As the case of the Banksy artwork removed from the wall in Wood Green continues, more & more people are trying to draw slightly absurd parallels to the Parthenon Marbles & calling for the British Ministry of Culture to intervene to block the auction from taking place. However in this case, I can’t really understand quite what the basis for the arguments is.

It now seems clear that the owner of the building (of which the wall on which the graffiti was on was a part) authorised & presumably organised the removal of the artwork. No doubt they stand to make a reasonable profit from it. Now, Banksy picks the walls he paints on – with no consultation with the owners, so this lucky owner is soon going to be wealthier than they were before – and it is entirely through luck.

Haringey Council are claiming that the art is something that enriched the area & was in part something that belonged to the people. It is unclear how they can make this judgement, though, when much of their time is spent cleaning graffiti (that is typically of much poorer quality) off walls. There is no body which decides what is graffiti & what is street art – and that one must be scrubbed off & one preserved, so there argument does not really carry much weight.

It would be great if the work could have stayed – but that is just my own personal opinion – nothing more. Just because you don’t like what is happening, it doesn’t mean that the law should suddenly intervene (without any clear legal framework under which to do so).

Comparisons to the Parthenon Marbles are far more ridiculous – street art by its nature is a transient thing – even with protection, paint will flake off in a few years, leading it to fade away. The sale is being made legally (despite the fact that many people are upset by it).

From:
Artinfo

February 20, 2013, 6:25 pm
London’s Stolen Banksy Heads to the Auction Block Despite 11th Hour English Rescue Attempt

Part of the inherent definition of street art is that it is, by nature, public. It appears on the sides of buildings and on sidewalks, in doorways and on concrete blocks. It most often appears in urban neighborhoods, and tends to lend itself to some sort of social commentary. The illicit nature of the craft is in itself subversive and, as a corollary, non-commercial. Or it was anyway.

In recent years, street art has become gritty-chic, touted by the likes of Kate Moss, and therefore increasingly popular as a collecting category. Original works by Banksy, probably the most important street artist of the last twenty years, now fetch six figures at auction. It was only a matter of time before people started ripping down walls to, quite literally, extract the value from them.
Read the rest of this entry »

More coverage of the debate earlier this week about he reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. As well as the vote taken after the UK debate, one was also made at the end of the live broadcast of it at the Acropolis Museum – which predictably found an either higher level of support than in Britain.

This story has also had a lot of additional coverage, as a paragraph at the end of an AP article, that has been syndicated by many newspapers internationally.

From:
Artinfo

“We Will Never Repay the Debt that We Owe Greece”: Actor Stephen Fry Calls for Parthenon Marbles to Be Sent Back
by ARTINFO UK
Published: June 13, 2012

The Eurozone may be in tatters, and Greece about to return to the drachma, but on Monday very different matters were at hand. A debate organized by Intelligence Squared held at London’s Cadogan Hall and screened live at the Acropolis Museum in Athens reignited the passions around the Elgin marbles. And Stephen Fry stood out as an unlikely hero of the Hellenic cause.

The Elgin marbles were stripped from the Parthenon and brought to the UK in the 19th century by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador in Constantinople when the Turks controlled Greece. The priceless sculptures have been held at the British Museum ever since, and although the British government claims that they were legally acquired, they have been a sore point in the cultural relationship between the two countries for just as long.
Read the rest of this entry »

The return of the Euphronius Krater to Italy a few years ago appears to have been far from the end to the Met’s problems over looted artefacts in their collection.

Further information on this story is available here and a more detailed description of the artefacts involved including photos is here.

From:
Artinfo

More Antiquities Woes for U.S. Museums Loom, As Turkey Demands 18 Artifacts From the Metropolitan Museum
by Benjamin Sutton
Published: March 20, 2012

Former Metropolitan director Phillipe de Montebello famously faced one of the greatest challenges of his career over looted Greek antiquities in the museum’s collection, ultimately diffusing it with his ingenious “returns-for-loans” strategy. Now, new director Thomas Campbell faces a fresh battle over dodgy antiquities, this time from Turkey. And it’s heating up.

At the beginning of the month the Turkish government made aggressive moves to assert its claims on supposedly looted objects, banning its own institutions from loaning antiquities to museums including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Met, until artifacts held in those museums’ collections were returned. While the Art Newspaper reported that 12 unidentified items at the Metropolitan were in dispute, the blog Chasing Aphrodite is now claiming that the number has escalated to 18, and has even offered a specific list of the contested artifacts.
Read the rest of this entry »

More coverage on the deal signed between Greece & the USA to restrict the importation of historic artefacts.

From:
Art Info

The U.S. and Greece Agree to Ban Imports of Most Antiquities, Despite Concerns Raised by Debt Crisis

Collectors in the market for Greek antiquities may soon find them harder to come by on this side of the Atlantic.

Standing at the Parthenon Museum in Athens, Greece last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an agreement with the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Stavros Lambrinidis to restrict imports of ancient Greek artifacts to the United States.
Read the rest of this entry »

More coverage of the statements made by Egypt about reclaiming Cleopatra’s Needle, an ancient obelisk, from New York’s Central Park, due to allegations of negligence. Note that, although the obelisk is part of a pair (with the other in London), the claim only relates to the one in New York at present.

From:
Artinfo

Egypt Threatens to Reclaim Cleopatra’s Needle From Central Park, Citing Negligence
Published: January 10, 2011

CAIRO— Zahi Hawass, the ubiquitous, media-savvy Egyptian antiquities director whose blockbuster King Tut exhibition just finished its United States tour over the weekend, cannot be accused of resting on his laurels. After having convinced the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return 19 small artifacts that he said were taken illegally from Egypt, he’s now turning his sights to bigger game in the museum’s backyard — Cleopatra’s Needle, the 3,500-year-old obelisk that resides next to the Met in Central Park, and which Hawass now accuses the Parks Department of failing to properly maintain.

Despite its moniker, the obelisk was not built under the famous Egyptian queen’s reign, but by her predecessor of a century and a half, Thutmose III, around 1450 B.C. Its provenance is not in question — the Egyptian Khedive (or viceroy) first suggested giving it as a gift to New York City in 1869 in honor of the completion of the Suez Canal and the resulting trade relationship between the U.S. and Egypt. The gift became official in 1877, after William Vanderbilt promised the tens of thousands of dollars necessary for transporting the obelisk, and it was erected near the newly-established museum in 1881. But Hawass claims that the city has allowed the monument’s hieroglyphics to deteriorate, LiveScience reported.
Read the rest of this entry »

Both of the major auction houses dealing with fine art seem to be equally comfortable about selling looted & disputed artefacts. In many cases however, subsequent public outcry has led to postponement of the sale. In this case, Christies in Hong Kong is selling yet more artefacts that came from Beijing’s Summer Palace. This looting during the ransacking of the Summer Palace is particularly relevant of course, as it took place under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin – the son of Lord Elgin who removed the sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens.

From:
Artinfo

Looted Imperial Treasure Hits the Block at Christie’s Hong Kong

HONG KONG— There were just three lots in the sale of imperial treasures from the Fonthill Collection at Christie’s Hong Kong on December 1, but they attracted intense interest and raked in a total of HK$226.3 million ($29 million). The reason? Their links to one of the most infamous acts of foreign plunder inflicted on 19th-century imperial China.

The Fonthill Collection was the creation of a passionate collector by the name of Alfred Morrison (1821-1897). The Chinese works in the Christie’s sale came to him via one Lord Loch of Drylaw, who served as private secretary to Lord Elgin on the latter’s fateful mission to China at the end of the Second Opium War. Lord Loch acquired the plundered items after the 1860 destruction and looting by French and British troops of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

The British Museum after months of prevaricating proceeded with the plans to loan the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran – but already, the hard line newspaper Kayhan is calling for it not to be returned at the end of its loan.

From:
Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies

Hard-line daily Kayhan called for not returning Cyrus Cylinder to Britain
Tuesday, 14 September 2010 14:56
By Golnaz Esfandiari*

LONDON, (CAIS) — Islamic Republic President, Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Sunday attended the unveiling in Tehran of the Cyrus Cylinder, which is on loan from the British Museum. The cylinder dates from the 6th Century BCE and is believed by many to be the first charter of human rights. It will be on public display for four months.

The unveiling took place at a ceremony at Iran’s National Museum that was turned into a platform for Ahmadinejad and his controversial chief of staff Esfandiari Rahim Mashaei to promote their brand of religious nationalism. (Read here for more about the recent attempt by Ahmadinejad to promote new religious nationalism and hard-liners’ reaction to it.)
Read the rest of this entry »

For thirty years, scaffolding has been a prominent feature of the Parthenon. The current stage that the restoration works have reached means that for a few months it will be possible for visitors to see the building unencumbered by scaffold.

From:
Reuters

Athens’ Parthenon scaffold-free for first time in years
By Jon Hemming
ATHENS | Thu May 27, 2010 9:45pm BST

ATHENS (Reuters Life!) – Visitors to Athens have a rare window of opportunity to see the showpiece Parthenon temple on the ancient Acropolis without scaffolding for the first time in nearly 30 years as a major restoration work nears completion.

The Greek government launched a project to restore the Parthenon and other buildings on the world heritage site in 1975, but it was not until 1983 that work started.
Read the rest of this entry »

Australian Aboriginal representatives are in the UK to lobby the Wellcome Trust, Oxford & Cambridge Universities for the return of Aboriginal remains held in their collection – something that they are likely to be successful with, based on their track record in recent years since the introduction of the Human Tissue Act 2004.

They are also discussing another entirely separate case – that of a sculpted bus of the last true Aboriginal from Tasmania, claiming that it is racist art. I’m in two minds about this case – whilst I respect their views & the original motivation for creation of the bust may in part have been motivated by a racially prejudiced world view, there is no evidenced that this is what the sculpture is now being used to portray. This is not something that physically ever belonged to the Aborigines, but instead they are laying claim to a likeness or representation, something that could set a very uncomfortable precedent if they were successful. One possible compromise would of course be to remove the artefact from display, but still to retain ownership of it. Another might be for more informative signage to indicate to visitors the issues surrounding the piece. Because the bust is currently in the British Museum, the British Museum Act’s anti-deaccessioning clauses would rule out the possibility of any form of outright return – at present if those asking for the artefact have plans for circumventing this.

From:
Artinfo

Aboriginal Remains, And a Bust, Sought From U.K.
Published: September 17, 2009

HOBART, Australia—She’s the most famous historical figure from the Tasmanian Aboriginal community in Australia, and 130 years after her death, representations of Truganini in the form of busts have provoked a continuing controversy.

Last month the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in Hobart stopped a Sotheby’s auction in Melbourne from selling busts of Truganini and her husband, Woureddy. Now, representatives of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community have flown to Britain in hopes of reclaiming another copy of Truganini’s bust, along with remains of other ancestors held by medical and academic institutions in the U.K.
Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Dismore’s bill to allow the return of items looted during the holocaust now looks as though it is likely to become law. I would question though whether the problem it deals with is the loophole that it is described as here – to my mind it was very deliberately created part of the regulations governing many museums – although now some of its side effects are becoming less palatable to the public.

From:
Artinfo

House of Commons OKs Restitution Bill on Nazi-Looted Art
Published: June 29, 2009

LONDON—A British bill that, at least in theory, would help return artworks looted by the Nazis to their rightful owners has cleared the House of Commons and now goes to the House of Lords. Members of Parliament in the House say the measure is largely symbolic and may never be used, but they believe it still sends an important signal about correcting an injustice.

Andrew Dismore’s Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Bill will plug a legal loophole preventing restitution in some cases. The bill covers such institutions as the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum, and it allows the Spoliation Advisory Panel to assess whether a work of art was looted and then recommend to the culture secretary if it should be returned. According to Dismore, a Labour Member of Parliament, the best estimate is that there are about 20 looted items in U.K. museums, although there could be more.

Few who have been inside the completed New Acropolis Museum would be able to argue that the sculptures could be equally well displayed in any other location outside Athens. Certainly, they may raise other arguments, such as the legalities of ownership, or how the sculptures supposedly form the basis for another institution, but the argument that they are better displayed elsewhere should now be considered irreparably null & void. Nowhere else is it possible to see the sculptures & the building that they were once an integral part of in the same glance. The pattern of light & shadows of the sculptures is replicated, as is the exact original spatial arrangement of them. Only in Athens is it possible to get a tru understanding of the scale & significance of the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
New York Times

Elgin Marble Argument in a New Light
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: June 23, 2009

ATHENS — Not long before the new Acropolis Museum opened last weekend, the writer Christopher Hitchens hailed in this newspaper what he called the death of an argument.

Britain used to say that Athens had no adequate place to put the Elgin Marbles, the more than half of the Parthenon frieze, metopes and pediments that Lord Elgin spirited off when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire two centuries ago. Since 1816 they have been prizes of the British Museum. Meanwhile, Greeks had to make do with the leftovers, housed in a ramshackle museum built in 1874.
Read the rest of this entry »