In response to the previous story about talks between the British Museum & Greece, the British Museum has emphatically denied that this could lead to the return of the sculptures.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

British Museum denies plan to return Parthenon pieces
Tuesday August 28, 2012

The British Museum denied Friday that it was considering returning fragments of sculptures from the Parthenon to Greece, as suggested by the director of the Acropolis Museum in Athens a day earlier.

The British Museum said it was «open to discussions regarding a short-term loan of some of the objects but not a permanent return.
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The Director of the New Acropolis Museum, Professor Dimitrios Pantermalis, has announced planed talks to be held with the British Museum, to discuss how the Parthenon Marbles issue might be resolved.

from:
Agence France Presse

Greece in Parthenon talks with British Museum
(AFP) – 5 days ago

ATHENS — Greece is holding talks with the British Museum on the return of fragments from the Parthenon Marbles, the director of the Acropolis Museum in Athens said on Thursday.

Demetrios Pantermalis said he had made a proposal on the issue at a UNESCO meeting in June and that talks would be held in Athens in the coming weeks.
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A new photo campaign aims to draw attention to the plight of the Parthenon Marbles, to illustrate how other famous landmarks around the world might have looked if Lord Elgin had seized artefacts from those locations rather than Athens.

Follow the link to the original article to see the actual images.

From:
Greek Reporter

“If Elgin was in …” Rome, London, New York, Paris, etc. …
By Stella Tsolakidou on August 7, 2012

ATHENS – After launching the international “I AM GREEK AND I WANNA GO HOME” independent movement for the repatriation of the stolen Greek sculptures and art, photographer and musician Ares Kalogeropoulos strikes again as an art editor of Alexis Mantheakis’ inspired concept “If Elgin was in …”

The series of pictures shows what would have happened if Lord Elgin had not only been to Athens but to plunder other cities of the world as well. The pictures aim at raising awareness among the public and the authorities about the catastrophe Lord Elgin wraught upon the Parthenon. The British diplomat removed 65 percent of the Parthenon marble sculptures in 1811, which are housed at London’s British Museum.

The Greek artists are attempting to compare the Greek monument’s looting to what could have been inflicted on other major sites and statues around the world, if their most treasured possessions had been stolen. The last picture depicts the Parthenon in its current state and the caption reads “…but Elgin went to Athens”.

The International Council of Museums has published a list of categories of items from Egypt that they believe should not be acquired by dealers, collectors or museums, unless there is a clear provenance to the artefact. (The link is from a few months ago, because I had not come across it earlier – but it is still relevant)

From:
The Art Newspaper

Icom publishes “red list” of Egyptian antiquities at risk
Objects include statues, vessels, coins, textiles and manuscripts that the council warns should not be acquired without documented provenance
By Martin Bailey. Web only
Published online: 21 February 2012

The International Council of Museums (Icom) published an “emergency red list” of Egyptian cultural objects at risk of being illegally traded earlier this month. It presents categories of objects (rather than individual looted pieces) that should not be acquired by dealers, collectors or museums without documented provenance.

The list, which is being circulated internationally, includes statues, vessels, funerary objects, architectural elements, coins, textiles and manuscripts. It is also designed to help police and custom officials identify the types of objects that are susceptible to illicit trafficking.
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In 2008, new standards for museum acquisitions, set by the Association of Art Museum Directors, were adopted by most museums in the US. The Cleveland Museum of Art however currently appears to be ignoring both these & its own guidelines, with the purchase of two artefacts that many believe to be of dubious provenance.

From:
New York Times

Museum Defends Antiquities Collecting
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: August 12, 2012

Over the last five years, the Cleveland Museum of Art has been at work on one of the largest building programs of any art institution in the country, a $350 million project that has been unveiled in sleek new stages and will be completed by 2013, adding 35,000 more square feet of gallery space.

But the museum has also been building in less visible ways and is set to announce on Monday the acquisition of two high-profile ancient artifacts that seem certain to draw attention not only to the institution’s expansion but also to the complicated long-running debate about antiquities collecting by museums.
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Photographer and musician Ares Kalogeropoulos has expanded on his original campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, with a new video.

From:
Greek Reporter

‘I Am Greek and I Want to Go Home’ Movement for the Repatriation of Looted Greek Antiquities
By Areti Kotseli on August 5, 2012 in News

“You can steal a statue. But you can NOT steal my origin.

I AM GREEK

Citizens of the World, I am being kept hostage

HELP ME RETURN HOME, to Greece.

I was made to be ridden by Heroes, I was made to run on stone,
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The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 led to international outcry. Looking back at it today though, their are different points of view over what should happen to the site now. As with sites such as the Acropolis, there are those who want to restore it to how it was originally, whereas others think that it should be stabilised in its current state, rather than attempting any sort of rebuilding. As with the Acropolis, this is the sort of issue, which has no clear right or wrong answers.

From:
BBC World Service

13 August 2012 Last updated at 00:44
Bamiyan Buddhas: Should they be rebuilt?
By Stephanie Hegarty

The destruction of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 led to global condemnation of the Taliban regime. But the decision by Unesco not to rebuild them has not put an end to the debate about their future.

When the Taliban were at the height of their power in Afghanistan, leader Mullah Omar waged a war against idolatry.
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The recent return of artefacts to Afghanistan that were recovered within the UK highlights the fact that over 9,000 looted items have been returned to the country in the last ten years. These returned items have been carefully packaged & put in storage until a new museum is built that can properly display them in a secure environment – a fact that makes nonsense of the issue raised in the past (before the opening of the New Acropolis Museum) that the Parthenon Marbles could not be returned because Greece had nowhere to put them.

From:
Guardian

Treasures returned to Afghan museum
Around 9,000 stolen artefacts returned since 2001, says minister Sayed Masaddeq Khalili

Hundreds of looted treasures have been returned to Afghanistan with the help of the British Museum and UK police and border forces.

The haul is just a fraction of what has been stolen from Afghanistan’s national museum and rich archeological sites in recent decades. Once a wealthy part of the ancient silk road, it was criss-crossed for centuries by traders and conquering armies who left buried traces of their presence.
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After the 2012 Olympics, the housing in the Olympic village, currently used for all of the Athletes attending the event, will be refurbished & altered, to convert it into private housing. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, architect Niall McLaughlin has decided to clad some of these building in panels that replicate the Parthenon Marbles, cast out of concrete. Tom Flynn has already written about it on his blog here.

From:
Notes From The Underground

East is East : The Athletes Village and the Elgin Marbles

Once the dust from the Olympics and Paralympics has settled, the Athletes Village will be transformed into East Village. Hosting over17,000 athletes and team officials during the Olympic Games, the Village will be converted into 2,818 residential units including 1,379 affordable homes. The athletes currently sleep in the homes of future owners, fulfilling the site’s own mantra of ‘Beds for athletes, homes for Londoners’. And what homes they are, with beautifully differentiated envelopes and the Lea Valley Park on their doorstep. Meanwhile, with athletes from all 205 competing countries in the village, a worldwide community is sure to identify these individual blocks as home for the next month.

One piece of this differentiation caught my eye in particular. Down at the Building Centre on Store Street, there was a slick exhibition of what the Village will be like after the games. New London Architecture, in association with Delancey, put on the exhibition ‘East Village – a lasting legacy for London’ from the 13th to the 31st March to showcase the architectural and design excellence of the village set within the broader context of the transformation of East London (1). Here models of the entire proposal sat alongside descriptions of the area, drawings from the architects and materials for the buildings themselves. Right in the middle of them all was this:
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A temporary exhibition at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens aims to give visitors a better idea of the colours that the sculptures on the Acropolis would originally have been, rather than the pristine while marble that we see today.

From:
Acropolis Museum

Archaic Colors

Commencing Tuesday 31 July 2012 and for the next twelve months, the Acropolis Museum wants to conduct research on its unique collection of archaic statues, which retain their colors to a small or large degree, and to open a very extensive discussion with the public and various experts on color, its technical issues, its detection using new technologies, its experimental use on marble surfaces, its digital reconstruction, its meaning, as well as the archaic period’s aesthetic perception of color. So far, scientific research into the color found on ancient sculpture has made great progress and reached surprising conclusions that to a large degree refute the stereotypical assumptions regarding ancient sculpture. It turns out that color, far from being just a simple decorative element, added to the sculpture’s aesthetic quality.
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Graham Bishop alerted me to a novel that he is writing, about French & Greek police trying to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. The story revolves around attempts to retrieve some sculptures from the the wreck of Elgin’s ship off Kythera.

From:
Commissaire Pierre Rousseau’s Diary

Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Back to the Parthenon

Our latest case is now written up in first draft. But before I submit it to the PJ there is a lot of work to do revising and checking facts. This time it was Patrick and Eleni who were the prime movers. Eleni spotted some suspicious goings on the the Greek island of Kythira and followed up a fascinating story told to them by a waiter at their favourite restaurant about the possible rescuing of some carvings from the Parthenon.

The background involves the foundering off the island of the HMS Mentor, the ship which carried the first of the cases Lord Elgin shipped back to England with the sculptures he had prised off the Temple of Athena the Virgin, that is, the Parthenon.

Should take a few months but then everyone will be able to read it.

Former Getty Director, Michael Brand, reveals why he left the institution along with some of the issues in dealing with the return of looted artefacts during his tenure. He also re-iterated what others have mentioned before – that Marion True was used more as a scapegoat, than being the true root of the disputed antiquities issue.

From:
Art Newspaper

Ex-director of Getty Museum reveals why he was ousted
Michael Brand takes pride in working with Italy and Greece to overcome impasse over controversial artefacts
By Elizabeth Fortescue. Web only
Published online: 19 July 2012

The former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Michael Brand, has revealed more about the reasons for his abrupt departure from the Los Angeles institution in January 2010, telling The Art Newspaper that his position there had become “untenable”.

Brand blames many of the Getty’s internal troubles on its management structure. The director of the Art Gallery NSW in Sydney since June, Brand recalls his role as the Getty Museum’s director as a “lonely” one. “It became very clear that the museum director was in a position where he couldn’t actually make decisions or plan,” Brand says.
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