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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Despite what institutions such as the British Museum might claim, repatriation has become an important part of the role of most international museums.

From:
The Epoch Times

Museums Gain New Relevance in the Modern World
By Shar Adams
Created: Apr 11, 2011

Every one has heard of blockbuster movies and sell-out theatre performances but we do not usually relate blockbuster exhibitions to museums. We can now, the dusty shelves and creaking floorboards of the C20 museums fast becoming a thing of the past.

Today well considered and relevant exhibitions can be found in museums with artifacts from the past cleverly displayed to interact with multi media, digital displays and even live performances.
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The New Acropolis Museum represents a new generation of museums – it would be radical anywhere, but especially in Greece, against the context of many relatively old fashioned state owned museums (although the privately owned institutions in Athens also represent a much more modern approach).

From:
eTurboNews

Insights into Tourism Branding
Museums: Must-see centers of meaning in a destination
By Anita Mendiratta, CNN Task Group/eTN | Mar 16, 2011

SEEING BEYOND THE SURFACE
They are places that make places make sense. Within their secure walls stand items that act as records of the past. History and culture are held tightly together in cases of glass, collections of frames, and viewing areas sectioned off with velvet ropes. Visitors are invited in and then carefully kept at arms length so as to protect all things precious. Voices are turned down in volume, whispers of conversation filling the air. They are places built for seeing, exploring, learning, and musing. They are museums.

In positions of pride in destinations around the globe are museums. Standing tall in city centers, tucked away in tiny towns, and even carefully moved from location to location through new mobile methods, museums represent homes of history of people, places, and periods of time. Historical jewel boxes of all that a destination holds dear, museums contain pieces of the past that can often not be explained in words – they must be seen and felt to be understood. Whether ancient artifacts or modern pieces of medical marvel, museums are centers of living history.
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In the face of UK public spending cutbacks, more & more people are questioning the free museum admission policy. Certainly, it is nice for everyone to be able to use them for free, but does this sometimes occur to the detriment of the visitor experience?

From:
Guardian

We need to start charging for museums and galleries again
Reintroducing entrance fees for the great collections should be a plank of government arts planning
Tristram Hunt
The Observer, Sunday 6 March 2011

The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent is, according to author AN Wilson, “the greatest museum in the world”. Its ceramics collection is rivalled only by the V&A, its Arnold Bennett archive is bettered only by the British Library and its Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasures is second only to the British Museum.

But while it is free to visit the V&A, the British Library and Museum, an entrance fee is set to be charged in Stoke. Across the country, eye-watering cuts to local authority budgets mean that councils are either closing museums or ratcheting up charges. Last week, artist Anish Kapoor accused the Tories of having a “castration complex” about the arts. Yet, in the midst of this, the teeming London museums continue to enjoy a state subsidy to retain free admission.
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Against the backdrop of looting carrying on in Egypt, many museums around the world holding artefacts on which restitution claims have been made were quick to step forward highlighting how the artefacts were safer outside the country. It is hard to see though how this was ever the intention when the artefacts were removed – a fortunate co-incidence does not justify the rebuttal of repeated return requests that are made to museums of the west. Security is not guaranteed in any country – one wonders whether these museum would be desperate to return the artefacts if their own country was besieged by looting & riots – or whether they would quickly find a different argument in favour of maintaining the status quo.

From:
Deutsche Welle

Art | 28.02.2011
Egypt’s cultural artifacts are casualties of political unrest

In the wake of political turmoil in Egypt, questions linger about the damage inflicted upon its archaeological treasures. But how much the international community can or should do remains unclear.

While Nefertiti sits with her head held high on Berlin’s Museum Island, archaeologists are besieged with worry over the cultural riches in her home country. Graves have been plundered; artifacts were found smashed in the corners of a famous museum; and protestors have demanded the resignation of Egypt’s antiquities minister, Zahi Hawass, known for his aggressive pursuit of Egyptian artifacts being kept abroad.
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Are modern-day sensibilities altering the way that museums in the UK display artefacts such as Egyptian mummies?

From:
Independent

The curse of the vanishing mummies
Museums have been hiding away priceless collections of human remains, for ideological reasons
By Tiffany Jenkins
Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Egyptian mummies used to be among the most popular displays in British museum collections. But their days as a visitor attraction may be numbered. Increasingly they are being secreted away by curators, hidden away from the public without consultation.

In the coming year, Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery will publish its first policy specifically on the use and display of human remains. It is clear from the draft that staff are increasingly sensitive about exhibits of ancient bodies and skeletons. Recommendations include erecting signs to “alert” visitors that such material is on display – and reconsidering whether to show it at all.
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Following the recent unrest in Cairo, museums around the world are looking out for any artefacts that may have been looted from sites there that were ransacked by protesters. An interesting change in approach, as 100 years ago, the museums would have been taking the artefacts for themselves… Interestingly though, this new public-spiritedness doesn’t apply retroactively to other artefacts in their collections acquired in similar circumstances.

From:
Reuters

Museums on high alert for ancient Egyptian loot
By Mohammed Abbas
LONDON | Wed Feb 2, 2011 2:49pm GMT

LONDON (Reuters) – International museums are on high alert for looted Egyptian artifacts and some archaeologists have even offered to fly to the country to help safeguard its ancient treasures, museums said Wednesday.

Egypt has been rocked by an unprecedented nine days of demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-rule, and fears are high for the country’s priceless heritage after looters broke into the Egyptian Museum in Cairo last week.
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A lot has been made in some news sources, of the amount of damage (or potential damage, because at the time that things like this are reported, it is often hard to make a full assessment) done to the collections of museums in Egypt during the recent protests there. Many sources then jump straight on to the next conclusion that this means that it is right to keep disputed Egyptian artefacts in the big museums of the West, despite the fact that even a year ago these riots could not be anticipated & that no one appointed certain big museums as official custodians of global culture.

Further to this, there is of course the fact that artefacts aren’t necessarily safe in any country.

One promising thing though, is that while some rioters were vandalising the museums, many more Egyptian citizens were making every effort they could to try & protect these places from damage.

From:
Wall Street Journal

Egypt’s Antiquities Fall Victim to the Mob
A definitive answer to the question: Should the Elgin Marbles be returned to Greece?
February 1st 2011

When Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, came to work at the Egyptian Museum on Saturday, he found that looters had broken in and beheaded two mummies—possibly Tutankhamun’s grandparents—and looted the ticket booth. Reports indicate that middle-class Egyptians, the tourism police and later the military secured the museum. But now it appears that many other museum’s and storehouses have been looted, along with archaeological sites. A vast, impoverished underclass seems less taken with either the nationalist narrative of Egyptian greatness that stretches back to the pharaohs, or the intrinsic value of antiquities for all humanity, and more intrigued by the possibility of gold and other loot. For his part, Mr. Hawass has now been appointed state minister for antiquities by President Hosni Mubarak.

These events make Mr. Hawass’s quest to return all Egyptian objects to Egypt misguided or at least poorly timed. Last week he again demanded the return of the bust of Nefertiti from Berlin. The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum has long been on Mr. Hawass’s wish list, along with the Zodiac Ceiling in the Louvre and statues in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and museums in Hildesheim, Germany, and Turin, Italy. And a few weeks back he complained bitterly that the obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle, a gift to the U.S. from the Khedive of Egypt that has graced Central Park since 1881, was in poor condition and might have to be reclaimed. He has made similar demands for the repatriation of Egyptian artifacts around the world, whether purchased, donated or stolen. But can Egypt even look after what it has? This question is now out in the open.
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Deaccessioning is a problematic topic for many museums – particularly those in the UK, where the law prohibits many of them from disposing of artefacts except in certain very specific circumstances. It is however, an issue that remains on the agenda – not least because whilst budgets of museums are cut, the size of their collections is ever increasing, yet much of it is never on public display. Institutions such as the British Museum hide behind the anti-deaccessioning clauses in their governing act of parliament, as a way of avoiding any sort of serious debate in many restitution cases. Surely though, there should be some more easy mechanism for downsizing vast collections, or loaning the items out on a more long term basis.

Many museums arguing that by keeping items in the public realm, they are serving an important educational purpose. It must be considered however, that if many of the items are not on display, the public is generally unaware of their existence (yet at the same time continues to pay for their storage & upkeep).

From:
BBC News

19 January 2011 Last updated at 06:30
London museums urged to show more ‘hidden’ artefacts

Museums in London are being urged to get more of their collections out of storage and on display as funding cuts will mean fewer landmark exhibitions.

Many museums in the capital keep more than 90% of their collections stored away.
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Following on from the event that i posted about last year, a video is now available online showing the debate that took place on the subject of Who owns culture

In the UK, most of the major museums are prohibited from deaccessioning any of their artefacts – often by specific clauses in their governing charters. Smaller museums also have difficulty doing so, as they may struggle to get funding grants if they do. Most of the issues in the UK with regards to deaccessioning are in terms of it being used as a blocking mechanism to prevent serious debate on many restitution claims.

In the USA, the situation is very different – more museums are independent of government & are free to sell items in their collections – this however raises potential new controversies with the deaccessioning of valuable items being used as a source of quick money.

From:
New York Times

Small Town, Big Word, Major Issue
By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: December 27, 2010

LITTLE FALLS, N.Y. — This small city up the hill from the Erie Canal is known for manufacturing paper and tea, for rooting on its Mounties at high school football games, for deposits of quartz that glint like diamonds and for the Victorian mansion that houses its 100-year-old library.

And now it’s also known locally as the place where the library director took a stand — or started a fuss, depending on your point of view — when the library board started selling historical items from its collection.
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The British Museum regularly makes much of the fact that the Elgin Marbles in their collection can be seen free of charge – but never enters into a debate about whether this is really to everyone’s benefit or not. The admission to the Acropolis Museum for instance is set at a level that it is easily affordable to most, yet this is somehow automatically seen by the British Museum as a bad thing.

Brian Sewell is not someone who is generally seen as a friend of the campaign for reunification of the Parthenon Marbles looked in previous articles at what the price of free admission to museums is – and whether resources could be better utilised across the culture sector if charges were introduced.

He now looks further, at whether some deaccessioning should be allowed. Traditionally, the UK has had very strict laws in this regard compared to the US, but there are arguments for allowing museums to refine their collections & reduce the cost of storing worthless artefacts.

From:
Evening Standard

It’s time to sacrifice some sacred cows
By Brian Sewell
09.12.10

The great (but not necessarily good) artists who put themselves forward as spokesmen for their profession have this year been very loud in their objection to cuts in state funding for themselves, for galleries, museums and all other institutions of the “creative industries” in which their work is exhibited. To these august orators and signatories of open letters in the press, their art is a sacred cow never to be fed short rations, never to be slaughtered; to others, however, they — and never mind their art — are fat cats in feather beds, or pigs with snouts in troughs, and short rations must be borne by them as well as by the rest of us.

Both views have some merit but neither represents the truth. Those of us who hold the middle view see the nation’s crisis as one from which the arts must not be exempt — we cannot go on fiddling while Rome burns — but must survive it in a fitter state than now. Heaven-sent may not be quite the suitable term, but the crisis has brought us an unexpected opportunity for radical revision of the way we run and fund the arts and we should take advantage of it to think what has hitherto been quite unthinkable.
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