Further coverage of the statement by Greek Culture Minister Nikos Xydakis not to take legal action over the return of the Parthenon Sculptures at the current time.

As I mentioned in the other batch of articles on the issue, there seems to be little new information in any of these stories over and above what was originally stated. The stories have instead become retellings of the narrative of the acquisition of the Marbles, adjusted according to the newspaper’s own leanings on the issue.

I have now been quoted in at least three of the articles, which is impressive, as I have only spoken to the writer of one of them.

David Hill, Amal Clooney & Geoffrey Robertson in Athens

From:
Artnet

Greece Says No to Amal Clooney’s Elgin Marbles Advice to Sue British Museum
Amah-Rose Abrams
Thursday, May 14, 2015

Amal Clooney is still working hard to win back the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum and return them to Greece, filing a 150-page document recommending the Greek government takes the British Museum to the International Court.

However, according to the Times, Greece has promptly snubbed Clooney’s efforts and decided not to follow her advice, despite Clooney and her colleague Geoffrey Robertson telling Greece that it was a case of “now or never” in the lengthy battle involving the ancient Greek artworks.
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Reports from a former official at the Greek Ministry of Culture indicate that a wealthy Greek shipping magnate may be providing funds to cover legal fees relating to the Parthenon Marbles. At present (according to this report), the group of lawyers (Geoffrey Robertson, Norman Palmer and Amal Clooney) who visited Athens last year to appraise the Greek government on the legal options available to them, have been appointed to produce a more in-depth report into the case. This report is due to be delivered to the Greek Government on 30th March 2015.

The news that this stage of the initiative is to be privately funded is interesting, as it was something that I had previously raised as a possibility, when people queried the issue of whether it would be affordable to the Greek Government.

Part of the Parthenon frieze in the British Museum

From:
Washington Post

Shipping magnate foots the bill for Amal Clooney to represent Greece
By Daniela Deane
March 3 at 4:29 AM

LONDON — Greece is broke, correct? That’s why it needed bailing out by the rest of Europe.

But then, the cash-strapped Greek government hires the high-profile and expensive London law firm that employs Amal Clooney, American actor George Clooney’s glamorous new bride, to represent it in its never-ending quest to get the Elgin Marbles back from the British Museum. With no public tender.

What’s missing from this picture? A Greek shipping magnate, of course.

A former official in Greece’s culture ministry said Monday that an unnamed Greek shipping tycoon who operates in both Athens and London wanted to make a “grand gesture of patriotism” by paying the London-based lawyers’ legal fees, according to the London Times newspaper. The official said the fees had been deemed “too extravagant” by the Greek government, which is in the midst of a financial crisis, the paper reported Tuesday.
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The St Louis Art Museum claimed in 2010, when asked about the return of requests for the return of the Lady Ka-Nefer-Nefer mummy mask, that “we would do the right thing … if there was something that refuted the legitimacy of the provenance“.

The courts have now ruled that they can keep the mask – although a lot of questions have to be asked, about how something that was know to have previously been on display on another museum & then went missing, can be considered an entirely legitimate purchase without first discussing the matter with the original owners.

David Gill has a lot more commentary on the case on his Looting Matters website.

From:
Washington Post

Federal judge rules 3,200-year-old Egyptian mummy mask can remain at St. Louis Art Museum
By Associated Press, Published: April 5

ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis museum can keep hold of a 3,200-year-old mummy’s mask, a federal judge has ruled, saying the U.S. government failed to prove that the Egyptian relic was ever stolen.

Prosecutors said the funeral mask of Lady Ka-Nefer-Nefer went missing from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo about 40 years ago and that it should be returned to its country of origin. The St. Louis Art Museum said it researched the provenance of the mask and legitimately purchased it in 1998 from a New York art dealer.
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Theft and looting, as covered by this website, tends to focus on illegal excavations & looting of archaeological sites, some of which isn’t discovered until well after the event. One must remember though, that huge amounts of art theft also take place directly from museums and private collections – and that many of these cases remain unsolved.

From:
Washington Post

Three books on art theft
By Christopher Schoppa, Published: October 7

The craft of looting precious artworks is almost as old as the medium itself, with countless cases littering the pages of history, from casualties of war (most recently, the Baghdad Museum) to brazen museum heists (Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990). There are also the thorny issues of national patrimony, art that by chance or pillage wound up as the backbone of some other country’s elite museum: The famed Elgin Marbles now housed in the British Museum are a prime example. Greece has a state-of the art (yet empty) space to house them in the Acropolis Museum, and is still waiting. But you needn’t. For more tidbits on all manner of displaced works of art, read on.

1. Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Story of Notorious Art Heists, by Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg (Palgrave Macmillan, $25). As the title suggests, the authors focus on the 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt Van Rijin and the vast body of work he left behind, With conservative estimates placing authentic Rembrandts at over 1,000, thieves have an ample selection from which to choose. Amore is the director of security at the Gardner Museum in Boston, which lost three Rembrandts among the 13 masterpieces swiped in the dead of night. Becoming obsessed with the case (still unsolved), Amore used his investigations as a jumping off point to explore the appeal of Rembrandt’s works for thieves and the entry of organized crime into art theft. He was aided by former Boston Herald reporter Mashberg, who wrote about the case on and off for 14 years (even being whisked off to an undisclosed site purportedly to see one of the stolen Rembrandts). Together they tell a compelling story.
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Despite significant coverage of looting of antiquities, the same antiquities often re-surface a few years later at auctions, or appear in museums. In some cases, this is because some parties choose not to ask too many questions when buying artefacts, but in many other cases, it is merely because the scale of the international art market is so huge, that it is almost impossible to track & catalogue every item accurately & thereby trace their true provenance.

From:
Washington Post

Reputable auction houses try to get all (arti)facts before selling antiquities
By Brian Vastag
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 1, 2011; 8:10 PM

The first Indiana Jones movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” offers many a scene to make archaeologists wince, but none more so than a quiet moment early on when the intrepid Professor Jones sells plundered artifacts to Marcus Brody, director of the fictional National Museum in Washington.

“The museum will buy them as usual,” Brody says with a wink. “No questions asked.”
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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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Indiana Jones might well be the most famous archaeologist in the world (despite being fictional). But do his swashbuckling antics have any relevance to the way in which today’s archaeologists act, or is it more like the behaviour of those from a former age, who came from the West & grabbed whatever they could to take home.

From:
Guelph Mercury (Ontario, Canada)

opinion Real archeologists don’t wear fedoras
May 27, 2008
Neil Asher Silberman
Washington Post

After 17 years, Hollywood’s most famous archeologist is back in action. Now grayer and a bit creakier, Indiana Jones is again hacking his way through thick jungles, careering wildly in car chases and scrambling through dark tunnels to snatch a precious artifact from the clutches of an evil empire (Soviet, this time).

And I’m thinking, oh no. Here we go again. Get ready for another long, twisting jump off the cliff of respectability for the image of archeology.
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The New Acropolis Museum was redesigned specifically to avoid creating problems with the archaeological site that it sits over. Many people in Greece (I suspect largely for political reasons) are continuing to raise objections to it, seemingly glossing over everything that it does to avoid damaging the site & instead talking about the potential for destruction. The reality is than anywhere you build in central Athens, you will be on archaeological remains. The building surrounding the Acropolis Museum doubtless damaged large areas of remains when they themselves were built. Far more than most buildings in Greece, this one is deliberately designed around the ruins that it shares the plot of land with, yet people continue to obstruct it construction. Surely though, looking at it pragmatically, it is better to have the building constructed as it is proposed, than to have no building at all? If the objections carry on in this way, a great opportunity for Greece will end up being lost.

From:
Washington Post

Marbles Lost and Found
In the Parthenon’s Shadow, an Old Grievance Gets Put on a Pedestal
By Kirstin Downey Grimsley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 29, 2002; Page C01

ATHENS — A $100 million museum being built here in hopes of shaming the British government into giving back sculptures taken two centuries ago is creating controversy in Greece, where a growing number of critics say the government is damaging other antiquities in a rush to make the museum ready in time for the 2004 Olympics.

They charge that excavation at the museum’s site at the foot of the great Acropolis citadel has uncovered substantial Roman, Byzantine and Stone Age ruins that provide vivid archaeological snapshots of ancient Athens, and that development should be delayed while the remains are studied.
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