Egypt Demands Artifacts Return from Sweden

From BBC News:

Egypt has asked Sweden for the return of 212 artefacts taken out of the country in the 1920s.

Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass said they were taken in an "illegal manner" by Swedish collector Otto Smith from locations like Saqqara and Luxor.

He said lawyers for the country's Council of Antiquities have contacted Sweden's Ostergotlands County Museum.

The museum confirmed Egypt was seeking to recover about 200 items, but was awaiting a formal request.

Museum director Maria Jansen said she had been contacted by the Egyptian Embassy in Stockholm about the matter, but could not comment further.

She said the items were one of the museum's most "important" collections.

Neglect

Mr Smith took the objects home to Sweden with him, and after his death his family gave the pieces to the Ostergotlands Museum, asking the museum to look after them, according to Mr Hawass.

Mr Hawass claimed the museum displayed some of the artefacts in its restaurant, which caused damage and neglect.

He added that the Smith family has now accused the museum of breach of contract and also wanted the pieces returned to Egypt.

The family could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mr Hawass said the objects include items from the pharaonic era and ancient Egyptian Coptic pieces.

The Getty: "Settling down, not shaking up."

Judith H. Dobrzynski of The Wall Street Journal writes about The Getty "easing into young adulthood," and new director James N. Wood creating a sum of all the foundation's parts, rather than allowing competition between the branches:

"What Mr. Wood is trying to change is the Getty's milieu. He wants the four branches to collaborate and cooperate much more. "Wherever possible, we want a program in one to overlap with at least one of the others," he says. "One through four should add up to six." The Getty should be a piazza, where people share ideas, not an acropolis with temples dedicated to different cults, different gods. Under Mr. Munitz, for example, the branch heads rarely, if ever, formally sat down and compared notes; each branch was a silo. Mr. Wood now holds Monday morning staff meetings with them, plus other top officials. Employing a metaphor for what he does, Mr. Wood says, "I create the centripetal force, as opposed to the centrifugal force."

Dobryznski's article also mentions "Loot":
"Like other museums, the Getty has been forced to return many ancient artifacts to Italy and Greece and, worse, it had to watch its former antiquities curator Marion True stand trial on charges of trafficking in looted objects. It suffered the scandal of Barry Munitz, Mr. Williams's successor, whose profligate spending, fighting with staff and questionable practices led to his forced resignation. In "Loot," a book published in November, journalist Sharon Waxman devoted a chapter to describing the trust's pernicious culture, including tales of rampant sexual misconduct among staffers."

Check out the rest of the article here. 

Britt Peterson Reviews "Loot"

The Nation:

In Loot, Sharon Waxman, formerly of the New York Times, investigates the Lydian heist as well as similar curatorial debacles around the world. On separate floors of Cairo's Egyptian Museum, she reports, two research teams feuding over trivial logistical matters simultaneously catalog the museum's rich collection of artifacts, each using its own distinct, incompatible notation system. Waxman stops by the then uncompleted museum at the base of the Acropolis--which is meant to house the Elgin Marbles one day, should the British Museum ever return them--where local protests and managerial incompetence delayed construction for years.

But Waxman appears to believe that, despite everything, these countries have some legitimate claim to the antiquities that have been taken through various semilegal and extralegal contrivances throughout the ages. And she is honest--often angrily so--about the ambiguous circumstances under which many of these objects left their homes. One of the best passages in Loot is a tour of the Louvre's cluttered, poorly labeled antiquities galleries, with Waxman supplementing the stingily worded display cards to create a panoramic exposition of French misadventures in Egypt. Visiting the Chamber of Kings, for example, where a three-wall bas-relief mural tells the story of eleven centuries of Egyptian royal history, Waxman corrects the Louvre's cursory explanation--"elements" were "lost in transport"--with a story of breathtaking greed and fraud: in the 1840s, a French explorer paid a midnight visit to a temple in Karnak, pried out the mural and bribed a local governor to allow him to ship it, in pieces, to Paris, where well-meaning workers coated the reliefs with a layer of varnish that soaked away the 3,500-year-old paint below, leaving the mural almost colorless. This section of Loot, as well as similar ones on the Met and the British Museum, makes one wish Waxman would turn the book's contents into a series of museum audio tours on tucked-under-the-rug looting scandals.

Waxman's extensive, empathetic reporting leads her to make some fairly minimal recommendations, the primary one being transparency. She also advocates closer cooperation between source countries and the West, suggesting that "the only realistic path forward is one of collaboration between poorer source countries so rich in patrimony and the wealthy industrialized nations that have the cash and expertise to preserve that patrimony." But she is vague about the details. How should courts proceed if the parties in question don't care to cooperate? It's true that a few source countries appear to have become more open to lending their artifacts for long periods of time, but what about curators in the West who fear that their cherished collections will be shipped out to museums as badly maintained as Usak's?

"Loot" Reviewed in The Nation Article

Check out this article by Britt Peterson from the current issue of The Nation, which reviews "Loot" at length.

Antiquities Dealer Arrested Over Thefts in Egypt

CAIRO (Reuters) - A wanted Lebanese antiquities dealer has been arrested in Bulgaria over accusations he stole ancient Egyptian artefacts and slipped them out of the country in recent years, Egypt's Culture Ministry said on Thursday.

Ali Abu Taam, arrested on Wednesday with help from Interpol, was accused of helping a convicted antiquities thief smuggle 280 artefacts out of Egypt by mislabelling them as glass bottles or hiding them in boxes of toys and electronics marked as exports.

An Egyptian criminal court convicted Abu Taam in absentia in 2004 on charges of helping antiquities thief Tarek al-Seweissi smuggle Egyptian artefacts. Abu Taam was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 50,000 Egyptian pounds.

Seweissi was arrested in 2003 and convicted of stealing and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, while Abu Taam had remained at large until his arrest, the ministry said.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said in a statement that Abu Taam's arrest was a "concrete step toward stopping the trade in illegal antiquities around the world".

The Culture Ministry gave no details as to what type of artefacts were involved. Egypt is home to some of the world's richest antiquities including pharaonic treasures, Roman ruins and Judeo-Christian and Islamic artefacts.

Under Egyptian law, Abu Taam would typically be eligible for a retrial if he is returned to the Arab country. The Culture Ministry did not say whether Abu Taam, who owns an antiquities dealership and lives in Geneva, would be sent to Egypt.

Egypt has launched several campaigns in recent years to secure the return of antiquities illegally removed from the most populous Arab country. Since 2002, it has succeeded in bringing home around 5,000 stolen or smuggled artefacts, the ministry said.

Brits repatriating loot to Greece

From SKYNews:

MPs Pushing Elgin's Marbles Back To Greece

Alastair BruceJanuary 8, 2009 11:29 PM

Two MPs championing the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece this year, to mark the opening of a new museum at the ancient Acropolis in Athens, have sent letters out this week to all their fellow legislators recruiting Parliamentary support.

My interest in this is because the marbles were brought back to Britain from Athens by my Great Great Great Grandfather, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, at the start of the 19th century. He was passionate about antiquities and wanted to preserve them from the destruction they faced, at a time when war and local indifference was grinding away at the edifice.

But the process broke him and he was forced to sell them to the Government in 1816. They were put into the British Museum and have been there ever since – owned by us all, in trust for the world.

Eddie O’Hara (MP for Knowsley South) and Andrew George (MP for St Ives), who are part of Marbles Reunited, have put down an Early Day Motion, which is a sort of mood barometer on Parliament, to see if there is a will to do this.

If Britain repatriates the Elgin Marbles, it will not be long before every country in the world puts in claims for items displayed in the British Museum to be returned. Museums in London, New York and elsewhere might face a mass repatriation from the precedent.

My family have little influence in this debate but we would be sad if the Elgin Marbles left. It is interesting that almost the first pronounced decision of Tony Blair's government in 1997 was that the Elgin Marbles would not be going back to Greece.

What do you think about this and have you been to see them?

From today's "Australian"

"Loot" is reviewed at length in today's "Australian." Here's what the writer says:

"Waxman comes across as a latter-day Henrietta Stackpole, the feisty journalist depicted by Henry James in his tragic tale about, among other things, the cultural chasm between America and Europe, The Portrait of a Lady. She makes it quite clear what she thinks of Loyrette's claims for the "universal museum", which puts the ideal of collecting for the good of humanity ahead of nationalist pride (and avarice). While the Frenchman was peeved by the American's insistent questions, the American nevertheless finds self-serving his arguments about what happened in the past belonging to the past."

Sharon Waxman: "Most Bootylicious"

Time Out names Sharon "Most Bootylicious." From this week's issue: The journo asks where ancient art belongs (on display in Western museums or in their countries of origin) in her new book, Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World. This panel tackles the pirated-booty argument. Jan 10 noon.

You can purchase tickets for the Arts & Leisure weekend here.