The Getty’s Aphrodite has now returned to Morgantina in Sicily following pressure from Italy.

From:
SAFE

Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Returning archeological artifacts to local communities: the example of the Morgantina Aphrodite

Aidone is a tranquil, rural town in central Sicily (Italy) that recently has become subject of the attention of international news, having checkmated – so to say – two of the most famous and powerful cultural institution in the world, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the unscrupulous collecting practice for which the obsession with “owning” an unique artifact overshadows due legal end ethical questions about provenance before the acquisition.

Aidone and its Archaeological Museum are now home of the so much disputed Morgantina Silver Trove, 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt items returned by the MET in 2010, and the Morgantina Aphrodite, the statue repatriated by the Getty in March 2011, both illegally excavated and exported from the ancient Greek site of Morgantina, the nearby archaeological centre, in the 1980’s. The Museum exhibits re-contextualize the artifacts according to the site’s history, as retraced by the various field excavations (Princeton University, University of Illinois, University of Virginia, along with the Italian Ministry of Culture) involved in researching and studying this ancient Greek colony.
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Cleaning controversies regarding poor attempts to restore artefacts are not new – the Parthenon Marbles attracted similar attention based on problems caused by the treatment of the sculptures in the 1930s.

from:
The Art Newspaper

European treatment harms African works?
Questions are being raised about a protective coating applied to Ife sculptures
By Martin Bailey | From issue 223, April 2010

LONDON. African art specialists are questioning the recent conservation of Ife sculptures in Madrid in preparation for an international touring exhibition. They are concerned that Spanish conservators applied an inappropriate coating intended to protect the sculptures during the tour and after they are returned to Nigeria, and might even have removed ancient surface patina.

John Picton, a professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and former deputy director of the National Museum in Lagos, says that the ancient brass heads have developed “a shiny surface”. Other specialists have also expressed concerns about the treatment by conservators at the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España (Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute).
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Some books, that may possibly form the earliest surviving Christian religious texts were found in a Jordanian cave, but were smuggled out of the country soon after their discovery. Jordan is now trying to secure their return.

From:
BBC News

29 March 2011 Last updated at 06:30
Jordan battles to regain ‘priceless’ Christian relics
By Robert Pigott BBC News religious affairs correspondent

They could be the earliest Christian writing in existence, surviving almost 2,000 years in a Jordanian cave. They could, just possibly, change our understanding of how Jesus was crucified and resurrected, and how Christianity was born.

A group of 70 or so “books”, each with between five and 15 lead leaves bound by lead rings, was apparently discovered in a remote arid valley in northern Jordan somewhere between 2005 and 2007.
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Following Peru’s agreement with Yale University, the first of the returned artefacts have now arrived in the country.

From:
BBC News

31 March 2011 Last updated at 00:56
Peru welcomes back Inca artefacts from Yale University

Peru has given a lavish welcome to hundreds of Inca artefacts returned by Yale University in the US, nearly a century after they were taken from the famed citadel of Machu Picchu.

A convoy of trucks escorted by police carried the remains from the airport to the presidential palace in Lima.
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Many museums holding disputed artefacts, claim that these were acquired in a different era, when ethical standards were different to how they are now. What they can’t absolve themselves from quite so easily is the cases that relate to far more recent acquisitions, where it appears that the right questions were never properly asked before the purchase was made.

From:
Huffington Post

Is It Possible to “Collect” Antiquities These Days?
Posted: 04/ 5/11 05:40 PM ET

Antiquities is “the only area of the art world that deals entirely with stolen goods.” Perhaps that is an exaggeration — certainly, many ancient objects were never looted from historic sites or even dug out of the ground — but it is a bit of hyperbole that has a growing level of acceptance, to some degree with the public and overwhelmingly with archaeologists. Clemency Coggins, professor of archaeology and art history at Boston University, who made this comment, describes herself as a moderate on this issue because she believes that some antiquities can be legally owned. However, in her ideal world, antiquities dealers would “get out of the business.”

One might assume that the trade in antiquities would be diminishing on its own. Almost every nation on the planet (the United States is a notable exception) has enacted laws to limit or prohibit the export of cultural property older than some specified number of years. With Mexico, it’s pre-Columbian objects; with Pakistan, it’s art and antiques dating before 1857. Presumably, no more comes out of these and other countries, leaving a dwindling supply of stuff that hasn’t already been donated to museums.
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More coverage of the US Appeal Court verdict on the seizure of Iranian Artefacts from two Chicago Museums.

From:
Tehran Times

Wednesday, April 6, 2011
U.S. court rejects seizure of Iranian antiquities
Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has rejected confiscation of Iran’s 300 Achaemenid clay tablets loaned to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute in a session on March 29.

In the ruling, the Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s order that might have handed the artifacts over to several victims of a 1997 terrorist bombing in Israel, the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) reported last week.
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Iran appears to have carried out its earlier threats to end cooperation with the Louvre, due to unresolved disputes that it has with the museum.

From:
Press TV

Monday Apr 04, 201102:42 PM GMT
Iran severs ties with Louvre Museum
4th april 2011

Iran says it has severed all ties with the Louvre Museum because the French art center has not shown any commitment to the promises it made.

“Based on the agreement between the Louvre and Iran’s Cultural heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHTO), the museum must hold an exhibition of its ancient artifacts in Iran,” Head of ICHTO Hamid Baqaei told a press conference on Monday.
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More coverage of Neil MacGregor’s comments in an Australian Press article.

From:
Greek Reporter

British Museum’s Director Refuses to Return Parthenon Marbles
Posted on 31 March 2011 by Anastasia Miskedaki

The director of the British Museum was interviewed by the Australian newspaper “The Sydney Morning Herald” where he eliminated all possibilities of the return of the Parthenon marbles to Greece. Mr. Macgregor, states characteristically about the marbles: “These historical objects are worthy when they are exhibited in a whole, so, as a narrator of the whole human history, I think it is obligatory to find the best way for the marbles to be visited, as they cannot be embodied in Parthenon.” As he also said, in the two-page interview included in the Spectrum insert of the newspaper, the museum is willing to lend the marbles to Greece but the Greek government doesn’t even negotiate this possibility. When the new museum of the Acropolis was inaugurated, the British Museum was once more willing to lend the marbles, on a condition that the Greek government would recognize the rights of their possession to the British Museum. This proposition was straightly declined from the Greek government.

The Russian Magazine Ellada has an article in it about an exhibition of photos of the Parthenon by Apostolos Papapostolou.

From:
Greek Reporter

Parthenon Photo Exhibition Profiled in “Ellada” Greek-Russian Magazine
Posted on 25 March 2011 by Polina Dimea

A special feature in the Russian magazine “Ellada” (Greece), which is published in Moscow, was dedicated to the “Marbles” photo exhibition and its creator Mr. Apostolos Papapostolou. The above mentioned magazine is the only printed medium in Russia specialized in topics related to Greece and Cyprus.

The article outlines the profile and work of Mr. Papapostolou, who is a professor in the Technological Educational Institution (TEI) of Athens. It describes how art and technology are his big loves, and actually a motivation for a remarkable photographic approach of the Parthenon marbles.
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The Marbles Reunited campaign’s latest newsletter is now available to download from their website.

Download it here.

The US Court of Appeals has overturned the verdict by lower courts in a long running case, that ordered two Chicago museums to hand over Iranian artefacts as compensation for American victims of a 1997 Hamas bombing. I still struggle to understand the logic that this entire case is based on – as the compensation seems entirely disconnected from the actual events – and if such a case is successful might lead the way for ever more spurious artefact seizures, making museums more reluctant to lend to US museums.

From:
CAIS

University of Chicago and Museums Win Key Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities
Wednesday, 30 March 2011 00:30
By David Glenn

LONDON, (CAIS) — Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute won a victory on Tuesday in their efforts to maintain possession of thousands of ancient Iranian artifacts. In a ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a lower court’s order that might have handed the artifacts over to several American victims of a 1997 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem.

Those victims won a $90-million judgment in 2003 against the government of Iran, which is claimed to have allegedly financed and trained the Arab terrorists who carried out the Jerusalem bombing. But the victims and their families have struggled to collect any of that judgment from Iran, and their lawyers have sought instead to seize purported Iranian assets in the United States, including antiquities held in American museums. Those legal efforts have been condemned by some scholars as a dangerous politicization of the world’s archaeological heritage.
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Neil MacGregor talks about how the Parthenon Marbles can be part of a story in London & a different one in Athens. What he seems to completely miss is the fact that they were designed were part of one complete story, not the contrived justification of their expropriation that he thinks they now embody. Would anyone consider that splitting the pages of a book between two locations made more sense than having all the surviving pages in a single library?

The story of the marbles in the British Museum, is merely a small & inconvenient footnote at the end of a long life on the acropolis – claiming that it somehow now forms a new (equally important) story seems slightly ridiculous.

From:
The Australian

An object lesson in civilisations
March 29, 2011 12:00AM

NEIL MacGregor, director of the British Museum in London, had an unlikely popular success with his BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects, followed by an engaging if sizeable tome of the same name. Bite-sized discussions about chiselled rocks, old coins and ancient scrolls, no matter how well researched, are not your usual hit-makers.

MacGregor tapped into a revival of interest in history, a thirst for cultural context at a time when we seem to value things being faster, smaller and disposable while, simultaneously, contemporary life is ever more frenetic and unexamined.
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