Scottish MP Angus MacNeil is annoyed about the British Museum’s depiction of the Lewis Chessmen as Norwegian with no mention of the fact that they were found in Scotland before ending up in the British Museum.

From:
The Times

February 24, 2010
MPs angered by ‘Norwegian’ Chessmen

The British Museum has been accused of “airbrushing” history after a poster campaign claimed the world famous Lewis Chessmen were from Norway, and failed to mention any connection to Scotland at all.

Angus MacNeil, the Nationalist MP for the Western Isles, wants the posters removed or the reference to Norway replaced by Lewis. Mr MacNeil, who has raised the issue at Westminster, described the promotional campaign as a “total cheek”.
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The dispute between Iran & the British Museum over the Cyrus Cylinder continues to drag on. Iran is taking further steps to cut ties with the British Museum, in the hope that this will force an earlier resolution to the situation.

From:
Museums Association

Iran cuts ties with British Museum
Gareth Harris
08/02/2010

Hamid Baghaei, head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism Organisation (ICHHTO), has cut ties with the British Museum (BM) after it delayed the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder. The sixth-century artefact was due to go on display at the Iran National Museum in Tehran last month.

The decision was announced during a press conference on Saturday according to the Tehran Times. But a spokeswoman for the British Museum said that the decision came as a “great surprise”, and added that the museum had finally agreed to loan the object to Iran only last week.
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Anyone who read the first edition of Mary Beard’s book; The Parthenon, will be pleased to hear that a revised version of it is planned, which will take into account the fact that the New Acropolis Museum discussed in the first edition has now opened & is quite liked by the author.

From:
The Times Blogs

January 15, 2010
The “new” Parthenon, my new edition?

I wrote my little book on the Parthenon about a decade ago. It looked at the material of, and from, the temples in all its different locations — from the Acropolis itself to the diaspora of the Parthenon in London, Paris, Rome and Wurzburg and other places.

Things have changed a little since then. A small fragment of the Parthenon frieze (and I mean very small) has been sent “back” to Athens from Heidelberg (thanks, largely to a Greek then in the administration of the University of Heidelberg); another, slightly larger piece, has gone back from Palermo.
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If the British Museum did relinquish ownership of the Rosetta Stone, some parties claim that there are still reasons why it would not necessarily return to Egypt as other countries also potentially have claims of ownership on the artefact.

From:
The Times Blogs

December 11, 2009
Should the Rosetta Stone go back….where?

What is the best selling post-card in the British Museum?

The last time I inquired — admittedly more than a decade ago, but was told that it was the permanent “number one” — it was a rather dreary image of the Rosetta Stone. That outsold its major rivals by several thousand. If you are interested, the main post-card rivals were: various views of the Museum itself, the (also Egyptian) bronze “Gayer Egypt Anderson” cat (displayed on the card plus or minus a real live tabby cat) and an original drawing of Beatrix Potter’s Flopsy Bunnies.
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Following recent requests, the British Museum predictably has come up with a long list of reasons why they believe the Rosetta Stone is better of in their institution than it would be in Egypt. With each new raft of reasons though it begins to look more & more as though they are grabbing at straws, desperately trying to preserve the status quo whilst ignoring the fact that the world has changed significantly in the last two hundred years since many of their artefacts were acquired.

From:
Daily Telegraph

The Rosetta Stone can be shared where it is
Despite Egypt’s overtures, the British Museum is the artefact’s natural home, suggests Roy Clare.
Published: 6:24AM GMT 10 Dec 2009

It’s a staple question at dinner parties or job interviews: if your house or office was burning down, what’s the one thing you would save? For the staff of the British Museum, the question might seem almost impossible to answer, given the wonderful riches contained in its collection. Yet if you pressed them, they would probably have to admit that the answer would be simple: the Rosetta Stone.

Discovered in Egypt by the French during Napoleon’s expedition, and acquired by the British as part of a peace settlement, the Rosetta Stone is a priceless and extraordinary item. The three languages displayed on it, translations of the same text, enabled us to make the first interpretations of Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is no surprise, then, that each year, millions of visitors to London seek out this exceptional artefact (and the thousands of others) in the galleries that present the world’s cultures in the British Museum.
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The British Museum act prevents the institution from de-accessioning artefacts from its collection – but a suggested loan of the Rosetta Stone (which it is also suggested does not even need to be long term) could lead to a possible solution to the problem. Or not, as the case may be.

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 21:31 GMT, Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Rosetta Stone row ‘would be solved by loan to Egypt’

Egypt’s head of antiquities will drop a demand for the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum agrees to loan it out, he says.

The Stone – a basalt slab dating back to 196BC which was key to the modern deciphering of hieroglyphics – has been at the museum since 1802.
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Further coverage of the decision by China to try & catalogue the artefacts in museum around the world that were looted from the Summer Palace. The British Museum says that they don’t see this as a threat – but then they said in the past that the New Acropolis Museum adds nothing to the argument for the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
The Times

October 20, 2009
China in worldwide treasure hunt for artefacts looted from Yuan Ming Yuan palace

China is to send a team of artefact hunters to nearly 50 countries to track down thousands of treasures looted by foreign armies 150 years ago.

The experts will scour museums, libraries and private collections in Britain, the US, France, Japan and elsewhere to photograph and catalogue what was taken from the Yuan Ming Yuan, popularly known as the Old Summer Palace, after British and French armies sacked it in 1860 then picked through what remained in 1900.
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As anticipated, an announcement has been made that some of the Lewis Chessmen will return to Scotland. The British Museum has also used the announcement though to make it clear that they never intend on these artefacts to leave the institution permanently – if anything making their views on the subject clearer & more emphatic than before, falling back again on the justification of the widely discredited Universal Museum argument.

From:
Press and Journal

October 2, 2009
Lewis Chessmen go north — but they’re just visiting
Tom Maxwell

The Lewis Chessmen are being brought north for an important tour of Scotland after the SNP government said it would contribute £75,000 towards the costs of a new exhibition to be staged by the British Museum in London and the National Museum of Scotland.

Nationalist ministers remain committed to the long-term goal of bringing the 12th-century figures to Scotland on a permanent basis, and hope the exhibition will further that aim.
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The British Museum loves the idea of cultural partnerships – but only when they are the ones dictating the terms. Despite repeated rejections in the past of the concept of being part of a joint curatorship of the New Acropolis Museum, they are now happy to follow the Louvre’s lead & set up an outpost in Abu Dhabi. The benefit of this will be that people in the Arab world may be able to see items from the British Museum’s vast Middle Eastern collection, but one has to wonder why the idea of outposts in some locations (which coincidentally have large mounts of money & are not requesting the return of artefacts) is acceptable, whereas in other countries similar proposals are not even up for discussion.

From:
The Times

July 26, 2009
British Museum treasures head for Abu Dhabi
Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

THE British Museum has struck a multi-million-pound deal to help launch a museum in the Middle East designed by Lord Foster.

In its biggest overseas venture, the institution will be unveiled tomorrow as the official partner of the national museum of Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich Gulf state. The new building will sit alongside offshoots of the Louvre and the Guggenheim museums.
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For some reason, it appears that Neil MacGregor is now guaranteed positive coverage whenever he writes a piece for, or is interview by The Times. It seems that whatever claims he makes regarding his reasons for retention of the Parthenon Sculptures are accepted with little question or analysis.

The problem in many cases is that whilst what the British Museum is saying may be construed as a valid approach to take, it is represented as being the only valid approach, without considering the range of other possibilities or the views & sensibilities of others.

The Elgin Marbles or the Rosetta Stone may well have changed history – but there is no clear evidence that this was only the case because of the fact that they were in the British Museum.

Following the initial article are two more articles also on the British Museum, followed by a response by Kwame Opoku.

From:
The Times

July 18, 2009
Neil MacGregor lifts British Museum’s ambition to new heights
Tristram Hunt: Commentary

This is why the Elgin Marbles are not going back. With characteristic panache, Neil MacGregor is once again making the case for the British Museum as a museum of all mankind. In 100 episodes based around 100 objects from the Bloomsbury collection, Mr MacGregor aims to cement the British Museum’s Enlightenment credentials. And he’s doing so with some ambitious inter-disciplinary thinking.

To tell a story of the world in 15 minutes through a series of objects requires a sure grasp of cultural and social anthropology. Mr MacGregor, whose most celebrated exhibition during his tenure at the National Gallery was the Seeing Salvation display of Renaissance iconography, has long understood the allure of artefacts. Indeed, he is sometimes accused of seeking to blur — in an increasingly agnostic age — the boundaries between the secular and the religious by investing the British Museum’s objects with an almost spiritual significance. But in going beyond the obviously material, in explaining the broader cultural and social currency of the collection, he will give the story of these objects a relevance far in excess of their historic context.
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Many disputed artefacts only appear above the radar during the rare moments when they change hands. As a result, it is hardly surprising, that the relatively light regulation of auction houses is also brought to the fore when various parties are making claims that they are dealing in potentially stolen property.

From:
The Times

March 7, 2009
Richard Morrison on art auctions
Chinese sabotage at Christie’s is a warning to every owner of antiquities

One man’s terrorist, it’s often said, is another man’s freedom-fighter. Happily, there was no violence at Christie’s “auction of the century” in Paris last week. But the fury of the reactions to an act of sabotage by an incensed Chinese bidder has rocked the arts world.

The sale was of the late Yves Saint Laurent’s art collection. It went for a cool £330 million. But £28 million of that won’t be paid. It was the winning bid for two 18th-century bronzes, once part of a set of 12 animal figureheads on a water-clock in the Summer Palace outside Beijing. The fountain must have been rather cute in its prime. Each animal in turn spouted water for two hours a day. Then at noon all 12 would effusively spray in aquatic unison.
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The Koh-i-noor diamond left India for Britain in 1850 as loot following a Sikh uprising. Since then there have been many calls for it to be returned.

From:
Times Blogs

March 03, 2009
Should Britain give the Koh-i-noor back to India?

It was reported yesterday that a descendant of Mahatma Gandhi has asked Britain to return the Koh-i-noor diamond to India, thereby adding it to a list of treasures which the UK is under pressure to restore to their original homes – most notably the Elgin Marbles. This also comes in a week when France has been asked to send back two bronzes from the collection of Yves Saint Laurent to Beijing, where they were originally looted from the Summer Palace.

The Koh-i-noor is an interesting case because it seems that almost from the moment it arrived in the UK there were doubts about its ownership. It was brought here in 1850 after the defeat of an uprising by the Sikhs in the Punjab, and was initially greeted as fair booty of war in this jingoistic leading article:
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