The recent agreement by the Metropolitan Museum in New York to return nineteen disputed artefacts to Egypt signifies yet another step in the turning tide against the retention of such pieces by museums.

From:
Periscope Post

Are art museums guilty of stealing?
12 November 2010

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced this week that it is sending 19 items, including a bracelet and a small bronze statue of a dog, excavated from the tomb of of the boy king Tutankhamun, back to Egypt. Art repatriation, it seems, is beginning to pick up steam.

This is not the first time that the Met have returned artifacts to their places of origin. As the Metropolis blog at the Wall Street Journal pointed out, last year the museum returned a granite fragment inscribed with the name of an Egyptian ruler to Cairo, and in 2001, the Met sent back a 19th-Dynasty relief, showing the head of an Egyptian goddess. Other items, such as Euphronios Krater (an ancient Greek vase), the Hellenistic silver collection (an ancient set of 16 silver pieces smuggled out of Sicily), as well as works of art that were looted by the Nazis, have been sent back home.
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Further coverage of the Met’s decision to return various artefacts to Egypt. Although the artefacts are all relatively small, it is still an important decision & acknowledges the growing realisation by museums that holding onto disputed artefacts is becoming increasing untenable.

From:
CNN

Met returning 19 King Tut objects to Egypt
By the CNN Wire Staff
November 10, 2010 8:24 p.m. EST

New York (CNN) — The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is returning to Egypt 19 small objects that were entombed for centuries with ancient Egypt’s “boy king,” officials announced Wednesday.

A small bronze dog and a sphinx bracelet-element were attributed with certainty to Tutankhamun’s splendid burial chamber, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of Kings, the museum and the Supreme Council of Antiques of Egypt said.
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Further coverage of the decision taken by the Metropolitan Museum in New York to return nineteen artefacts to Egypt. The items were all originally located in the tomb of Tutankhamen. Return of two of the artefacts & acknowledgment of Egypt’s ownership of them was first mooted prior to the World War Two.

From:
Wall Street Journal

Egypt Hunts Ancient Artifacts
New York’s Metropolitan Museum Says It Will Give Back 19 Items as Archaeologist Lobbies for Returns
By ASHRAF KHALIL

CAIRO—Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s larger-than-life antiquities chief, is hunting for treasures from some of the richest known troves—the world’s prominent museums.

In an increasingly public campaign, Dr. Hawass is lobbying international museums to return some of Egypt’s most important archaeological artifacts. These include the Rosetta Stone, displayed for more than 200 years in the British Museum, and the Zodiac of Dendera, housed in the Louvre in Paris.
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The Metropolitan Museum in New York has agreed to recognise Egypt’s title to nineteen artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamen. These artefacts will now be returned to Egypt after the current Tutankhamen exhibition in Times Square ends in January.

From:
Bloomberg News

Met Museum to Return Tutankhamen’s Bronze Dog, Sphinx, Egypt Council Says
By Digby Lidstone – Nov 10, 2010 12:04 PM GMT

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has agreed to repatriate a collection of ancient Egyptian objects including a lapis-lazuli sphinx that once adorned a bracelet worn by King Tutankhamen, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

Curators at the museum have established that all 19 antiquities, which also include a three-quarter-inch-high bronze dog, come from the tomb of the boy-pharaoh, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, according to an e-mailed statement. They are among a number of objects that were acquired by the Met after the deaths of Carter and Lord Carnarvon, the English earl who sponsored the expedition.
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One of the key differences between museums in the UK & those in the US, is that while the ones in Britain tend to often be run almost as though they are a distant offshoot of the government, those in the USA tend to be run far more like a normal business.

In the UK, deaccessioning of any form is generally seen as something to be avoided – the charters that govern many of the countries major institutions explicitly prohibit it except in a very narrow range of special cases. This tends to lead (whatever the intention of the institution) to the dominance of quantity over quality, meaning that maintaining the overall quality of the collection is only possible by keeping vast amounts of it permanently in storage. In the USA on the other hand, the opposite approach is often taken. The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas is an excellent example of this approach, whereby acquisitions are only ever made with the aim of enhancing the quality of the collection & as a result are generally countered with a consequent deaccessioning to remove one of the less significant pieces from the museum. As a result, the museum’s collection is generally percieved as gaining in quality over time, rather than merely increasing in size or scope. The running costs of the museum are also significantly reduced by the fact that it does not need to create vast stores of artefacts that are never seen by the public except at special request.

More contentious though in the US (& even more so in the UK, particularly in the case of the Watts Gallery), is the idea that museums could sell off parts of their collection to cover their own operating costs.

The problem is that whilst there are benefits to both arguments, many institutions in the UK use anti-deaccessioning clauses in their governing charters as something to shelter behind when restitution requests are made, rather than actually dealing with the issue itself.

From:
New York Times blogs

September 14, 2010, 4:38 pm
Board of Regents Ending Injunction Against Museums’ Art Sales
By ROBIN POGREBIN

In a surprise development in the battle over whether museums should be allowed to sell art to cover operating costs, the New York State Board of Regents on Tuesday approved the expiration of emergency regulations regarding such “deaccessioning” on Oct. 8.

Those rules, which enjoined such sales, have been in effect since 2008. After hearing views from museums statewide, “there was no consensus on the efficacy of those emergency regulations,” David Steiner, the state’s education commissioner, said in a statement. Thus, “those regulations will be allowed to expire, allowing the prior regulations regarding museum collections to once again take effect.”
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Among the vast numbers of disputed artefacts in museums & galleries, some have a high profile, whilst others are barely known. Time Magazine has attempted to draw up a list of what they feel are some of the most currently significant cases.

This article was published a few months ago, but I only recently came across it – explaining the fact that the information on the Louvre’s Egyptian Frescos is already out of date.

From:
Time

Top 10 Plundered Artifacts
History is big business. Plundered art and antiquities trade to the tune of at least $3 billion a year, much to the chagrin of nations struggling to reclaim their lost artifacts. In honor of a recent spat between the Egyptian government and the Louvre museum in Paris over the fate of fresco fragments, TIME examines 10 plundered antiquities and the conflicts they’ve created.

The Louvre’s Egyptian Frescos

A set of ancient fresco fragments is at the center of a nasty feud between Paris’s Louvre Museum and the Egyptian government. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s antiquities department, claims the Louvre bought the fragments last year despite knowing they were taken from a tomb in Egypt’s storied Valley of the Kings in the 1980s, a prime spot for grave-robbers. Egypt, which has made reclaiming ancient art taken from its country a top priority, said they would sever cooperation with the Louvre unless the fragments were returned. A museum representative claimed on Oct. 7 that the Louvre was unaware the fragments were stolen, and said the museum would consider sending the fresco pieces back to Egypt.
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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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Columbia University’s Wallach Gallery in New York is hosting an exhibition of architecture & archaeology that relates to the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. Bernard Tschumi, the architect of the New Acropolis Museum was previously Dean of the School of Architecture at Columbia University.

From:
Columbia Spectator

New museum in Athens inspires exhibit at Wallach Gallery
“The New Acropolis Museum” incorporates architectural models, casts of classical Greek pottery and sculpture, and rare books and prints in Wallach Gallery.
By Kat Balkoski
Published Tuesday 10 November 2009 07:17pm EST.

“It is my profound belief that an exhibition in an educational institution should do more than please the eye and present ‘originals,’” said Ioannis Mylonopoulos, a professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology and curator of “The New Acropolis Museum,” on view at the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.

The exhibit contains little in the way of what would traditionally be considered “fine art”—instead, it incorporates architectural models, casts of classical Greek pottery and sculpture, and rare books and prints from Columbia’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. This selection of media gives the impression that the exhibit is more focused on the work that goes into the creation of art spaces and art appreciation than on art itself.
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