When the New Acropolis Museum is mentioned, people’s first thought is of the Elgin Marbles. It does however contain many other artefacts – some previously displayed in the old museum on the Acropolis, others never publicly on show before. Their are artefacts from well before & well after the construction of the Periclean Acropolis – as well as the finds from the site of the museum itself which are retained beneath the building.

From:
Athens News Agency

06/25/2009
Tour of the permanent collections of the New Acropolis Museum

The New Acropolis Museum, which will be officially inaugurated on Saturday, contains five Permanent Collections: The Acropolis Slopes, divided into sub-categories on The Settlement, and The Sanctuary; The Acropolis during the Archaic Period, with sub-categories on The Hekatompedon, The Ancient Temple, abd The Votives; The Parthenon, with sub-categories on The Monument, The Metopes, The Pediments, and The Frieze; Other Monuments of the Classical Acropolis, with sub-categories on The Propylaia, The Temple of Athena Nike, and The Erectheion; and Other Collections, with sub-categories on The Sanctuary of Artemis Vravronia, The Votives of the Classical and Hellenist Periods, and The Votives of the Roman Period. ANA-MPA takes its readers on a tour of the collections, in three parts, leading up to the official opening. The Museum opened its electronic gates (www.theacropolismuseum.gr) on Monday.
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Spiked has predictably written a favourable review of James Cuno’s latest work on why ancient artefacts are best retained by the museums that currently hold them whether or not they were acquired by them legitimately.

From:
Spiked

How to preserve the future of museums
Whose Culture? – a collection of essays defending the vital importance of museums – is a welcome challenge to repatriation policies underpinned by identity politics.
by Tiffany Jenkins

There is a thirteenth century ivory casket on show at the Art Institute of Chicago. The box was made from an elephant’s tusk, probably found in southern Africa and then brought to Sicily, Italy, by Muslim traders from the Swahili coast. It was once used as a Christian reliquary and it bears an inscription in Arabic. Visitors to the Art Institute can also view the fourteenth-century German monstrance made of gilt silver around a translucent vessel. The holder for this relic was a perfume bottle made in Fatimid Egypt.

The ivory casket and the monstrance are just two of many works at the Art Institute which reflect connections between cultures. Artefacts are created through interactions between people, through exchanges of ideas and materials. Questions around who ‘owns’ such objects, where they should be and what meanings we draw from them are at the heart of a debate currently raging amongst archaeologists, museum professionals, nation states and various claimant groups. Now, the once beleaguered side of the debate is finally standing up, arguing loudly that museums are, in fact, good places to keep artefacts and art work and that sending objects back to their assumed countries of origin – which has been the dominant view until now – is not always a good idea.
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The New Acropolis Museum is due to open next month, which will be a significant event, both within the world of museums, but also for the campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures.

From:
Live PR

THE NEW AKROPOLIS MUSEUM-SET TO OPEN ON JUNE 20 AMID HIGH EXPECTATIONS!
16.05.2009 11:08:18 The New Akropolis Museum, at the foot of The Akropolis at Athens, is all set to open for public display completely on June 20, 2009, according to the Culture Minister of Greece, Mr. Antonis Samaras.

(live-PR.com) – Athens, March 30, 2009 – The New Akropolis Museum, which was opened in stages during early 2008, is all set to enthrall the visitors and public. The construction work which started on Nov 2004 has been completed and, after many postponements, it is due to open on 20th June 2009. The overall budget for the Museum’s construction was 130 million euro, including the cost of expropriations. The new museum which replaces the existing Akropolis museum will exhibit approximately 4.000 artifacts and is definitely going to be the new landmark that will be added to the city of Athens.
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The Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill has now been published in its current form, shortly before its second reading in Parliament. This bill if it becomes law will allow the return by museums of artefacts looted during the Nazi era, something that in many cases is currently not possible, as proved by the Feldmann Case in 2005.

From:
UK Parliament

Session 2008 – 09
Internet Publications
Other Bills before Parliament
Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill

Contents

1 Powers of de-accession
2 Applicability
3 Short title and commencement

Bill 35

A Bill To provide for the transfer from public museum and gallery collections of arts, artefacts and other objects stolen between 1933 and 1945 by or on behalf of the Nazi regime, its members and sympathisers; to provide for the return of such artefacts and objects to the lawful owners, their heirs and successors; and for connected purposes.
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James Cuno has repeatedly made statements about the importance of museums & why they must continue to hold large collections of artefacts. At the same time, any other arguments are rubbished as Cultural Nationalism or in some way of lesser importance. Are museums really so important though that the maintaining of their collections (many of which are largely in storage) should over-ride all other concerns? Cuno’s revisionist view of history seems to serve only the museums, whilst neglecting the original owners of the artefacts as irrelevant.

From:
Modern Ghana

REFUSAL OF INTELLECTUAL DIALOGUE: COMMENTS ON AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES CUNO
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The latest statements by the Director of the Art Institute of Chicago in an interview entitled “Treaty on antiquities hinders access for museums” cannot be simply ignored or dismissed (1). After all, James Cuno heads one of the leading museums in the West and is from an important city with a long established intellectual tradition, fine Law Schools and excellent faculties in the social sciences. His views should concern all of us even though his own institution, the Art Institute of Chicago has distanced itself from the views expressed in his book, Who Owns Antiquity? (2)

We have always assumed that the Western intellectual tradition is based on dialogue, between scholars and writers expressing different views and not based on a practice of repetition of mantras from a revered authority whose statements
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Virtual reunification is often put forward as a means of resolving cultural property disputes. Whilst there have been notable uses of technology for this purpose, the proposals are not normally seen by both parties involved in a dispute as an acceptable solution.

From:
Ulster University

Virtual Repatriation – The Way Forward
23rd February 2009

Dr Bill Hart, an expert on Sierra Leone’s rich artistic heritage, makes a good sound on a 19th century ceremonial horn

University of Ulster academic Dr Bill Hart is to play a key role in a multi-disciplinary research initiative that will make Sierra Leone’s rich cultural heritage accessible to a worldwide audience.
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In a move that goes against the accepted norm, Sir Norman Rosenthal is arguing that Nazi loot in museums should not be returned. An additional twist to the story is that Sir Norman Rosenthal is Jewish himself.

So. To recap – he is arguing that artefacts looted within living memory & presumably purchased without sufficient due diligence to highlight their provenance should now be regarded by everyone as completely legitimate property of the museums that now hold them, whilst the surviving heirs are left with nothing. I find it hard to see how this point of view benefits anyone other than the museums that he speaks on behalf of.

From:
Daily Mail

Museums should be able to keep artwork raided by the Nazis, says son of Jewish refugees
By Liz Thomas
Last updated at 5:26 PM on 09th January 2009

Former Royal Academy chief Sir Norman Rosenthal has provoked anger after arguing that museums should be able to keep Nazi looted artwork.

Sir Norman, who is the son of Jewish refugees who fled from Adolf Hitler to the UK, has called for museums to be allowed to keep pieces plundered by the Nazis, rather than being forced to return them to descendents of their owners.
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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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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book – this time in the Australian Press.

From:
The Australian

Pillagers called to account
Rosemary Sorensen
January 08, 2009

AFTER Michael Brand took on the directorship of the J. Paul Getty Museum in California and inherited the ugly mess of its acquisitions history, he suggested that being an Australian was an advantage.

“I went in (to negotiate with the Italian government the return of looted artworks the Getty owned) with no background in antiquities, no history at the Getty, a neutral person,” Brand told author and journalist Sharon Waxman last year. “It might even have helped that I was Australian — who knows?” Waxman, in her recently published book Loot, concurs, calling Brand a “blank slate”.
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According to the Times Newspaper, British Museum Director Neil MacGregor is the Briton of the Year. Whilst this may or may not be the case, the articles do seem to take a very similar tone to the sycophantic ones about the museum published in the summer.

One also has to put things in perspective – there are some achievements at the museum that can be credited to Neil MacGregor, but many others can not. For example, the Great Court was planned & under construction for many years before he started working there – which also led to reduced visitor figures in the prior period, as the museum felt like a building site much of the time. Similarly, he took over at a time when international visitor figures were severely reduced due to people not wanting to travel after 9-11.

He may have managed to steer the museum down a different route from the one it was taking – but it needs far more changes if it is to become an institution for the twenty-first century.

From:
The Times

December 27, 2008
Briton of the Year: Neil MacGregor
‘Saint’ whose charm and enthusiasm had a curative effect on the British Museum
Rachel Campbell-Johnston, Chief Art Critic

Saint Neil is his nickname. And we are blessed to have him. The British Museum’s director, Neil MacGregor, is far more than just the highly successful administrator of an iconic national establishment. He is a committed idealist who, in a world in which culture is increasingly presented as the acceptable face of politics, has pioneered a broader, more open, more peaceable way forward.

This year we almost lost him. He was being courted to replace Philippe de Montebello as the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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Colin Renfrew has published his review of James Cuno’s book in The Burlington Magazine, reproduced here by SAFE.

From:
The Burlington Magazine

Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over our Ancient Heritage. By James Cuno.
228 pp. incl. 6 b. & w. ills. (Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2008), £14.95. ISBN 978–0–691–13712–4.
Reviewed by COLIN RENFREW
McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge

THE POLEMIC OVER what antiquities should be acquired by museums, and which ones they should decline in order to discourage the illicit traffic in them, has become much louder in recent months, with the reluctant return to Italy of antiquities, worth many millions of dollars, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. These, it was claimed, had been illicitly excavated and illegally exported in recent decades, a charge tacitly accepted by the museums which agreed to their return. In this readable and lucidly argued book James Cuno sets out what might, ten years ago, have been described as the art museum director’s case on the proprieties of ownership and acquisition. His position is still indeed held by the collection of which he is Director (the Art Institute of Chicago) along with such other influential institutions as the Metropolitan Museum or the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. But the times have moved on, and other museums, including now the Getty itself, have shown themselves willing to adopt more careful acquisition policies and to avoid buying antiquities which might have been the product of looting. Cuno here, thoughtfully and with well-chosen examples, reasserts the traditional view.
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Sharon Waxman, author of Loot, looks at the Metropolitan Museum’s upcoming change of director & how the museum might handle future cultural property restitution claims.

From:
New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor
How Did That Vase Wind Up in the Metropolitan?
By SHARON WAXMAN
Published: December 1, 2008
Los Angeles

THE imminent arrival of Thomas Campbell as the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is much more than a simple changing of the guard after the long tenure of his predecessor, Philippe de Montebello. Mr. Campbell, who will take over one month from today, is a 46-year-old curator from the Met’s department of European sculpture and decorative arts, and he has a unique opportunity to shift the tone of an enduring and increasingly hostile debate in the world of art and museums: Who should own the treasures of antiquity?

Up to now, the parties on either side of this dispute have stood in opposing corners with their fingers in their ears. The governments of Italy and Turkey have filed lawsuits to force the return of plundered and looted artworks. Egypt has threatened to suspend excavation permits if iconic artifacts are not repatriated. Greece has built a new museum in Athens in large part to justify its renewed demands for the return of the Elgin Marbles from Britain.
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