#repatriation of antiquities

[ancientstuff]

Doing the right thing, but somewhat reluctantly, it seems to me. The argument that the MFA Boston couldn't be sure it was looted originally is a little disingenuous. IMHO, of course.

[reasonsforhope]

"A trove of precious jewelry from Cambodia’s past has been repatriated after surfacing in London.

Totaling 77 artifacts from the medieval kingdom of Angkor, they are believed to have been trafficked from the country during the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge and the civil wars that plagued the country during the 20th century.

Angkor was one of the greatest powers in the East between the 9th and 14th centuries. Their theocratic capital of Angkor Wat is considered one of the 7 Wonders of the Medieval World, and today is still the largest religious complex on Earth.

The treasures date squarely to this period of flourishing and some of the crowns are believed to have sat on royal brows. They include items “such as gold and other precious metal pieces from the Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian period including crowns, necklaces, bracelets, belts, earrings, and amulets,” the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said in a statement.

The items came from the estate of recently-late serial art trafficker Douglas Latchford, who for many years was considered an expert antiquities appraiser, but was later discovered to have worked alongside the Communist Khmer Rouge to traffic hundreds of artifacts from the country.

Now, many of the nation’s historical treasures are returning, and this trove is just the most recent tranche.

Last year, US citizens or institutions returned either voluntarily or by court order, 30 items sold by Latchford, including a 10th-century sculpture of the Hindu god Skanda atop a peacock considered a “masterpiece.”

The year before that, the estate of Latchford, who died in 2020 before he could be convicted of antiquities trafficking, sent back five bronze and sandstone sculptures to Cambodia."

-via Good News Network, 2/22/23

--

Bonus Info:

"The return of the items followed a September 2020 agreement with Latchford's family under which all Cambodian artifacts in their possession would be returned to Cambodia. Other stone and bronze artifacts were returned in September 2021."

-via NPR, 2/21/23

[ani-antiquities]

Trajectories and Movements of Filipino People: Diasporic Objects and Possibilities for Rematriation, Marian Pastor Roces (Alliance Français Manila, September 7, 2024)

(Photos from Tara Illenberger, Facebook. We attended the same talk, though I was not able to take much photos as much, since I was not seated at the front. 😅)

Would like to start this post by saying that it was such an honor to have met Marian Pastor Roces again. For my would-be followers who are yet to read my blog posts, especially those who are situated abroad, I would like to introduce Marian Pastor Roces to you. MPR is an art critic, museum curator (and creator, in a comical sense), writer, political analyst, and cultural critic. She has hosted the establishments of numerous cultural initiatives that concern cultural heritage of ethnic groups in the Philippines. She is also a writer of essays and books, and an editor for Mapping Philippine Material Culture — a global archive of the different diasporic Filipino art and antiquities.

I met her the first time when I hosted a talk for her at my university. Terrific woman. I wish I had learned about her way sooner, from when I was a kid. Then, I would not have been so indecisive of what I wanted to be when I grew up and knew that I wanted to be a cultural heritage lawyer from the start, haha!

Something this talk proved further was the very principle that

cultural objects have memory too,

much like how much of the movements of Filipino people are reflected in the movements of its cultural objects.

Click read more to read the notes I got from the talk! ⬇️

There were three events that mark as significant events and turning points in the movements of the Filipino people.

Austronesian Migration: Wherein a seaborne migration set sail from the island of Taiwan to Batanes, in Northernmost Philippines. Objects traced and left behind by our Austronesian ancestors revealed marks of cultural connections along their trail.

1887 Madrid Exposition: Wherein maltreatment from the colonial Spaniards sought to display people of the Igorots in Human Zoos. The Filipino people have become an object themselves according to the colonizer.

Philippine Diaspora and Globalization: Wherein Filipino artifacts are now dispersed in cultural and archival institutions globally. Now, the material culture heritage of the Philippines is in large measure overseas. Filipinos do not have access to much of the material evidence of our heritage. Among the outcomes of this unknowing is an abyssmal loss of measures of quality that Philippine Peoples enjoyed until about a century ago.

The substantial collection of the National Museum of the Philippines was nearly totally destroyed during the Second World War, the same event which led to the adopted of the 1954 Hague Convention, briefly discussed in the previous post.

Material Culture Studies were not a significant area of work for Philippine Studies during the Post-War Period.

Philippine Material Culture collections started to be an activity in the 1970's.

What is lost to the Filipinos, as diasporic objects are detached from them?

Key pieces that embody the most ✨ sublime ✨ levels of cultural expression in material form by specific Philippine Peoples. Here, Marian does not refer to these pieces by the quantity of cultural objects being produced, but by the quality of it. You can get traditional, authentic fabric anywhere in the region where the community resides — but all the ones that were made special, limited, and ceremonious are all stored in museums abroad.

Key pieces for which no equivalent exists.

The full range of variations of certain traditions, as expressed by the artists of specific community.

The opportunities to study continuities or commonalities between and among parts of the Philippine experiences that are normally separated.

Accurate analysis of what is Philippine — and thus to inform policy.

WHO DO YOU RETURN THE OBJECTS TO? Repatriation vs. Rematriation

Repatriation:

Nation-state as destination of return.

The loss of legitimacy or ethical high ground of holdings of powerful entities.

Rematriation:

Not return to the state — but the people who made them.

Though legal processes are able to create a process for repatriation, you cannot template rematriation.

You need to built trust with the community you are rematriating to.

The Legal Practice and Rematriation:

Cultural Heritage law centers more on private/institutional ownership (i.e. cultural property). However, Cultural Heritage is inherently collective. Hence, what we need is a legal basis for cultural custodianship as well — in collaboration in both the communal (discourses among the ethnic group), and international (UNESCO).

Enumeration of Investigative Directions that will have useful impact on Policy, Governance, Philantrophy, Grassroots Work, and International Relations, with regard to Philippine Material Culture

The celebration of global peak achievements in material culture.

The acknowledgement of Philippine Material Culture as rooted in village cosmologies that are shared across island Southeast Asia.

The establishments of living links between past and future art.

The metamorphosis from village to supra village ethos.

The fullsome recognition of a different way of being human in this part of the world.

[artcentron]

Repatriation of Looted Artifacts: A Victory for Global Antiquities Protection

The repatriation of looted artifacts from the U.S.  to India marks a major victory in global efforts to combat antiquities trafficking and protect cultural heritage.

The Celestial Dancer sculpture is one of the pieces in the recent repatriation of looted artifacts from the United States to India. Photo: Manhattan DA The repatriation of looted artifacts from the U.S.  to India marks a major victory in global efforts to combat antiquities trafficking and protect cultural heritage. BY ARTCENTRON NEWS The United States recently returned a significant…

[southeastasianarchaeology]

30 Stolen Artifacts Repatriated to Southeast Asia from New York

via AFP/Thai PBS, 27 April 2024: Besides the return of Cambodian antiquities reported last week, New York prosecutors, led by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, have successfully repatriated looted antiquities to Indonesia. These artifacts, including a bronze Shiva Triad from Cambodia and a Majapahit bas-relief from Indonesia, were illegally trafficked by dealers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener. Kapoor…

[suchananewsblog]

National capital to now host Khajuraho exhibition on repatriated artefacts

The exhibition showcasing 26 repatriated Indian antiquities, put up at the Khajuraho G20 culture group meeting, would now be displayed in the national capital in a bid to keep the spotlight on the prevention of illicit trafficking of antiquities. The exhibition titled “Re(ad)dress: Return of Treasures” includes historical gems like the 12th century Dancing Ganesha, a stone sculpture from Central…

[middlebury-college]

A stylized cat face, five inches tall and sculpted in brass, stares from a wall in the Middlebury College Museum of Art. This is the Leopard Head Hip Ornament, whose label explains that the piece was made sometime between the 16th and 19th centuries and probably once adorned the hip of a Benin Empire ruler’s costume. The ornament was stolen after the disturbingly named Benin Punitive Expedition in 1897, when British forces destroyed a Benin palace in present-day Nigeria and took thousands of objects, collectively known as the Benin treasures. Some of the looted pieces, like this one, were handed out to expedition leaders as souvenirs; others went to the British Museum and other institutions...

[blueiscoool]

Greece Returns 1,055 Ancient Coins to Turkey

Greece on Thursday returned a hoard of over 1,000 stolen ancient coins to Turkey in the first repatriation of its kind between the historic rivals and neighbors, Agence France-Presse reported.

The move came a few months after Turkey publicly supported Greece in its long quest to reclaim the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum in London.

Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said the hoard of 1,055 silver coins had been seized by Greek customs guards on the border with Turkey in 2019.

“These coins had been illegally imported,” Mendoni said at a ceremony at the Numismatic Museum, which specializes in currency and medal collections, in Athens.

Greeks are “particularly sensitive” to repatriation issues, she said.

“All illegally exported antiquities from whichever country should return to their country of origin,” Mendoni added.

Turkish Culture Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the operation was the first repatriation from Greece.

Greek and Turkish experts determined that the coins were part of a stock hidden in Asia Minor between the late 5th and early 4th century BCE, she added.

While research is ongoing, it is possible the hoard was secreted in modern-day Turkey during the Persian Wars expeditions of Athenian general Cimon, a veteran of the 480 BCE Battle of Salamis, she added.

Broadly used

Most of the cache were tetradrachms — ancient large silver coins — originally minted in Athens and used broadly in the eastern Mediterranean, said Museum Numismatologist Vassiliki Stefanaki, a coinage expert.

Stamped with the image of an owl, the Athenian relics were also used locally to pay tribute to the Persian Empire, and Persian governors used them to reward their troops, she said.

Other coins came from Cyprus, the islands of Aegina and Milos, from Asia Minor cities founded by Greek settlers, the Iron Age kingdom of Lydia, and Phoenicia in modern-day Lebanon, officials said.

Mendoni on Thursday also thanked Turkey for supporting Greece’s campaign to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles from London.

The British Museum has long maintained that the Marbles were removed from the Acropolis in Athens by royal decree granted to Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

But in June, Zeynep Boz, the head of the Turkish Culture Ministry’s anti-smuggling committee, told a UNESCO meeting in Paris that no such document had been found in Ottoman archives.

Her statement was “decisive” in favor of Greece’s position, Mendoni said Thursday.

Ersoy through a translator said Turkey wanted “with all its heart” to see the Marbles return to Athens.

“The Greek people should have them, they belong to them,” he said.

Boz, who attended Thursday’s ceremony in Athens, told Agence France-Presse that the timing of the coins’ return by Greece was not related to her report in June.

The five-year delay was caused by the time required by the Greek justice system to authorize the coins’ repatriation, she said.

[allthegeopolitics]

Prosecutors in New York City have announced that they returned to Cambodia and Indonesia 30 antiquities that were looted, sold or illegally transferred by networks of American antiquities dealers and traffickers. The antiquities were valued at a total of $3m, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement on Friday. Bragg said he had returned 27 pieces to Phnom Penh and three to Jakarta in two recent repatriation ceremonies, including a bronze statue of the Hindu deity Shiva, which was looted from Cambodia, and a stone bas-relief sculpture of two royal figures from the Majapahit empire, which reigned between the 13th and 16th centuries, that was stolen from Indonesia.

Continue Reading.

[froody]

Fucking wild that in most of the US human bones are both cheaper and way easier to obtain than marine mammal parts.

YEAH. When I brought up the MBTA I wasn’t dissing it, even though I’m a taxidermy and bone collector I understand why protected species have prohibitions against the possession, sale and transportation of their remains. It’s vital to ecology. It is just truly insane to me that I cannot keep the feathers of a dead raven I found in a barn but human remains with no provenance are on display, for sale in antique stores and oddities shops across the US and at online boutiques.

I’m not against the possession or display of human remains by institutions involved in the arts and sciences but they should always be in the stewardship of cultural decedents of the deceased, repatriated immediately upon asking AND have provenance.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Re: your Wonder Woman story ideas. I'm really interested in what you have in mind for a storyline centered around ancient artifacts and their home countries. Because I don't think a lot of greek myth-inspired stories ever really touched on that issue (which is a shame).

Okay so the original set-up I had in mind for this story is basically this: Diana gets a call from Helena Sandsmark saying that the Gateway City Museum has been broken into and one of their priceless artifiacts is missing. Diana promises to find it, and at the end of the issue, she does!

....in a warehouse full to the brim of other stolen and "discretely discovered" (aka, found and not reported) artifacts. Whoops, she's just stumbled over a massive underground antiquities black market operation and now it's probably her duty (as Wonder Woman, as a diplomatic ambassador, and as someone who's worked closely with antiquities and museum people for ages) to make sure everything gets handled properly and repatriated safely.

Cue massive squabbling and ongoing negotiations between Diana (who found everything and has placed the contents of the warehouse under Themiscyran protection), the countries of origin (who want their stuff back), the museums any of the artifacts were stolen from (who say because it was stolen from their museums they should have rights to it regardless of whether or not the countries of origin think the artifact should be theirs to display), private dealers (who want to snap up the artifacts that aren't legally bound for a new home), US museums (who want to temporarily display the stuff in their museums while repatriation negotations happen), and the US government (who says because the artifacts were found on US soil it should be their job to repatriate everything, not Diana/Themiscyra).

Oh yeah....and also the superheroing community and various mythological entities, because of course the black market dealers couldn't leave well enough alone and just grab normal artifiacts. No no, they were also planning on selling a whole bunch of stolen cursed stuff and magical relics and mythical statuary. Including a bunch of stuff of Greek and Amazonian origin, because why wouldn't they be there?

So this sets up a nice solid arc where I could either a) take a series of connected issues to show Diana personally handling and/or returning artifacts to their rightful home (and the trials and tribulations of doing so) or b) every once in awhile when I'd need a break from telling other stories, another artifact's negotiation process is done and she has to go return it. Boom, nice fun breather oneshot or mini-arc.

Some of the repatriation stories would be bog-standard "country of origin and museum in another country are fighting over who gets to have it. Diana mediates" stories. Others would be Diana journeying to return a stolen relic to its rightful owner (kind of like Damian Wayne did during his Year of Blood arc in R:SOB). Either way: it allows for a nice, fun ongoing set of stories that I could return to at literally any time to keep the run going. It would also allow me to bring back a lot of Diana's various civilian supporting casts that we haven't gotten to see in a long time (particularly the museum/antiquities/linguisitics crowd like Helena Sandsmark and Julia Kapatelis, the UN crew that was Diana's embassy delegation, and her DC supporting cast). I think it would be fun.

[talentlessmuse]

It would pretty definitely get me kicked out, but I would love to take a group of people on a "Stolen Antiquities Tour" of the British Museum. We would go through the museum, and I would identify the artifacts, where they were stolen from, their cultural importance, how long they've been separated from their homeland, and which nation would very much like their things back now. If, by some miracle, I were to actually get to the end of the tour, I would conclude with a discussion about how the British Museum's refusal to return these items is just a modern continuation of their Imperialist history, laying claim to things they have no right to.

I would also strictly enforce a no harassing the staff policy. Most of them are just trying to make a living, and they are not the ones responsible for the refusal to repatriate artifacts. That decision is made higher up the chain.

[ancientstuff]

People always point to the British Museum as the boogey-man of colonialism and it surely is, but also complicit in that is the Met in New York. IMHO.

[agentfascinateur]

Return looted antiquities. Sign Dr Hawass's petition:

[homerstroystory]

BIG WEEK FOR REPATRIATION!

12 looted items worth over $33 million are returned to Türkiye by the Manhattan District Attorney, including an 8000-year-old figure from Çatalhöyük

29 looted antiquities worth over $20 million are returned to Greece by the Manhattan District Attorney, including Neolithic figurines and an extremely rare Eid Mar coin commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar

The seller of an Eid Mar coin who used a fake provenance to sell the coin for $4.2 million has been arrested

77 looted pieces of jewelry were returned to Cambodia from the estate of the notorious looter and collector Douglas Latchford

The Denver Art Museum removes the name of Douglas Latchford's associate who brokered the sale of looted Cambodian artifacts to the museum from the walls of the Asian Art Collection and returns $185,000 in donation, and is looking into repatriating looted items

The United States is preparing to return 77 looted antiquities to Yemen

[southeastasianarchaeology]

US Hands Over Precious Cambodian Statues Worth Millions

27 Cambodian artifacts worth $2.4M, including Angkorian Buddhist and Hindu statues, set for repatriation from New York.

via Khmer Times, 24 April 2024: The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York has facilitated the return of 27 valuable Cambodian artifacts, totaling $2.4 million. This repatriation involves Buddhist and Hindu statues, including rare Angkorian pieces, thanks to the joint efforts of various Cambodian and US agencies. The artifacts, which had been held by art dealers involved in illegal…