More coverage of the looted Afghan artefacts, which were returned by the UK earlier this year.

From:
Museums Association Journal

Hundreds of stolen items returned to Kabul | Museums Association
Patrick Steele
01 September 2012

Some of the 825 stolen objects returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul in July, with the assistance of the British Museum and Ministry of Defence, were saved by a London-based philanthropist.

The British Museum’s Middle East curator, John Simpson, said the philanthropist offered to acquire the objects for the Afghan museum if the British Museum could “advise on legality and process” and act as an intermediary.
Read the rest of this entry »

An anonymous art dealer, is trying to purchase an artefact, believed to have been looted from Afghanistan, with the sole aim of returning it. Interestingly, the British Museum is getting involved – clearly repatriation is much more important for recently taken artefacts than it is for older ones (that are already in their collection).

From:
Guardian

Prized Afghan antiquity is rescued by British art dealer
Gandharan Buddha will be on show at the British Museum until mid-July
Dalya Alberge
Sunday 29 May 2011 00.04 BST

An anonymous art dealer passionate about Afghan heritage has teamed up with the British Museum in an effort to buy and repatriate a spectacular antiquity believed to have been looted from the Afghan national museum in Kabul during the 1990s.

The British dealer, who said he had a “very strong emotional attachment” to Afghanistan, resolved to buy the 2nd-century Gandharan Buddha after he recognised it in a photograph sent by a colleague in Japan. The sculpture, which had disappeared in the bloody civil war, had been bought by a Japanese collector.
Read the rest of this entry »