring to – e.g. whether it is a case that has been covered elsewhere, as it gives very little in the way of detail & there was nothing mentioned on Zahi Hawass’s own website at the time this article was released by Associated Press.

From:
Art Daily

Egypt’s Chief Archaeologist Says United States to Return Smuggled Sarcophagi
14 October 2010

CAIRO (AP).- Egypt’s chief archaeologist says the United States will return a number of sarcophagi smuggled out of the country 50 years ago.

Zahi Hawass says U.S. authorities seized the sarcophagi on American soil and will return them to Egypt in the next two weeks. He didn’t provide any further details about the antiquities or say what sites they were taken from.
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Despite some press reports that have indicated to the contrary, the shops & restaurants in the New Acropolis Museum will remain open despite various planned strikes by workers.

From:
Kathimerini

Friday October 1, 2010 – Archive
Restaurant at museum open

The restaurant and gift shops at the Acropolis Museum will continue to operate as usual, its director Dimitris Pandermalis insisted yesterday, as he rejected reports that shutting down the Organization for the Promotion of Greek Culture (OPEP) would lead to their closure.

OPEP, whose employees’ contracts expired yesterday and are not being renewed due to public spending cutbacks, had been responsible for running the two gift shops and second-floor restaurant at the museum, which opened last summer. The museum has launched a tender for the management of the restaurant but Pandermalis said that its operation would not be affected in the meantime.

“The restaurant does not belong to OPEP,” he said in a letter to Kathimerini. “It is an area that is absolutely associated with the museum. The museum respects its visitors and aims to provide high-quality service that is free of the traditional hang-ups and failed stereotypes of the past.”

At first I thought I was reading an older story – but it appears that there is another auction of artefacts that are now suspected to have been through the warehouses of Giacomo Medici.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Medici “loot” for sale?
Two works coming to auction with Bonhams appear similar to those pictured in Polaroids found in the convicted dealer’s Geneva store
By Fabio Isman and Melanie Gerlis | From issue 217, October 2010
Published online 5 Oct 10 (market)

Bonhams London is to auction two antiquities that may have passed through the hands of the dealer Giacomo Medici, who has twice been found guilty of trafficking in antiquities in Italy, but is free as he mounts his third and final appeal. As we went to press, the auction house had not withdrawn the lots because the necessary information on the items had not been released, despite Bonhams’ repeated requests to the Italian authorities, they say.

Pictures in the Bonhams catalogue of the two works coming to auction on 6 October appear similar to Polaroids found in Medici’s Geneva store, which were seized in 1995 and presented as evidence during his trials, although these particular objects were never examined in court. This means that the objects have not been studied to establish their origins and whether or not they were illegally excavated or exported and may be legitimate.
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Peru’s long running dispute with Yale University continues, with President Alan Garcia making new demands for the return of 40,000 artefacts.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Peru president accuses Yale of Inca ‘robbery’
Published: 4:42PM BST 28 Sep 2010

Peruvian President Alan Garcia has demanded that Yale University returns the archeological treasures its researchers “looted” from the country’s Machu Picchu site in the early 1900s.

Peru says Yale took around 40,000 artefacts including pottery, jewellery and bones from the site in the Peruvian Andes.
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Following neatly on from the review of Craig Childs’s book on looting of Native American sites, one of the dealers caught for involvement in the Four Corners bust last year is taking a plea deal at his trial.

From:
Salt Lake Tribune

Key player in artifacts theft taking plea deal
By Paul Foy – The Associated Press
Published Sep 27, 2010 01:38PM

A Southwest antiquities dealer who was forced to surrender five truckloads of American Indian relics to federal agents is expected to settle charges of digging up a grave and plundering artifacts from federal lands, his defense lawyer has revealed in court papers.

Durango, Colo., artifacts dealer Carl “Vern” Crites was one of the biggest players in a Four Corners bust of artifact trafficking that led to charges against 26 defendants last year.
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A court in Munich has ruled that various artefacts looted from churches & monasteries in Northern Cyprus should be returned, after they were found hidden in the false wall of an two apartments in 1997.

From:
Cyprus Mail

German court order return of stolen Cypriot treasures
By Natali Hami and George Psyllides Published on September 28, 2010

SCORES of valuable religious artefacts looted from churches in the Turkish-occupied north are a step closer to repatriation following the decision of a German court.

Last week, a court in Munich ordered the return of the artefacts stolen by Turkish national Aydin Dikmen, after the invasion of the island in 1974.
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A new book by Craig Childs looks at looting of Archaeological sites – particularly Native American ones in the USA.

From:
Salt Lake Tribune

Author digs for answers in Four Corners artifacts looting raid
By Ben Fulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published Sep 25, 2010 07:54PM
Updated Sep 25, 2010 07:51PM

A flood of thoughts entered Craig Childs’ head long before he wrote page one of his new book about archaeological plunder and preservation.

Memories of hunting for rocks in the Four Corners area with his then-3-year-old son were foremost among them.
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During a visit to Athens, China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao toured the New Acropolis Museum & pledged to support Greece in their efforts to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles that are in the British Museum.

This display of support is not unexpected, considering that China has in recent years been making many efforts to track down artefacts looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin (son of the Seventh Earl who removed the Parthenon Sculptures).

From:
Athens News Agency

10/21/2010
Chinese support for return of Marbles

(ANA-MPA) — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, accompanied by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, toured the Acropolis in central Athens on Sunday morning, where the return of stolen antiquities and cultural treasures to their country of origin was discussed, amongst others. (ANA-MPA)

Wen Jiabao pledged to support Greece’s standing demand for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles, currently displayed at the British Museum in London, to the new Acropolis Museum.

The Chinese premier also recounted the looting and destruction in 1860 of the old summer palace Yuan Ming Yuan, outside Beijing, by British troops. The soldiers were acting on the orders of then British High Commissioner to China Lord Elgin, the son of the notorious Lord Elgin, the diplomat who connived of the operation to slice off and (ANA-MPA) remove the sculptures from the Ottoman-occupied Parthenon less than two decades before the Greek War of Independence.

A conference organised by the Greek organisation AHEPA in Melbourne has decided to begin a legal battle against the British Museum for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
Greek Reporter

AHEPA Initiative for Parthenon Marbles Return
Posted on 06 October 2010 by Panos Kontogiannis

A conference organized by the Greek-American progressive organization AHEPA of Australia in Melbourne has decided to begin a legal battle against the Museum of London to return the Parthenon sculptures in Greece. AHEPA of Australia made the first initiative by giving the amount of $15.000 Australian dollars for Emanuel Komninos and Victor Bizanis to start a global campaign on this issue.

Emanuel Komninos who is in charge of the first committee for returning the Parthenon sculptures and lawyer Victor Bizanis spoke among others, at the conference.
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The Ghent Altarpiece, also known as the “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” is a complex polyptych panel painting made up of twenty four separate scenes painted onto a number of panels. Since it was completed in 1432, at various times, many of the panels have been stolen or looted or lost by other means & at the same time, various attempts have been made to reunify all the surviving panels & where possible to replace the missing ones with copies. It has some odd parallels with the Parthenon Marbles, althogh the attempts to reunify it have been far more successful.

From:
Basil and Spice

Book Review: Stealing The Mystic Lamb By Noah Charney
Oct 5, 2010
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen

‘Stealing the Mystic Lamb’: Strange World of Art Theft Revealed With Emphasis on the Most Frequently Stolen Artwork of All Time

Question: What Is the Most Frequently stolen artwork of all time?

Answer: Read Noah Charney’s “Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece” (PublicAffairs, 336 pages, color and black and white photographs, notes and sources, bibliography, index, $27.95) to discover that truth is indeed stranger than fiction in the world of art theft and looting.
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This article identifies the duplicity I noticed earlier in the year with the Staffordshire Hoard. Whenever artefacts are found in the UK, efforts are made to keep them in the area where they were discovered, to the extent of organising fundraising appeals & comments are made by prominent politicians. On the other hand, when a foreign country asks for their artefacts to be returned, so that they too can keep them close to the area where they belong, they are frequently accused of having an argument that is nothing more than jingoistic cultural nationalism.

From:
News and Star

Is it our history?
By Stephen Blease
Last updated at 12:47, Friday, 01 October 2010

There’s no doubt about it. The Roman helmet unearthed in Crosby Garrett deserves to return to Cumbria.

It was found here. It’s as much a part of our history as that other great Roman relic, Hadrian’s Wall. It is great news that the campaign has got political backing from MPs John Stevenson and Rory Stewart – and financial backing from an anonymous donor offering £50,000.
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Tiffany Jenkins (who was also one of the organisers of this event) is giving a talk this evening at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery about the ethical issues surrounding human remains in museums.

From:
Bristol City Council

Human Remains: objects to study or ancestors to bury?
Thursday 11November 2010 7.30 –9pm
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Speaker: Dr Tiffany Jenkins

FULLY BOOKED

Cultural sociologist Dr Tiffany Jenkins explores the ethical questions surrounding museums and the holding and display of human remains. What is respectful treatment? How should they be displayed? Should human remains be repatriated?

Dr Tiffany Jenkins is arts and society director of the Institute of Ideas. Her book ‘Contesting Human Remains: Museums and the Crisis of Cultural Authority’ is out Autumn 2010.