In the mid 1980s, when interest in the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles was not as high as it is now, Christopher Hitchens chose to write his second book about the Parthenon Marbles – and why he thought that they should be returned to Greece. This book still is perhaps the text that most eloquently summarises the arguments for the return of the sculptures & refutes those against. It has since been reprinted in three different editions, each time summarising the current status of the case, with introductory passages written by various others involved with the campaign.

His book was the first thing that I read when researching the design of the New Acropolis Museum – which led to my interest in the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles ever since then.

Particularly in his later works, I disagreed with much of what Hitch wrote, but in other cases, his clear understanding of the arguments led me to change my own mind on subjects. Throughout his life though, he steadfastly maintained his assertions that the Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece.

Farewell Christopher, you will be missed.

(Interestingly, I notice that the Reuters obituary was written by Sharon Waxman – herself an author of a book on disputed artefacts in museums)

From:
Reuters

Christopher Hitchens: A salute to intellectual honesty
By Sharon Waxman
Sun Dec 18, 2011 2:42pm EST

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Nothing sharpened Christopher Hitchens’ mind like cancer.

He wrote the best, most piercing, most clarifying prose of his career as he faced down the specter of his own demise.

As he dealt with fatigue and nausea, with the anger, disgust and frustration that must accompany what he knew was a death sentence, Hitch poured it all into words that were as painfully honest as they were hilarious.
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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book about the looted ancient treasures from around the world that fill many of the great museums of the West.

From:
The Star (Toronto)

That which was stolen shall be returned
The complex story of the fate of ancient artifacts in foreign museums is packed with smugglers, intrigue and Imperialism
Feb 08, 2009 04:30 AM
Hans Werner

Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
by Sharon Waxman
Times Books, 414 pages, $33

If you’ve ever stood there awestruck in front of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum (London), or the Denderah Zodiac ceiling in the Louvre (Paris), you may get a sinking feeling to imagine them gone, vanished or replaced with replicas. That goal of some powerful people is the subject of Loot: The Battle of the Stolen Treasures of the Art World by Sharon Waxman, a former culture correspondent for The Washington Post and The New York Times. Also the author of Rebels on the Backlot, about the new Hollywood, Waxman presents a lucid and intelligent investigative report into the dilemma of what the great museums of the world are to do in the face of demands to return signature artifacts to the countries of origin.
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Author Sharon Waxman is giving a talk at the University of North Florida about who owns ancient treasures.

Waxman has recently generated a lot of interest in the issue with her book: Loot.

From:
The Florida Times-Union

Ownership of ancient treasures focus of talk
Western museums are facing a fight for many centuries-old objects.
* By Jessie-Lynne Kerr
* Story updated at 6:13 AM on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2009

The battle over who owns ancient treasures will be the subject of a lecture by author and award-winning journalist Sharon Waxman at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the University of North Florida’s University Center.

The event is sponsored by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville.
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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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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book on the looting of the ancient world by museums of the West.

From:
Forbes

Book Review
Give Me Back My Ancient Art
Judith H. Dobrzynski, 12.12.08, 12:00 AM EST
A battle rages between museums and countries of origin.

From time to time, the battle for antiquities that rages between museums, collectors and dealers on one side and governments and archaeologists on the other breaks into the headlines–“Bail Set in Greece for Ex-Getty Curator,” “Antiquities Trial in Rome Focuses on London Dealer” and the like.

The coverage rarely lasts long or goes deep; it tends to sympathize with the countries making claims. Most people probably shake their heads in disapproval of the looters, smugglers, museums and collectors, and turn the page.
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Sharon Waxman’s book Loot continues to receive large numbers of reviews in the US. Even if people only read the review & do not buy the book, this will still increase awareness on the issues of looted artefacts & help to keep the subject on the radar.

From:
The Payson Roundup (Arizona)

Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
Reviewed by Larry Cox
December 3, 2008

For the past two centuries, the treasures of the ancient world have been shamelessly plundered. One of the most graphic examples involves the tomb of Amenophis III in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Looters in the 19th century hacked the head out of the pharaoh in three murals. Those fragments are now on display in the Louvre, leaving behind the original mural, which is permanently defaced.

Other ancient treasures also were looted and are now scattered throughout the world. The Elgin marbles originally crafted for the Acropolis are in London, dozens of Etruscan masterworks now reside in American collections, and there are now almost as many mummies in France as in Egypt.
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This interview with Sharon Waxman indicates that the Getty’s reaction to her recent book on looted artefacts has not been particularly positive, due to her coverage of some of the institution’s practises.

From:
Boston Globe

Sharon Waxman: On the trail of ‘Loot’
Posted by David Beard, Boston.com Staff December 2, 2008 07:22 AM

Sharon Waxman, a former Washington Post and New York Times culture reporter, appears in Cambridge on Wednesday to speak about “Loot” (Times Books), her account of the US and European plunder of Third World antiquities — and the return home for some of the art. She spoke from her home in Los Angeles.

Q: Your last book, “Rebels on the Backlot,” was about six Hollywood bad boy film directors of the 1990s. Could “Loot” be any more different?
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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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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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Sharon Waxman’s new book looks at both sides of the arguments over looted artefacts held in museums. Museums come up with increasingly tenuous arguments to justify their positions – but public mood is shifting in favour of making sensible agreements to repatriate artefacts with source nations.

From:
Los Angeles Times

BOOK REVIEW
‘Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World’ by Sharon Waxman
As museums battle nations of artifacts’ origin, the author weighs both sides in a sane manner.
By Wendy Smith
November 25, 2008

Journalist Sharon Waxman’s “Loot,” a cogent survey of the conflict over classical antiquities, is notable for its common sense, a rare quality in a debate generally characterized by high-pitched rhetoric. As Italy, Greece, Egypt and Turkey attempt to reclaim ancient artworks, their government officials depict Western museums as predatory institutions working hand-in-glove with tomb robbers, crooked dealers and shady collectors to strip vulnerable nations of their patrimony. In response, the beleaguered directors and curators of the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum proclaim that they are repositories of universal culture, the places best qualified to conserve masterpieces that, if returned to their countries of origin, would languish in institutions that no one visits.
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Another review of Sharon Waxman’s new book. Another new book by Nina Burleigh looks at one of the side effects of the endemic trade in de-contextualised unprovenanced artefacts.

From:
Washington Post

Fool’s Gold
How stolen ancient artifacts have turned up in famous museums around the world.
Reviewed by Roger Atwood
Sunday, November 16, 2008; Page BW02

LOOT – The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World
By Sharon Waxman | Times. 414 pp. $30

UNHOLY BUSINESS – A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land
By Nina Burleigh | Smithsonian/Collins. 271 pp. $27.50

Early this year, officials at the Metropolitan Museum of Art trussed up one of the prizes of its collection, an ancient vase known as the Euphronios krater, and sent it back to Italy. Italian authorities had presented evidence that the piece had been looted from a tomb near Rome less than a year before the Met paid $1 million for it in 1972. Faced with the prospect of a lawsuit and a ban on receiving any future loans from Italian museums, the Met, writes former Washington Post and New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman, “stalled, stonewalled, and would not be swayed — until it was forced to do so.”
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