The Scottish Parliament on the Parthenon

Among the motions and amendments for the Scottish Parliament on Monday June 29, 2009 was this:

S3M-4498 Hugh O’Donnell: The Opening of the Acropolis Museum in Athens—That the Parliament congratulates the Greek people and Government on the opening of the eagerly awaited Acropolis Museum in Athens, which will house artefacts covering the Greek bronze age and Roman and Byzantine time periods; notes that part of the space is specifically designed to accommodate the Parthenon Marbles, and urges the British Museum to enter into negotiations with the Acropolis Museum with a view to returning the Parthenon Marbles to their original home.

Supported by: Rob Gibson, Mike Pringle, Bill Kidd, Jim Tolson, Gil Paterson, Christina McKelvie, Sandra White, Alasdair Morgan, Jim Hume

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Parthenon sculptures on Twitter

The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles has launched its Twitter site. BCRP's press release (July 9, 2009) had a response to Neil Macgregor from Professor Anthony Snodgrass,

"Let us have a sensible negotiation on the issue of the Parthenon Sculptures, between equals, without any prior stipulations about ownership and possession. Only then can the possibilities for the transmission of the sculptures to other countries, whether physical or virtual, be seriously discussed,"

Image © David Gill

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The Journal of Art Crime: volume 1

The first volume of The Journal of Art Crime edited by Noah Charney and published by the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (details here).

There is much in the volume with a series of regular columns including my own, "Context Matters: Archaeological and Antiquities Crime".

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Timothy Rub on loans over ownership

I was struck by a reported comment of Timothy Rub, the out-going director of the Cleveland Museum of Art (Steven Litt, "Losing director could make for great partnership", Plain Dealer (Cleveland) July 5, 2009). Rub spoke at a conference at the end of June and "made a convincing case for long-term loans as a way for countries seeking to control illicit trade in antiquities to share national patrimony". He is quoted:

"Access might not mean ownership."

Such a statement is a move towards a position of stewardship of the archaeological record, a position I have been advocating here. Rub is now standing in marked opposition to senior museum figures such as James Cuno and Philippe de Montebello who have been vocal advocates of "ownership".

Perhaps before he leaves Cleveland Rub could release the collecting histories of the objects returned to Italy.

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Cleveland Museum of Art: Objects in Rome

The fourteen antiquities handed back to Italy by the Cleveland Museum of Art have gone on display in Rome ("Art back home in Italy after stay in Cleveland", cleveland.com July 8, 2009). Although the collecting histories have yet to be released, it is clear that the identifications were made from the seizure of photographs and documents in raids on the premises of dealers in Switzerland.

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Looted Shipwreck off Sicily

ANSA has reported on the recovery of five 1st century CE Roman transport amphorae from the sea off the island of Filicudi in the Aeolian islands ("CC Messina recuperano anfore Romane alle Eolie", June 24, 2009). The containers had apparently been removed from the wreck and then hidden in an underwater crevice nearby.

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Parthenon marbles in European context

I have earlier commented on the way that the New Acropolis Museum will display the architectural marbles from the Parthenon within sight of the fifth century BCE temple on the Athenian acropolis. You will be able to wander down the south slope, past the theatre of Dionysos and straight into the museum.

At least to see part of the surviving sculptures. The rest are on the display a little further away.

At least for the moment.

Image derived from Google Earth.

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Euphronios: The Lost Chalice by Vernon Silver

Vernon Silver has produced a remarkable book from his Oxford University doctoral research: it is a page turner. (I noted the acknowledgment to lunches with Colin Dexter author of the Inspector Morse novels.) It concentrates on the Euphronios cup that passed into the Bunker Hunt collection. However, the Sarpedon krater also features prominently.

I do not intend to write a full review here, but it would be appropriate to share some of the points. If anybody is in any doubt about the level of destruction caused by the looting process in order to supply the market they need to read The Lost Chalice. The account of the search for antiquities at Greppe Sant'Angelo at Cerveteri in Tuscany is sickening. This does not represent the casual finding of artefacts during agricultural work; it is the deliberate ransacking of ancient tombs in the search for saleable material.

Silver helped me to understand Giacomo Medici and The Lost Chalice provides a different position to that found in The Medici Conspiracy by Peter Watson and Celia Todeschini. It also allowed me to make sense of snippets of information about the market in Rome during the 1960s where "minor" antiquities were fed (relatively) openly onto the market while the major objects were taken for sale outside Europe.

The background to the fragmentary krater showing Herakles and Kyknos that was returned to Italy by Shelby White is reviewed. (I was interested to note who was advising Leon Levy about his purchases of Greek pottery.)

There is also information about the Sabina statue that was returned from Boston. It makes sense of the statement that it had once formed part of "an aristocratic family collection in Bavaria".

One of the strengths of this study is Silver's meticulous interviewing of key figures involved in the saga.

• Harper Collins

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Keeping the marbles will now be terrible PR for Britain

Rowan Moore, the architecture critic for London's Evening Standard, has written a piece on his visit to the New Acropolis Museum in Athens ("Now let's return the Elgin Marbles", June 24, 2009). He is not totally enthusiastic about the new building:

You enter, under a vast, clumsy portico, an elephantine proboscis propped on three thumping columns. Throughout the building, architecture gets in the way of the exhibits. There are too many fat columns, and thick joints between panels, and holes cut in walls and ceiling for purposes of acoustics or lighting. The serene sculptures are interrupted with too much visual noise.

He also objects to the "pointless vandalism" of demolishing the Art Deco buildings that stand between the museum and the archaeological zone.

But the building has persuaded him of one thing:

Standing there on Sunday, as the first members of the public flooded in, and armed with all the arguments of a London patriot, I felt my objections melting away. It is partly that the Parthenon sculptures form a single work of art, which has been arbitrarily dismembered. This work can never be completely restored but there is still much to be gained from having as much as possible in one place. Like a shattered figure, it is good to reconnect the head to the neck to the torso, even if the feet and hands are permanently lost. To be more mundane, keeping the marbles will now be terrible PR for Britain. Each person who visits the new museum will see the same story: here is a great family of sculptures kept apart by the grouchy Brits, still exercising their imperial rights of loot and pillage. Most of all, the Greeks have shown, by building the museum, how much the marbles mean to them.

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"Pot hunting" and absentee archaeologists?

I was interested to read the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial on the "pot hunting" episode in the Four Corners region (June 21, 2009).

No one is endorsing wanton vandalism of such sites or artifacts. But it would be useful and realistic if a cooperative, rather than an adversarial, approach allowed quick surveys of such sites, with the most archaeologically promising being set aside for near-future professional digs, with residents told "Harvest the rest if you can."

How do all such artifacts -- even those unknown and undiscovered -- automatically become the property of absentee archaeologists who may never even show up?

The piece then points to two voices for the collecting lobby: Kate Fitz Gibbon and Peter Tompa (see my comments here).

Praise to "Doug" for leaving his thoughts on the Editorial:

The first false assumption is that the looted items "belong" to long dead peoples. Archaeological objects on federal lands belong to all Americans.

Second, an archaeologist who excavates such things never "owns" what he or she excavates. These items are strictly controlled, and the object's ownership goes to the federal government which often stores such objects in state museums. Implying that this is not the case belies a deep ignorance of the laws regarding public lands.

Ownership is the non-issue. Archaeology promotes good stewardship of our cosmopolitan cultural resources.

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