The New Acropolis Museum is an entirely modern architectural solution, but it respects the ancient buildings that it relates to, while never trying to compete against them.

From:
San Francisco Chronicle

New Acropolis Museum looks forward, honors past
Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic
Sunday, August 9, 2009

Designing a museum figures nowadays as a rite of passage in the careers of many celebrity architects. New York’s Bernard Tschumi faced an unusually stern test in this vein after winning a competition in 2001 to build the New Acropolis Museum.

For starters, he and Athens architect Michael Photiadis had to contend with house ruins – dating from the fourth to seventh centuries A.D. – unearthed on the museum site, about 1,000 feet southeast of the Acropolis and its crowning fifth century B.C. relic, the Parthenon.
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Sharon Waxman’s new book seems now to have been reviewed in almost all the major news publications in the US – perhaps an indication of the current level of interest in the subject.

From:
San Francisco Chronicle

Nonfiction review: ‘Loot’ by Sharon Waxman
Reagan Upshaw, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, November 29, 2008

Loot
The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
By Sharon Waxman
Times Books; 414 pages; $30

The title, stamped in gold capital letters on the dust jacket, gives away the author’s agenda: This is a muckraking book about art objects from ancient cultures that have found their way into major museums of Europe and the United States. Sharon Waxman has a nose for scandal and spends much of the book following up on reports of thefts by grave robbers, smuggling by dealers and sexual hanky-panky between museum personnel.
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