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Repatriation Of Relics & Antiquities: Should They Be Returned?

Should ancient treasures be returned to the nations from which they were taken?

  • Yes, it's where they belong.

    Votes: 5 35.7%
  • Only if the treasures will be safely cared for if returned.

    Votes: 6 42.9%
  • No. Finders keepers.

    Votes: 3 21.4%

  • Total voters
    14
OldTimeRadio said:
Is a pharaonic necklace so bound to a given place that it only has beauty in Egypt?

Are the masters of the Hudson Valley School so mediocre that they can only resonate with inhabitants of New York State? Should it be forbidden to hang a Constable in a United States or even a Canadian museum. Grant Wood outside Iowa?

Who started this mad rush to re-provincialize World Art?
Stolen plumage?

Good to see you back, OldTimeRadio. :)
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Good to see you back, OldTimeRadio. :)

Thanks, Pietros. This past November I managed to burn out the motherboard in my primary computer and the modem in my old back-up unit. Living on a single social security check it took a couple of months of living on water and gravel <g> until I could afford a replacement. So I'm now back on a professionally-rebuilt Dell Windows XP.

Sincerely,

Old Tune Radio (George Wagner)
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Is a pharaonic necklace so bound to a given place that it only has beauty in Egypt?

Are the masters of the Hudson Valley School so mediocre that they can only resonate with inhabitants of New York State? Should it be forbidden to hang a Constable in a United States or even a Canadian museum. Grant Wood outside Iowa?

Who started this mad rush to re-provincialize World Art?
While we've been discussing this, there has been a very interesting (if that's the right word) spat between Moscow and London regarding a travelling exhibition of art from Russia. Problem is, a lot of it isn't actually Russian art...

From The Times:

....Spectacular pieces by Matisse, Van Gogh and Kandinsky are among more than 120 paintings that had been expected to go on show at the Royal Academy of Art on January 26. However, against a backdrop of deteriorating diplomatic relations, the Russian Government has blocked the export of the works temporarily, claiming that they could be seized to settle private legal claims despite assurances from ministers to the contrary...

..From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg draws on work from Russia’s four principal state collections: the Pushkin Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Hermitage Museum and the Russian Museum.

It had been seen as an encouraging example of cultural co-operation between Russia and Britain at a time when diplomatic relations are cooler than at any time since the Cold War.

The exhibits in From Russia are sensitive because many were seized from private collections by the communists in 1917. Some have been the subject of legal claims by the collectors’ heirs, notably the descendants of Sergei Shchukin, a textile merchant in Tsarist Russia who became the greatest patron of Matisse. Russia has said before that it would no longer lend works to countries without anti-seizure laws after 55 paintings held by the Pushkin Museum were briefly impounded in 2005 while on loan in Switzerland.

Britain is one of the few European countries without an anti-seizure law although one is going through Parliament. “Letters of comfort” from Margaret Hodge, the Culture Minister, and James Purnell, the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, have apparently failed to satisfy the Russians that the paintings will be safe here.

The Government has underwritten the collection to the value of nearly £900 million and emphasised that under English law, the artworks are recognised as Russian state property...

Now, where do we stand on that? I remember a documentary some years ago featuring an Auschwitz survivor, the only one of her entire family, who was utterly transfixed by a beautiful vase in the window of an antique shop in (I think) Amsterdam. With tears in her eyes she explained it had been her grandmother's - it was literally her last material link with her family, her pre-war home, her entirely innocent childhood.

She couldn't afford the vase, and the dealer didn't care. It was his to sell. I don't know what happened next, but I really hope that the producers bought it for her.

Now, I still think art and artefacts are distinct from one another in the context of this discussion, but if and when someone can prove provenance and rightful ownership, should such goods be returned to them? Or, if they are of sufficient importance, should compensation be paid instead so the exhibit can continue to be viewed and experienced by as wide an audience as possible?

I must admit, the grey shades in this discussion are getting greyer by the minute for me. I'm not quite so sure either way, now :).

And who says we can't have a good debate on here any more ;)?
 
Now, I still think art and artefacts are distinct from one another in the context of this discussion, but if and when someone can prove provenance and rightful ownership, should such goods be returned to them? Or, if they are of sufficient importance, should compensation be paid instead so the exhibit can continue to be viewed and experienced by as wide an audience as possible?

I must admit, the grey shades in this discussion are getting greyer by the minute for me. I'm not quite so sure either way, now

Yeah - I think there is merit in distinguishing between situations where an individual can claim rightful ownership, such as in your Holocaust survivor example, and cases where a particular group or locality claims an item on the basis of (sometimes dubious) ethnic entitlement. In the former case I would be far more sympathetic to restoration of the actual item, or perhaps at least financial compensation.

Something like the Lewis chessmen - who may have very little connection to Lewis other than being buried there - is rather more tenuous IMO.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Is a pharaonic necklace so bound to a given place that it only has beauty in Egypt?

Are the masters of the Hudson Valley School so mediocre that they can only resonate with inhabitants of New York State? Should it be forbidden to hang a Constable in a United States or even a Canadian museum. Grant Wood outside Iowa?

Who started this mad rush to re-provincialize World Art?

Some things can absolutely stand on their own no matter where they are.

Then you have things like a century old landscape painting next to a window which looks out on the actual landscape painted so long ago, revealing the changes in the land as time marched on. Seeing it there would be a superior and more interesting experience than seeing it 100 miles away for example.
 
Common sense suggests that the treasures of world art and archaeology would best be preserved in locations where they can be kept the safest for future generations.

During World War Two the curators of the great museums of London and even Berlin kept their treasures intact even as their respective cities melted around them.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Common sense suggests that the treasures of world art and archaeology would best be preserved in locations where they can be kept the safest for future generations.

During World War Two the curators of the great museums of London and even Berlin kept their treasures intact even as their respective cities melted around them.
In fact, both the Germans and the British were very good at taking the Wealth of other Nations into 'protective' custody, too. :lol:
 
If it's a case of something like a Ming vase or the Mona Lisa that was meant to be sold and travel about the world, then it's just as good in the Louvre than anywhere else, but things that have been stolen during WWII, looted from tombs, or sacred objects should be returned - and things like the Elgin Marbles should go back to Greece - I think the Greeks can take care of them now!
 
markbellis said:
If it's a case of something like a Ming vase or the Mona Lisa that was meant to be sold and travel about the world, then it's just as good in the Louvre than anywhere else, but things that have been stolen during WWII, looted from tombs, or sacred objects should be returned - and things like the Elgin Marbles should go back to Greece - I think the Greeks can take care of them now!

Mark, that's an interesting point. We tend to overlook the fact that the vast majority of great art treasures were intended to be sold to private buyers for economical prices rather than being hung in national museums. The artists themselves didn't much care whether their products wound up in Italy, France, England, Germany, Spain or indeed the New World.

The artists maintained assembly-line studios where 30 or 40 assistants painted pictures in the Master's style. He'd would walk around examining the works in progress, commenting, critiquing, taking a paint brush and adding a daub or two here or there, then signing his name to the finished product.

As for the Elgin Marbles they were sold to the British Museum by the Greek government, albeit an enemy occupational government. That makes it an iffy issue all around. It's no different than had the United States and Great Britain claimed Japanese art treasures immediately after World War Two and sold them on the world market. The argument would have been spoils of war and all of that.

P. S. Ancient Egyptian coffins have been unearthed all over the Near East. They were manufactured for the export market. "Give you dear departed the respect which he/she so genuinely deserves. Purchase a genuine Egyptian coffin! Lay-away plan available." (Sorry.)
 
Viz creator urges gospels return

Renewed calls have been made for the return of the Lindisfarne Gospels to the north-east of England.
The illustrated manuscripts, created by monks on Northumberland's Holy Island in about 700AD, were kept at Durham Cathedral for hundreds of years.

They are currently held at the British Library in London, where it is claimed they can be seen by more people.

Now Viz co-founder Simon Donald has urged officials to return to gospels to Durham Cathedral. ...

For the full news story (and link to same) see the full post in the thread for news and specific cases:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...quities-news-specific-cases.66617/post-771884
 
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So now we've moved beyond Egypt and Greece pressing for the return of archaeological and historical treasures to one section of England laying similar claims against another!

There is only one way in which this can end - with the north and west walls of the British Museum suing the south and east.
 
I think it's worth noting that both the British and the Germans kept their archaeoligical relics intact through the seemingly-endless saturation bombings of World War Two, while their cities melted around them, while the Iraqis and the Egyptians lost their very own treasures to street criminals.
 
Sámi Shaman's Sacred Drum Finally Returns Home.

On 7 December 1691, a precious rune drum, created to help a noaidi, or shaman, to enter a trance and walk among spirits, was confiscated by the authorities. The owner, Anders Poulsson – or Poala-Ánde in the name’s Sámi form – was tried for witchcraft the following year.

Poulsson told the court, according to official records, that his mother had taught him how to use the rune drum, because “he wanted to help people in distress, and with his art he wanted to do good, and his mother said that she would teach him such an art”.

Before a verdict was reached, he was murdered, with an axe, by a man who had “taken leave of his senses”.

Poulsson’s drum entered the Danish royal collection, and later became the property of the National Museum of Denmark – until now. The drum has officially been handed back to the Sámi people, after what Jelena Porsanger, director of the Sámi Museum in Karasjok, northern Norway, called “a 40-year struggle”.

An indigenous people of northern Europe, the Sámi inhabit Sapmi, a territory straddling northern Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia’s Kola peninsula. “It’s a precious object for us that is a symbol of our history, values and culture – and at the same time a symbol of colonisation and unequal power relations,” said Porsanger.

The drum had been on loan to the museum since 1979, but earlier attempts formally to regain ownership had been rebuffed. Last year, Norway’s Sámi president appealed to Queen Margrethe of Denmark over the issue, hoping she would act as “the conscience of the Danish people”.

“For us these objects are not about collections, or representing a historical period,” said Porsanger. “They are not material objects. We think of them as humans, as persons.”

It is the first Sámi drum to be repatriated from abroad and the only one in the collection in Karasjok. Now undergoing conservation, the drum will go on display as the centrepiece of a new exhibition on 12 April.

The formal handover of the object is an event of huge significance, according to Sámi film-maker Silja Somby, who is making a film about rune drums to be shown during the Venice Biennale in August. They are, she said, “like bibles for us. Each has its own special meanings and symbolisms”. ...

https://www.theguardian.com/science...-on-a-shamans-precious-rune-drum-returns-home
 
Looted artefacts to be returned to Nigeria.

A London museum says it has agreed to return to Nigeria artefacts looted in the 19th Century from the Kingdom of Benin.

The Horniman Museum said ownership of 72 objects would be transferred to the Nigerian government.
Items include 12 brass plaques, known as Benin Bronzes, a brass cockerel and a key to the king's palace.
It follows a request by Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) in January.
The museum, in south-east London, says it has consulted with community members, visitors, schoolchildren, academics, heritage professionals and artists based in Nigeria and the UK.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-62456366
 
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