The authors of Chasing Aphrodite, Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino are taking part in an event in Washington to discuss looted antiquities and transparency in American museums.

From:
National Press Club

Chasing Aphrodite: Investigative Journalists Track Down Looted Antiquities
January 24, 2012 6:00 PM

This is a ticketed event. Click here to jump to the ticket form.

Investigative journalists to analyze looted antiquities, and museum transparency

Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino, investigative journalists and authors of “Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum” will join Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum and Arthur Houghton, a former curator at the Getty Museum, to discuss looted antiquities and transparency in American museums at 6 p.m. Jan. 24 in the National Press Club ballroom.
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New Acropolis Museum director, Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, gave a talk at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, about the museum & his aims & aspirations for it.

From:
National Gallery of Art

November 2010
Notable Lecture
The New Acropolis Museum: A Conversation with Dimitrios Pandermalis

Dimitrios Pandermalis, president of the board of directors, Acropolis Museum, and professor of archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in conversation with Selma Holo, professor of art history, director of the International Museum Institute, and director of the Fisher Museum of Art, University of Southern California, and Faya Causey, head of academic programs, National Gallery of Art.
Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis provides an overview of the construction of the new Acropolis Museum in this podcast recorded on October 17, 2010. Designed by Bernard Tschumi and completed in 2009, the 262,000-square-foot museum rises at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. This lecture reveals the challenges and responsibilities of creating a modern building atop sensitive archaeological excavations, within the Athens city grid, facing the Parthenon—one of the most influential buildings in Western civilization—and housing ancient sculptures and decorative arts excavated from the Acropolis. This lecture was coordinated with and supported by the American Friends of the Acropolis Museum and the Embassy of Greece in Washington, DC.

The full recording is available to download as a podcast here.

Tiffany Jenkins (who was also one of the organisers of this event) is giving a talk this evening at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery about the ethical issues surrounding human remains in museums.

From:
Bristol City Council

Human Remains: objects to study or ancestors to bury?
Thursday 11November 2010 7.30 –9pm
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Speaker: Dr Tiffany Jenkins

FULLY BOOKED

Cultural sociologist Dr Tiffany Jenkins explores the ethical questions surrounding museums and the holding and display of human remains. What is respectful treatment? How should they be displayed? Should human remains be repatriated?

Dr Tiffany Jenkins is arts and society director of the Institute of Ideas. Her book ‘Contesting Human Remains: Museums and the Crisis of Cultural Authority’ is out Autumn 2010.

There is a talk about the Parthenon Marbles organised by Worcester Anglo-Hellenic Club on November 25th.

From:
Worcester News

Worcester Anglo-Hellenic Club
3:44pm Tuesday 9th November 2010

AT the October meeting, members and guests of the monthly Greek interest club enjoyed a highly informative travelogue from Leigh and Celia Canham entitled Lesbos.

During the first half, Leigh gave a whistle-stop tour in pictures and words of the third largest but little-known island in the northeast Aegean known as the Emerald isle, due to its green and lush appearance. To aid enjoyment, the locally distilled aniseed aperitif ouzo was on hand for sampling.
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Any debate on the ownership of cultural property is to be welcomed – however, based on past experiences, any involvement of Robert Anderson will mean that only the view of the issue as seen b the British Museum is represented.

From:
Web News Wire

Who owns antiquities?
Submitted by editor on May 11, 2010 – 11:32

Dr Robert Anderson, former Director of the British Museum and Vice-President of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge, will examine who really owns antiquities lost, stolen and unearthed over recent years.

Speaking ahead of the event, he said, Antiquities, frequently being valuable and sought-after, often lead exciting, itinerant lives, ending up in places remote from where they originated. They can get into the news by being unexpectedly unearthed, offered surprising identities, sold for huge prices, exported ( sometimes illegally ), stolen, and even deliberately destroyed.
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Professor Dimitrios Pantermalis is visiting Nicosia next week to give a lecture about the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Cyprus Mail

President of Acropolis Museum in Cyprus
Published on February 17, 2010

PRESIDENT of the New Acropolis Museum, archaeologist Dimitrios Pantermalis, will visit Cyprus next week and will give a lecture in Nicosia.

According to an announcement issued by the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, which is organising the lecture, Pantermanis will speak on the New Acropolis Museum, its Architecture and its Exhibition Programme.

British Museum director, Neil MacGregor has given a talk, mentioning both the Elgin Marbles & the Cyrus Cylinder. He says that the sense of national identity that people get from these pieces is an example of seeing what one wants to see – but surely his own interpretation of the artefacts as part of a global story that can only be told when they are assembled together in the British Museum is far more of a digression from the original significance of these particular artefacts.

From:
Guardian

British Museum’s Neil MacGregor on the Parthenon marbles and Cyrus cylinder
Tuesday 2 February 2010 22.45 GMT
Charlotte Higgins

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, gave the first of the London Review of Books’ winter lectures, organised to celebrate the ­journal’s 30th birthday. He began by talking about John Dee’s obsidian ­mirror, in which the Elizabethan ­magus could supposedly see angels. That became MacGregor’s metaphor: we look at objects and find in them what we want to see. And so to the ­Parthenon marbles and the Cyrus ­cylinder (a clay cylinder inscribed with a decree from the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great). “A whole nation,” MacGregor said of the marbles, “has decided they embody something ­fundamental about Greek national identity. It is a prime example of ­seeing what you want to see.”
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Dimitrios Pantermalis has given a lecture on the New Acropolis Museum at Columbia University, to coincide with their current exhibition.

From:
Athens News Agency

Lecture on New Acropolis Museum in NY

New York (ANA-MPA/P. Panagiotou) — Dimitrios Pandermalis, President of the Board of Directors of the New Acropolis Museum and Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, presented a lecture on “the Acropolis Museum and Its Collections” on Saturday evening at Columbia University in New York, in Schermerhorn Hall at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

Pandermalis made a historic review of the landmarks in the search for the appropriate site for the New Acropolis Museum, the obstacles that arose along the way, the excavations that necessitated a change of plan, and the final result that he said enchanted humanity.
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A follow-up to Professor Dimitrios Pantermalis’s lecture on the New Acropolis Museum organised by the Irish Museums Association.

From:
Heritage Key

Controversy Present and Absent: Dimitrios Pandermalis Introduces the New Acropolis Museum
Submitted by Brian Dolan on Thu, 11/19/2009 – 18:16

Thirty years in the making, the €130 million euro New Acropolis Museum is a stunning, if controversial, addition to Athen’s famous architectural landscape and at the same time a provocative statement of intent by the Greek people. In a fascinating talk in Dublin last night, Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, President of the new museum took an enthralled audience on a tour of the history, architecture and intentions of the spectacular building.

The talk, entitled ‘Collections Present and Absent at the New Acropolis Museum, Athens’ was hosted by the National Museum of Ireland, organised by the Irish Museums Association and was attended by the new Greek ambassador to Ireland, Her Excellency Ms. Constantina Zagorianou-Prifti.
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The annual lecture of the Irish Museums Association is this year being presented by Dimitrios Pantermalis, director of the New Acropolis Museum, on the topic: Collections present and absent at the New Acropolis Museum.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday 18th November – further details below.

From:
Irish Museums Association

MUSEUM NEWS – IMA EVENTS
[…]

2009 (November) – IMA Annual Lecture: Held in memory of Dr James White. Collections present and absent at the New Acropolis Museum, Athens will be presented by Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis Director, New Acropolis Museum in the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology, Kildare Street, Dublin 2 on Wednesday 18 November 2009 at 6.30pm. See our poster for details, admission is free but booking is essential. To book a place contact Ms Carla Marrinan, IMA Administrator at +353-1-4120939 or office@irishmuseums.org

[…]

You can view the poster for the lecture here.

Submissions are invited for abstracts for a conference on Museums & Restitution to be held at the University of Manchester on 8th & 9th July 2010. Any abstracts should be submitted by 11th December 2009.

From:
Kostas Arvanitis (by email)

Call for papers
Museums and Restitution
International Conference
8-9 July 2010, University of Manchester

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/museumsandrestitution/

Museums and Restitution is a two-day international conference organised by the Centre for Museology and The Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester. The conference examines the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject.
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This week, the University of Tennessee is using a regular discussion programme to talk about the Parthenon Sculptures and other restitution claims.

From:
The Daily Beacon (University of Tennessee)

Beacon Bits
Staff Reports
Thursday, September 17, 2009 issue

Global Hour evaluates antiquities trade

This week’s Global Hour, a weekly discussion of current events, will address how nations are dealing with antiquities such as the Elgin Marbles. Removed from Greece to be displayed in the British Museum, the collection of marble sculptures are one example of a nation’s heritage that has been displaced. Global Hour will be held Thursday at the I-House from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

[…]