#museum looting

[catandgirlcomic]

Slime to student ratio

[hafwen]

Looting at multiple museums in Sudan

[homerstroystory]

Looks vs. Loot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by The Antiquities Coalition (@/CombatLooting) on Twitter

Transcription below the cut

1: The #MetGala may be "fashion's biggest night," but tonight's event hides some dark truths at @/metmuseum...including a long history of looted antiquities. To spotlight some of the contested objects from the Met's collection, we are featuring #MetGala vs. Loot [THREAD]

2. First up: @/KimKardashian in @/Versace at the 2018 #MetGala posing next to the Golden Sarcophagus of Nedjemankh. The coffin was purchased by @/metmuseum in 2017 and repatriated in 2019 after this viral photo helped solve the case. (link)

3. Next, her sister @/KendallJenner in @/givenchy at the 2021 #MetGala as the 13th century wooden Temple Strut with Salabhinka, returned from @/metmuseum to the Government of Nepal in 2022, after it was determined to be looked from Itum Baha in Kathmandu. (link)

4. Another object from Nepal, @/rihanna in @/Margiel at the 2018 #MetGala as a 10th century Shiva in Himalayan Adobe with Ascetics. @/metmuseum was gifted the sculpture in 1995, but repatriated it to Nepal in 2022 along with the temple strut, after learning both were stolen.

5. Dakota Johnson in @/gucci at the 2022 #MetGala as a terracotta kylix (c. 470 bCE). This piece, valued at $1.5 million, was seized from the @/metmuseum in July 2022 after being linked to Italian antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina. (link)

6. @/billieeilish in @/gucci at the 2022 #MetGala as the Fayum Mummy Portrait. Looted from Egypt and sold to @/metmuseum in 2013, it was seized in September '22 by @/ManhattanDA as part of a global investigation into an international trafficking ring. (link)

7. @/iamcardib in @/ThomeBrowne at the 2019 #MetGala as a painted linen fragment displaying a scene from the Book of Exodus, 'Exodus Painting" (250-450 CE), valued at over $1.6 million. The fragments were also part of the seizure by the @/ManhattanDA in September '22.

8. @/Beyonce in @/givenchy at the 2013 #MetGala as a 2,300-year-old vase that depicts the god Dionysus. The vase is linked to Giacomo Medici, an art dealer convicted of conspiracy to traffic antiquities in 2004, and was seized from the @/metmuseum in 2017. (link)

9. @/blakelively in @/Versace at the 2022 #MetGala as a bronze statuette of Jupiter. This object is among 27 antiquities that were returned to Italy and Egypt in 2022 after investigators seized them from the @/metmuseum. (link)

[blueiscoool]

Thieves use Explosives to Steal Gold 'Masterpieces' From Dutch Museum

Thieves have stolen four ancient artifacts, including an approximately 2,500-year-old gold helmet, after using explosives to break into a museum in the Netherlands.

The daring heist took place at Drents Museum in Assen during the early hours of Saturday morning, according to Dutch police, who said they received a report of an explosion at 3:45 a.m. local time.

CCTV footage released by police shows the suspects opening an exterior door before a blast sends sparks and smoke into the air. The thieves made off with three gold bracelets, dating from around 50 BC, as well as the 5th-century BC Helmet of Cotofenesti, a historically important artifact on loan from the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest.

The items were part of an exhibition about the Dacians, an ancient society that occupied much of present-day Romania before being conquered by the Romans. On show since July, “Dacia: Empire of Gold and Silver” featured treasures borrowed from institutions across Romania.

In a press release on its website, Drents Museum described the Helmet of Cotofenesti — which was discovered in a Romanian village almost a century ago — as a “masterpiece.” Its design features mythological scenes and a pair of eyes, located above the wearers’, that were thought to deter enemies during battle while protecting against the “evil eye.”

The exhibition was set to conclude Sunday, though Drents Museum remained closed through the weekend due to the robbery. Its premises were damaged by the explosion, though no injuries were reported, the museum said.

Dutch police announced that they are working with global police agency Interpol and had, as of Sunday, received more than 50 tip-offs. Investigators are currently looking for information about a gray car that was stolen from the nearby city of Alkmaar earlier in the week and was discovered around four miles from the crime scene, on fire, shortly after the overnight heist.

Police believe the suspects abandoned the vehicle, which had stolen license plates, and fled in a different getaway car.

In a press statement, Drents Museum’s general director Harry Tupan, described the incident as a “dark day” — both for his institution and the National History Museum of Romania.

“We are intensely shocked by the events last night at the museum,” he added. “In its 170-year existence, there has never been such a major incident. It also gives us enormous sadness towards our colleagues in Romania.”

By Oscar Holland.

[rudjedet]

Broke: why are the pyramids still in Egypt? Because they don't fit in the British Museum

Woke: why are the pyramids still in Egypt? Because the Metropolitan Museum of Art couldn't fucking traffick them like they did 1000s of other artefacts

[lesbian-salamander]

[nubianisms]

Plunderers of lives, treasures, memories, identities…

[gemsofgreece]

Is it a cultural difference in understanding the concept of dignity or does the British Museum knowingly insults the Greeks by proposing that Greece should acknowledge that the Parthenon marbles belong to the UK in order then for the museum to “allow” them to be borrowed?

No. No. No. Keep the loot a ten times over, mates.

[jadeseadragon]

“Man carrying a box, possibly for offerings” (c. 2,900–2,600 BCE), Sumerian, copper alloy (image courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Met Museum Returns Ancient Sumerian Statue to Iraq

[liusia-piu]

The Enarei were Scythian androgynous soothsayers who played an important role in Scythian religion. The Enarei were associated with the orgiastic cult of the goddess Artimpasa, also acted as seers and performed a special form of divination, in which they used the inner bark of linden trees and willow inflorescences. The Enerei belonged to the most powerful Scythian aristocracy. They were born men, but wore women's clothes, did women's work, spoke like women, and the Scythians believed that they were inherently different from other men, and their androgyny was of divine origin. The Scythians believed that the androgyny of the Enereans arose in this period as a result of the curse of the goddess Artimpasa on the perpetrators of the plundering of the temple, this curse was hereditary and was inherited by the descendants of the perpetrators of the plundering.

[tomorrowusa]

When Russians weren't looting washing machines, toilets, and used underwear from Ukraine in the early weeks of the invasion, they were looting museums.

As a result of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2022, the Russian army was forced to withdraw from the area around Kherson. On November 11, the city was liberated by the Ukrainian army. One of the many consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the months of turbulence in the Kherson region has been the devastation of the cultural sector. For example, at the beginning of November 2022, entire collections were removed from the Kherson Art Museum, the Kherson Regional Museum and the Kherson Region National Archives. Tombstones of Russian Tsarist commanders and even the remains of Russian Field Marshal Grigory Potemkin, a confidant of Tsarina Catherine II (Empress Catherine the Great), were looted.

Yep, Putin's troops (I use troops loosely) even took the bones of Grigory Potemkin of "Potemkin village" fame.

The Kherson Regional Museum director, Olga Goncharova, laments the loss of the most valuable collection items. The Russians took ancient Greek amphorae, gold ornaments from steppe nomads, medieval weapons and Orthodox icons to the left bank of the Dnipro River, an area still occupied by Russia. Goncharova says that since the occupying forces withdrew, the museum has also lacked important lists of exhibits and documents proving their historical value. She can therefore only roughly estimate the number of looted objects at around 23,000.

Putin is attempting to eradicate even the idea of Ukraine. That's part of the definition of genocide.

During the Russian invasion, more than 40 museums in the occupied territories were looted, says Ukraine's first deputy prosecutor general, Oleksiy Khomenko. The loss has not yet been fully quantified. "It could take years," he says. By the end of the year, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy intends to create a register in which all available information on collections located in the occupied territories will be entered. This should later help to find art and valuables. However, this will probably only be possible after the end of the war.

For anybody who"s interested, here's the DW article about Russia looting Ukrainian museums in Ukrainian. 🇺🇦

Де шукати зниклі під час російської окупації колекції музеїв

[blueiscoool]

Moscow Auction House Sells a $1 Million Painting Stolen from a Ukrainian Museum

In Russia, Ukrainian artist Ivan Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” has been put up for auction, according to Ukraine’s former Deputy Attorney General and Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Gyunduz Mamedov, who has reported the auction plans.

Russia’s looting and destruction of Ukrainian museums and cultural heritage sites have resulted in significant losses, with nearly 40 museums plundered and almost 700 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since the invasion began in February 2022, causing cultural losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros.

The first report that “Moonlit Night” will be the main lot of the auction, which will take place at the Moscow Auction House on 18 February, appeared on the Telegram channel by Russia’s state-funded news agency RIA Novosti, noting that the painting was estimated at 100 million rubles (approximately $1.09 million) before the sale.

‘In 2017, [Interpol], at the request of [Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Crimea], put the paintings on the international wanted list. Thus, Russia openly disregards [international law], as according to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the export of cultural properties and transfer of ownership is prohibited,” Mamedov emphasized on X.

In 2014, during the early stages of Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” was illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum, along with 52 other artworks.

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some of his works were destroyed in an airstrike on the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, and others were looted by Russian forces from Mariupol and Kherson museums, including “The Storm Subsides,” which was moved to the Central Taurida Museum in Simferopol, Crimea.

[wiinterskye]

I don’t particularly like the sherlock & co podcast, but I catch up on the episodes every now and then and. I don’t think I have ever in my life come across any british character with more casual contempt for the british empire than this version of John Watson? And I really do appreciate that actually.

[ancientstuff]

Very good news - a slow start, but a start from the BM.

[raspberry-gloaming]

For everyone ever interested in the "make the British and the museums give back what they stole" - did you know we have LITERAL LAWS that say that the big museums aren't legally allowed to give people back there stuff permenantly?

Like how fucked up is that