Showing results 13 - 24 of 120 for the tag: Museums.

February 27, 2013

Is free admission to museums & galleries in the UK sacrosanct?

Posted at 8:44 am in British Museum

This subject seems to crop up on a regular basis – is the government’s money better spent on other things rather than free admission to large numbers of museums & galleries? While I enjoy the free use that the current subsidies give, one has to wonder if the overall visitor experience might be improved if there was some level of charging, which would help to reduce over-crowding. When referring to the Parthenon Sculptures, the British Museum regularly proclaims that they can be viewed there free of charge – something that seems to be taken as beneficial (& as a criticism of the fact that the Acropolis museum has an entry fee), without any meaningful debate on the subject. This free access relies heavily on government subsidies – something that the museum is less willing to shout about.

From:
Independent

Dominic Lawson
Monday 25 February 2013
Why is free admission to art galleries and museums sacrosanct, when free swimming is not?

Even in a time of straitened national finances, it never pays to underestimate the awesome power of the arts lobby in Britain

What do you imagine would be an easier subsidy to defend at a time of straitened national finances – free swimming in public baths for children and pensioners; or free entry for all into metropolitan museums of fine art? If I didn’t know otherwise, I would have guessed the former. This, however, would be to underestimate the awesome power of the arts lobby in Britain.
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February 18, 2013

National Museum Security Group aims to fight back against art thieves

Posted at 2:30 pm in Similar cases

It is great that museums are working together, to try & tackle the problem of art theft. One can’t help thinking though, that they are much more interested in keeping artefacts in their own collections, that considering the plight of the original owners of many disputed items that ended up within their own collections.

From:
Independent

Look out, art thieves: museums are fighting back
New organisation set up after high-profile thefts will let galleries share information instantly
Sunday 17 February 2013

Should criminals attempt to lift a valuable Chinese artefact from a museum display case, or scrawl over a priceless painting, their photograph now could be with the police and 800 cultural institutions in 20 minutes.

A new national organisation has been set up to allow museums and galleries to share their experiences of criminal behaviour with the police and each other, as they look to beef up security in the wake of ongoing threats to their collections.
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January 28, 2013

The return of cultural treasures – and it wasn’t the Parthenon Marbles that opened the floodgates

Posted at 2:03 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

Regular readers of this blog will no doubt have noticed the increase in returns of disputed artefacts in recent years. American Museums have led the way here, but many others are now being drawn into this new way of operating – to return the artefacts without things progressing as far as legal action, on the basis that doing so will aid other co-operative projects with the countries involved.

For many years, people clamoured that the return of the Parthenon Marbles would open the floodgates for the emptying of museums. Now, it appears that the floodgates have already partially opened & the Parthenon Marbles had nothing to do with it.

So – now that that argument seems no longer valid, surely it is time for the British Museum to reconsider the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures in Athens? Unlike many of the countries that have threatened legal action, or to withdraw co-operation, by blocking exhibit loans etc, Greece has always maintained good relations with museums in Britain – but it appears that taking the nice approach counts for nothing in this instance – the carrot is not enough & there needs to be the threat of some type of stick before large institutions are willing to come to the negotiating table.

From:
New York Times

The Great Giveback
By HUGH EAKIN
Published: January 26, 2013

THE news has become astonishingly routine: a major American museum announces it is relinquishing extraordinary antiquities because a foreign government claims they were looted and has threatened legal action or other sanctions if it doesn’t get them back.

In the past two months, the Dallas Museum of Art has transferred ownership of seven ancient artworks, including a pair of Etruscan bronze shields, to Italy and Turkey; the Toledo Museum of Art has handed over to Italy a rare water vessel that had been on display since 1982; and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has announced it will be transferring to Sicily a terra-cotta head believed to depict the Greek god Hades, which it purchased from a New York dealer in 1985 for more than $500,000. Other museums across the country — including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Cleveland Museum of Art — have also given up prized antiquities.
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November 12, 2012

Revisiting S2212 – The flaws inherent in the Foreign Cultural Exchange Judicial Immunity Clarification Act

Posted at 7:03 pm in Similar cases

Nikki Georgopulos has written a very extensive piece for the Plundered Art blog about the man issues with Senate Bill S2212 (the Foreign Cultural Exchange Judicial Immunity Clarification Act). While the act gives the impression of helping the current situation, in reality it causes as many problems as it solves.

Her article is in two parts.

Part 1.

Part 2.

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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June 13, 2012

Chasing Aphrodite – calling into question the place museums occupy in our society

Posted at 5:54 pm in Similar cases

Another review of Chasing Aphrodite, The book about the problems of looted artefacts in their collection that have plagued the Getty Museum for the last decade.

From:
Paste

By Chaz Oreshkov
Chasing Aphrodite by Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino
The Art of Looting
Published at 12:32 PM on June 12, 2012

“To me my works of art are all vividly alive. They’re the embodiment of whoever created them—a mirror of their creator’s hopes, dreams and frustrations. They have led eventful lives—pampered by the aristocracy and pillaged by revolution, courted with ardor and cold-bloodedly abandoned. They have been honored by drawing rooms and humbled by attics. So many worlds in their lifespan, yet all were transitory. What stories they could tell, what sights they must have seen! Their worlds have long since disintegrated, yet they live on.”—J. Paul Getty, The Collector’s Choice

Artifacts belong in museums. We know this much from Indiana Jones’ epic words at the beginning of Last Crusade, when he yells (on a sinking ship in the middle of a typhoon, no less) “That belongs in a museum!” to another explorer who wants to keep an artifact for private use.
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The New Acropolis Museum – a self-funded exemplar to other Greek museums

Posted at 5:47 pm in New Acropolis Museum

The New Acropolis Museum is unusual for a Greek state owned museum – in that it keeps the money it receives from ticket sales & its shop etc – and uses these funds to entirely finance its running costs, ensuring that it does not at present require any aid from the cash starved Greek state.

You can find out more about this from this video on Bloomberg news.

June 7, 2012

How the wikiloot crowdsourcing project aims to located looted artefacts around the world

Posted at 1:35 pm in Similar cases

Jason Felch, talks about his plans for a “wikiloot” database to help located looted artefacts based on the evidence that is already available. Unfortunately, the project is unsuccessful in getting the funding grant from the Knight Foundation, but they are still looking for other organisations that might be interested in funding such an endeavour.

From:
Guardian

WikiLoot aims to use crowdsourcing to track down stolen ancient artefacts
Man behind WikiLoot hopes crowdsourcing experiment will help to find some of the world’s oldest and most valuable treasures
Tom Kington in Rome
Wednesday 6 June 2012 18.39 BST

Campaigns to combat archaeological tomb raiders have notched up some big successes, notably a deal under which the J Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles agreed to hand back 40 precious artefacts after it was shown they had been looted from digs in Italy.

Activists, however, call that a drop in the ocean in a business valued at as much as $10bn (£6.5bn) a year, and claim hard-pressed lawyers and police forces are struggling against unscrupulous dealers.
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May 25, 2012

Dispute over Senate bill S. 2212 over looted artefacts loaned to museums

Posted at 8:07 am in Similar cases

The Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act has stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the USA.

Many who have examined the bill (S. 2212) say that despite exemptions in the planned law, it is only really there to protect the interests of the big museums – while reducing the chances of recovering looted artefacts by the original owners (or their descendants).

From:
New York Times

Dispute Over Bill on Borrowed Art
The heirs of Malevich sought to recover paintings, including the ones displayed above center and right.
By DOREEN CARVAJAL
Published: May 21, 2012

The lending and borrowing of famous artworks is the essence of cultural exchange between museums in the United States and abroad. So routine is the practice, and so universally valued, that the American government has traditionally protected it with a law that shields a lent work from being seized by anyone with a claim to legal ownership while the art is on display here.

In recent years, though, American museum directors have come to fear that this safeguard has eroded, and that foreign museums, dreading entanglement in costly ownership battles, are more hesitant to make loans. So they have asked Congress to increase the security for global art swaps.
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May 14, 2012

Association for Research into Crimes against Art’s annual conference in Amelia, Italy

Posted at 12:37 pm in Events, Similar cases

ARCA’s annual conference is being held in Amelia, Italy on 23rd & 24th June.

You can view the official flyer for the conference here.

From:
Art Crime

May 10, 2012
ARCA Annual Conference, June 23-24, Amelia

In order to encourage continued awareness of the growing field of art crime and cultural heritage protection ARCA will host its fourth-annual conference in Amelia.

The interdisciplinary event brings together those who have an interest in the responsible stewardship of our collective cultural heritage. Presenters will discuss topics including:
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May 10, 2012

Who does the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act really protect?

Posted at 1:16 pm in Similar cases

A comment on my earlier post about the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act, also known as Senate Bill S. 2212 highlights some more issues with this proposed law.

I’ve copied the information below directly from the comment by Pierre Ciric.

People who are concerned about the potential impact of the act are encouraged to sign the petition here.

As a second generation holocaust survivor, I have concluded that S. 2212, in shielding any government-related foreign institution from ANY liability or suit in the United States for claims for artworks related to cultural exchanges, and subject to pillage, plunder or illegal excavation, is appalling.

In 1998, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and its members promised to perform in-depth provenance research for their entire collections, during hearings held by Jim Leach, Chair of the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services.
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Free entry to New Acropolis Museum for International Museums Day

Posted at 1:01 pm in Events, New Acropolis Museum

As happened in April for International Monuments Day, the New Acropolis Museum will have free admission on 18th May 2012, to celebrate International Museums Day.

You can read more about International Museums Day here.