I have to admit, I’m not entirely convinced by this Taxi driver’s version of history – clearly he wasn’t one of the many Cypriot drivers that have driven me around London in the past. On the other hand, seeing the reputation of black cab drivers for having political views somewhere to the right of Colonel Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorpe, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.

From:
Chicago Reader

I needed to write this to claim a tax deduction on my vacation
Posted by Michael Miner on 01.07.13 at 06:40 AM

[…]

An excellent way to tap the pulse of a distant people is to take a taxi somewhere, one cabbie serving the busy fact finder as roughly the equal of two cocktail waitresses or three members of clandestine political movements organized to cadge free drinks and meals from visiting reporters. Our cabbie was excellent. He made it clear that England stole the Elgin Marbles fair and square, and if Greece actually values its cultural heritage it should pack up the rest of the Acropolis and ship it all to the British Museum.

[…]

James Cuno seems convinced (maybe because himself) that the power of museums to good in the world is all important & it should over-rule any minor things like who is the actual owner of artefacts & where they were acquired…

From:
Chicago Reader

Who Owns Antiquity?
In a controversial new book, Art Institute president James Cuno argues that museums should trump nations.
By Deanna Isaacs
June 5, 2008

When I was a kid, the public library in my hometown of Minneapolis had a pair of real Egyptian mummies. They were displayed in glass cases and one was partially unwrapped, his head exposed. He was small (about my ten-year-old size) and shriveled, with gaping sockets where his eyes had been. A card said he’d been a priest who lived more than 2,500 years ago, and explained that during the mummification process his brains had been pulled out through his nose. I was mesmerized. Out of time and place, his eternal rest horribly violated (even by my gaze), he seemed to me to be an emissary from an amazing and previously unimaginable culture.

Those mummies, now on loan to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, came to mind as I was reading James Cuno’s controversial new book, Who Owns Antiquity?, in which he rails against cultural property laws that have made it nearly impossible to legally export not only mummies but almost any relics from the countries in which they’re found. Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, contends that these laws, though regularly rationalized as a means to protect archeological sites, are actually about something else.
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