Showing results 25 - 35 of 35 for the tag: Iraq.

March 3, 2009

Efforts made to retrieve disputed artefacts

Posted at 10:03 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

As the issues of repatriation & reunification of cultural property become more widely known, many countries are going to ever greater lengths to secure return of their artefacts.

From:
Star Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)

Posted on Tue, Mar. 03, 2009
Countries go to greater lengths to get looted treasures back
By TIM JOHNSON and JULIE SELL
McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING — China fumes over the foreign auction of its looted relics. Cambodia sputters over pieces of an ancient temple on sale on eBay. Egypt aches for its stolen treasures that sit in foreign museums, including the indescribably splendid bust of Nefertiti. Italy and Greece plead for the return of countless antiquities.

Countries with rich architectural heritages demand their patrimony back — and they are going to ever-greater lengths to get it.
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March 2, 2009

The difficulties of recovering looted artefacts

Posted at 9:58 pm in Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

The recovery of looted artefacts is often accompanied by many underlying political dimensions – both on the part of the party requesting return & of the current holders.

From:
Democracy Arsenal

March 02, 2009
Stolen Art and International Relations
Posted by Hanna Lundqvist

The looting of art and historical artifacts is often dismissed as a factor in international relations. Having studied art history in college and now working in foreign policy, I feel that when dealing with an issue portfolio that includes nuclear proliferation, war, economic crises, and global warming, the lower priority of art and culture is usually reasonable – however, this does not mean that the problem of looting should be entirely ignored, particularly because of the strong ties between art and national pride. Stolen art is not merely of concern due to the loss of object context for art historians and archeologists or cultural patrimony. Though usually rightly on the back-burner, looted art is a legitimate and often hot-tempered foreign policy issue.
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February 21, 2009

Museum diplomacy?

Posted at 12:15 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

The British Museum is fond of terms such as Cultural Diplomacy as a way of describing some of their current initiatives, but as I have commented before, this only ever seems to occur when it is on their terms & they are in a position to call the shots.

In the case of the Shah ‘Abbas exhibition, Cultural Diplomacy seems to take the form of leveraging your looting – lending back disputed artefacts in exchange for borrowing further artefacts.

From:
Time

The Art of Museum Diplomacy
By WILLIAM LEE ADAMS Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009

When western diplomats seek concessions from Iran, they typically dish out tough rhetoric and threaten sanctions. Neil MacGregor, the cherub-faced director of the British Museum, uses a more refined arsenal: cultural relics and priceless artifacts. In January, MacGregor traveled to Tehran to finalize the loan of treasures from eight of Iran’s best museums. In exchange, he promised to loan the National Museum of Iran the Cyrus Cylinder, a 2,500-year-old clay cylinder inscribed with decrees from the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great. Following a request by the Iranian Vice President’s office, he also vowed to raise international awareness of damage done to archaeological sites in Gaza during Israel’s recent military operation. The lofty maneuvering paid off: three weeks later, dozens of crates containing Persian rugs and 17th century mosque ornaments were winging their way to London.
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January 27, 2009

Greece to give Iraq money and know how for museums

Posted at 1:32 pm in Greece Archaeology, Similar cases

Greece is using some of the expertise that they have gained in the recovering of looted treasures to help Iraq to recover items lost in the chaos following the fall of Baghdad.

From:
Reuters

Greece to give Iraq money, know-how for museums
Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:53pm EST

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece will give Iraq financial aid and expertise to help reconstruct its looted and war- stricken museums, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyanni said on Tuesday.

Iraq had thousands of priceless antiquities plundered after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Most were stolen from Baghdad’s National Museum or damaged in the war, while others were removed from poorly-guarded archaeological sites across the country.
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January 8, 2009

Four books on looted cultural property

Posted at 2:59 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

This review compares four different books all covering the field of looted cultural property, from different perspectives. The fact that there are so many current books on the subject proves that it is an issue that is definitely on the radar – museums should think twice before dismissing it as an irrelevancy that the public aren’t bothered about.

From:
The Nation

Tales from the Vitrine: Battles Over Stolen Antiquities
By Britt Peterson

This article appeared in the January 26, 2009 edition of The Nation.
January 7, 2009

On a 1984 visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Turkish journalist named Ozgen Acar noticed a group of fifty artifacts labeled “East Greek treasure” that resembled a collection that had gone missing some twenty years before. The treasure, Acar suspected, had been snatched by grave robbers from Sardis, an ancient city in western Turkey, which served as the capital of the Lydian empire at its peak in the sixth and seventh centuries BC. (Herodotus tells us that its last king, the affluent Croesus, was the first person to mint coins of pure silver and gold, hence the saying “as rich as Croesus.”) Acar, who had spent the previous decade tracking antiquities looters in the small towns surrounding Sardis, took his suspicions to the Turkish Ministry of Education. It turned out that the Lydian Hoard had passed through a number of smugglers and semireputable dealers before reaching the Met in the 1960s, and there was plenty of evidence that the Met had known something of the provenance of the objects at the time and willfully ignored it. The Turkish government sued the Met for the unconditional return of the cache and, after a six-year legal battle, finally won. In 1995 the Lydian Hoard was returned to the small town of Usak, in Sardis, sparking an outpouring of national pride and a flurry of copycat lawsuits.
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November 26, 2008

Looted Iraqi antiquities siezed in Dubai

Posted at 2:05 pm in Similar cases

Ever since the fall of Iraq, the lawless nature of much of the country has led to unchecked looting of many of the world’s most significant ancient sites & museums. There have been notable efforts to recover artefacts though & seizures such as this let collectors & dealers know that such actions will not be tolerated.

From:
The National (UAE)

Iraqi antiquities seized in Dubai
Gregor McClenaghan
Last Updated: November 25. 2008 10:05PM UAE / November 25. 2008 6:05PM GMT

DUBAI – Customs officers have seized more than 100 looted Iraqi antiquities and artefacts as they were being smuggled through the emirate.

The objects, believed to be between 5,000 and 1,000 years old, will be displayed to the press today but officials declined to indicate beforehand how they were intercepted.
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May 14, 2008

The looting of Baghdad

Posted at 1:37 pm in Similar cases

The looting in Baghdad following the fall of Iraq has been a recurring topic in the news for the last few years. It is interesting, not least because it brings home to people the reality of many acquisitions from archaeological sites, which is probably far closer to the truth than the image of an English gentleman picking up a few select items for their country residence. Certainly, the latter happened – but in many cases it was preceded by the former more brutal style of acquisition.

Peter Stone and Joanne Farchakh have written a new book on the subject which is reviewed in The Times.

Also, I thought it worthwhile at this point though to mention a book by one of the key people involved in trying to unravel the current situation – Matthew Bogdanos who I met in Athens in March has been largely responsible for leading recovery efforts, first on the ground in Iraq & now from within the US as he tackles the international art trafficking networks head on. His book is available in paperback soon.

From:
The Times

From The Times
May 9, 2008
The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq by Peter Stone and Joanne Farchakh
Reviewed by Mary Beard
Bajjaly Boydell, £50; 352pp

THE TWO MOST FAMOUS words ever spoken by Donald Rumsfeld – “Stuff happens” – were given in response to persistent questioning in April, 2003 about the looting of Baghdad, including the National Museum. Rumsfeld did not have a clue what had happened to the 5,000-year-old Wark Vase, or the thousands of other antiquities that had been systematically lifted; nor did he much care.
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May 6, 2008

Why there should be a ban on trading Iraqi antiquities

Posted at 12:26 pm in Similar cases

Discussion continues on a total ban on trade in Iraqi artefacts until the situation in the country has stabilised.

From:
The Guardian

Ban proposed on Iraqi antiquities trade
Maev Kennedy
Thursday May 1, 2008
guardian.co.uk

A worldwide ban on buying and selling any Iraqi antiquities was proposed yesterday in London by a senior Iraqi official, as the only way of ending an illicit trade which has left looted sites resembling lunar landscapes, pitted with hundreds of holes and trenches.

Dr Bahaa Mayah, an archaeologist and adviser to the Iraqi Minister for Tourism and Antiquities, speaking at the British Museum where Iraqi, British and American experts had gathered to discuss the plight of looted antiquities, said, “we have to stop this problem at the roots”. A ban on trading in any Iraqi artefacts would strip them of their commercial value, he said, and mean there was no longer any financial incentive to dig them out of the ground.
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May 1, 2008

Iraqi official implicates the west in looted antiquities trade

Posted at 1:27 pm in Similar cases

Many arguments have arisen from the looting of Iraq. Much of the trade in looted artefacts though is directly reliant on dealers in the west & not enough is being done to stop this.

From:
The Independent

Iraqi expert accuses West over antiquities trade
By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Thursday, 1 May 2008

A senior Iraqi official has accused the West of not doing enough to stop the thriving trade in antiquities smuggled out of the country’s depleted archeological sites and sold in auction houses across Britain, America and Europe.

Dr Bahaa Mayah, a special adviser to Iraq’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, called for an immediate global ban on the sale of at least 100,000 artefacts that have been stolen since the invasion.
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June 7, 2003

British Museum celebrates 250th anniversary

Posted at 1:10 pm in British Museum

The British Museum is 250 years old. In the time since it opened, a lot has changed – the means of acquiring artefacts, which were once acceptable, are no longer seen in the same light.

Perhaps now, in celebration of this anniversary, the time is right for the British Museum to re-invent itself, but repatriating the disputed artefacts in its collection, by negotiating new deals & exchanges, by looking forward rather than backward.

From:
Guardian

National treasure
In praise of the British Museum
Leader
Saturday June 7, 2003
The Guardian

This nation has too few monuments to the mind. Quite the grandest can be found in the capital – the British Museum, which is 250 years old today. A project of the 18th-century English enlightenment, it offered an education to the masses at a time when the country’s monarch, and much of its ruling classes, were indifferent to the public’s need for scholarly nourishment. It took an act of parliament to set up, was paid for by a public lottery and was founded in Bloomsbury in 1753 where it still stands. The first national public museum in the world opened for “all studious and curious persons” two years later. Dickens, Marx and Orwell all passed through its neo-classical portals in the pursuit of knowledge.

The British Museum made its name by collecting and cataloguing the world. It has sensibly abjured the trend for many public places to be an arm of the entertainment industry. This can be deeply unfashionable, but there is a place for it – highlighted by the need to repair Iraq’s cultural heritage, a task which the British Museum’s curators and conservators are uniquely equipped to help. Of course one person’s accumulated wealth can be viewed as another’s loss. Plunder may have brought the Elgin Marbles to Britain, but it is undeniable that they remain free for anyone to see. These arguments should be put to one side today. The British Museum’s repository of knowledge instead should be celebrated.
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April 27, 2003

Looking back at the looting of Baghdad

Posted at 7:44 am in British Museum, Similar cases

Four articles look at different aspects of the looting of museums & archaeological sites in Iraq, whether similar things could happen in the west, & whether more steps could have been taken to anticipate it.

The British Museum has been eager to help the situation – which is to be welcomed, but at the same time is slightly odd behaviour, as so many of the museum’s own artefacts were acquired through similar situation in the past. Despite this fact though, they continue to maintain that what happened in the past was perfectly acceptable, but that what is happening now in Iraq is to be condemned.

From:
Post Gazette

Looting of Baghdad treasures shines light on a ‘dirty business’
Sunday, April 27, 2003
By Dennis B. Roddy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Byzantine frescos of Lysi, painted in Cyprus, kidnapped to Germany and now staring down from the ceiling of a museum chapel in Texas, testify by their travels that the world views much of its cultural legacy through a catalog of stolen property.

For nine centuries, the frescos hung unmolested on a small chapel in Cyprus before being cut from the ceiling by Turkish looters during the 1974 war. Ten years later, a Houston foundation, working with the Cypriot Orthodox Church, saved them and installed them in the museum chapel, where they are an example of the moral ambiguity of the antiquities trade.
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