Showing 9 results for the tag: Cleveland Museum of Art.

March 5, 2013

Two US museums wrestle with complex questions of provenance

Posted at 9:16 am in Similar cases

An interesting story about how the archaeological museum of the University of Pennsylvania led to modern treaties on acquisition of unprovenanced artefacts – and how the artefacts that started the story are now returning to their presumed original home.

From:
Newsweek

Who Owns Antiquity?
Sep 10, 2012 1:00 AM EDT
Two U.S. museums wrestle with the provenance question.

In 1966, curators at the archaeological museum of the University of Pennsylvania bought a pile of gorgeous Bronze Age jewelry from a Philadelphia dealer. They couldn’t know their purchase would change how museums work.

The 24 gold objects had come to Penn with no trace of where they’d been unearthed, or how. That left scholars there without much clue about why and when the gold had been worked, or by whom— and with the suspicion that it had been dug up by looters. Frustrated, they decided to take steps to prevent this kind of “homelessness” for other antiquities. In 1970, they issued a declaration (a Philadelphia tradition, after all) insisting that the Penn museum would no longer acquire ancient objects whose history could not be properly tracked. Later that year, a UNESCO convention on cultural property suggested the same rule for all other museums, and since then, reputable institutions have pretty much toed that line.
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August 15, 2012

Cleveland Museum of Art ignores its own acquisition guidelines

Posted at 1:08 pm in Similar cases

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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July 23, 2012

Turkey plans to embrace its multi-cultural past

Posted at 12:48 pm in Similar cases

More coverage of Turkey’s requests for the return of artefacts from various museums around the world. These requests form part of a wider cultural plan, to make more of the country’s culture, that includes the planned construction of a huge new museum in Ankara.

From:
Spiegel

07/20/2012
‘Art War’ Turkey Battles to Repatriate Antiquities
By Matthias Schulz

If one were to describe the current mood in Turkey in one word, it would be pride. Once decried as the “sick man of the Bosporus,” the nation has regrouped and emerged as a powerhouse. Turkey’s political importance is growing, and its economy is booming.

In cultural matters, however, Turkey remains a lightweight. To right this deficiency, the government plans to build a 25,000-square-meter (270,000-square-foot) “Museum of the Civilizations” in the capital. “Ankara will proudly accommodate the museum,” boasts Minister of Culture and Tourism Ertugrul Günay. “Our dream is the biggest museum in the world.”
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June 19, 2012

Turkey puts pressure on foreign museums involved in artefact disputes

Posted at 8:07 am in Similar cases

Turkey is applying more pressure to the foreign museums that it claims contain looted Turkish artefacts. Various exhibition loans to these museums are now being cancelled, in an attempt to convince the institutions involved to take the issue more seriously & attempt to resolve it.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Turkey turns up the heat on foreign museums
The list of antiquities demanded gets longer as more exhibitions are hit by the loans boycott
By Martin Bailey. Museums, Issue 236, June 2012
Published online: 13 June 2012

Turkey is set on a collision course with many of the world’s leading museums, by refusing exhibition loans because of antiquities claims. European museums that are being targeted include the Louvre, Berlin’s Pergamonmuseum, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In America, claims are being lodged against New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Cleveland Museum of Art and Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC. Turkey’s tough new approach was first reported by The Art Newspaper (March 2012, p1, p10; April, p6).

Among the exhibitions that have been hit is a British Museum project on the Uluburun ship, the world’s oldest recovered wreck. Dating from the 14th century BC, it was discovered (with its cosmopolitan cargo) in 1982, six miles off the south-west Turkish coast. It was put on display 12 years ago at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. The British Museum was discussing an exhibition, along with reciprocal loans to Turkey, but this has had to be dropped because of Turkey’s claim for the Samsat stele.
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April 3, 2012

Turkey’s requests for the return of looted artefacts in US museums

Posted at 12:57 pm in Similar cases

As well as eighteen artefacts in the Metropolitan Museum, Turkey is requesting the return of many other disputed artefacts in other museums across the USA.

From:
Los Angeles Times

Turkey asks U.S. museums for return of antiquities
By Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2012, 8:48 p.m.

The government of Turkey is asking American museums to return dozens of artifacts that were allegedly looted from the country’s archaeological sites, opening a new front in the search for antiquities smuggled out of their original countries through an illicit trade.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection are among the institutions that the Turkish government has contacted, officials say.
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March 26, 2012

The evolving moral and political climate for art museums

Posted at 8:27 am in Similar cases

Cleveland museum’s recent purchase of the Apollo Sauroktonos has been criticised by many archaeologists, because of the uncertain provenance of the work. The Museum has however, agreed to work with Italy to further research the sculpture.

From:
Cleveland.com

Conference at the American Academy in Rome illuminated the changing climate for Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions that collect antiquities
Published: Saturday, December 03, 2011, 12:30 PM

Rome — The images of ancient Roman mosaics found and preserved recently in south-central Turkey were stunning.

Unfortunately, they flashed across the screen in a darkened auditorium at the American Academy in Rome too quickly. One had the impulse to shout at the lecturer, “Slow down!”

But the two-day symposium last month on “Saving Cultural Heritage in Crisis Areas” was running late, and Italian archaeologist Roberto Nardi had a lot of ground to cover in his dramatic tale of rescuing the mosaics from the rising waters of a lake created by the Birecik hydroelectric dam along the Euphrates River.
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November 17, 2011

Due dilligence & the acquisition of antiquities by museums

Posted at 1:40 pm in Similar cases

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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November 26, 2008

Museums end up paying the price for looted antiquities

Posted at 1:54 pm in Similar cases

For many years, Museums sat comfortably in the knowledge that despite turning a blind eye to the looted antiquities in their collections, the law was on their side & successful prosecutions were rare, even in relatively clear cut cases. In the past three or four years though, a constantly evolving situation has begun to shift far more rapidly.

So far, Italy has taken the lead role in spearheading the wave of restitutions, but other countries are carefully watching & learning.

From:
Cleveland.com

Analysis: Museums often pay the price for looted antiquities
by Steven Litt/Plain Dealer Art Critic
Sunday November 23, 2008, 6:30 AM

On Sept. 13, 1995, Swiss and Italian police raided a suite of offices in a warehouse on the southwest side of Geneva rented by Italian antiquities dealer Giacomo de Medici.

Behind the gray metal door of Room 23, on Corridor 17, they found shelves packed with looted vases, statues, bronzes, frescoes, mosaics and jewelry.
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August 11, 2008

The fight against the tombaroli

Posted at 1:26 pm in Similar cases

Maurizio Fiorilli has in recent years been no stranger to restitution cases in his work for the Italian Government. Here he talks about some of the issues he is dealing with, as well as the way that the problems of looting are exacerbated by the policies of many of the museums that receive the stolen artefacts.

From:
Sunday Telegraph

Maurizio Fiorilli: scourge of the tomb raiders
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 10/08/2008

Bad news for the art thieves who for years have been selling Italy’s ancient treasures to foreign museums: ‘Il Bulldog’ is on your case. Alastair Smart meets the resolute attorney demanding their return

Pasquale Camera didn’t do light lunches. After a third plate of veal Napolitano, washed down by his nth glass of Barolo, the 25-stone ex-police captain galumphed his way out of a Naples restaurant, climbed into his Renault 21, and set off north for Rome. The August heat was intense, and just a few miles up the motorway, he fell asleep at the wheel, smashed into the guardrail and overturned his car. He died instantly.
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