Kwame Opoku has forwarded me a response to Neil MacGregor’s assertions that the artefacts should not be returned & instead substituted with travelling exhibitions to help share the artefacts.

From Kwame Opoku via email.

Travelling Exhibition as Alternative to Restitution? Comments on Suggestion by Director of the British Museum.

The Director of the British Museum has indeed a fertile mind that never tires of inventing new defences for the retention of looted artefacts of others in the major museums.

Once it became clear that the infamous Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums. (2002) and its principles were not as effective as the signatories thought, other approaches had to be considered.

One such approach is the “travelling exhibition”. This seems interesting and reasonable until one begins to consider what is being proposed. MacGregor is reported in Elginism to have told an audience at the University of Western Australia that due to globalisation, the concept of “travelling exhibitions” will become more relevant;
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At a lecture at UWA in Perth, British Museum director, Neil MacGregor insists that artefacts should not be returned by museums to their countries of origin. Instead, he proposes that travelling exhibitions will become more popular in future, allowing some of the artefacts in question to be exhibited around the world.

This idea sounds fine in practice – but it doesn’t help to correct the many perceived and actual injustices that led to large amounts of the artefacts being in museums such as his in the first place.

From:
WA Today

Museum boss defends keeping of precious artefacts
Jenna Clarke
October 27, 2011 – 5:57AM

Artefacts of historical and cultural significance which are displayed in major museums around the world should not be returned to their country of origin, according to art world leader Neil MacGregor.

During an address at the University of Western Australia this week the British Museum director came to the defence of museums around the world where indigenous and ancient objects are displayed.
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The remains of an Australian Aboriginal leader that ended up in a Museum in the UK & then in an unmarked grave have no been returned to Australia & re-buried. This follows closely after the return of various Aboriginal remains by the US.

From:
One Face in a Million

Aboriginal Leader Is Finally Laid To Rest After 170 Years

Posted by Will Byrne on Jul 13th, 2010 and filed under Featured News, World

Following more than 170 years of controversy, the final remains of one of Australia’s greatest Aboriginal leaders, the Noongar chieftain, Yagan, was laid to rest during a traditional ceremony in Western Australia on Saturday.
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Various Australian MPs with Greek origins are campaigning to raise awareness of the campaign to reunify the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in Athens.

From
Hellenic News of America

AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS TAKE ACTION ON RETURN OF PARTHENON SCULPTURES

The annual meeting of the World Hellenic Inter-Parliamentary Association (WHIA – Oceania Region) in Perth resolved to increase public awareness of the issue of the return of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British Museum to Greece, said WHIA President, John Pandazopoulos MP.

Mr Pandazopoulos said that the opening of the new Acropolis Museum removes a major obstacle in Britain’s argument that there was no suitable venue to exhibit the famous sculptures.
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