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#Post#: 6363--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: guest5 Date: May 14, 2021, 1:35 am
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Germany to return Benin Bronzes to Nigeria: A new era for stolen
artifacts? | DW News
[quote]It's being called a game changer - and the start of a new
era. Germany has promised to begin returning the artefacts known
as the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria next year, making it the first
country to do so.
Germany has a collection of just over 1,000 Benin Bronzes.
They're on display in museums in Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg,
Leipzig, and Stuttgart. The sculptures and metal plaques are
from the ancient Kingdom of Benin - which is today known as Edo
State in southern Nigeria. The Bronzes were looted by British
soldiers in 1897 and sold to museums in North America and
Europe. The largest collection of the Bronzes is held by the
British Museum.
Nigeria has been trying to get the bronzes back for decades.
Without success. But momentum has been building over the last
few years, with calls growing ever louder for artifacts seized
during the colonial era to be returned to their places of
origin. Germany's culture minister explained why Berlin had
decided to act now. She said:
''We are confronting our historic and moral responsibility. We
want to contribute to a common understanding and reconciliation
with the descendants of the people who were robbed of their
cultural treasures during the times of colonialism.''
It's not just the Benin Bronzes from Nigeria that are wanted by
their rightful owners. There is also a claim from Cameroon from
where a special artifact known as the Tangue was stolen from a
local King. More than a century later it is still in Germany.
But not everyone in Cameroon is of the view that it should be
brought back to the country.
In Douala, Cameroon Prince Kum'a Ndumbe III has been advocating
for the return of the Tangue, a sculpture stolen from his
grandfather in 1884. Prince Ndumbe has made a copy of the Tangue
and put it on show in Cameroon.
The original artifact - looted by the Germans during colonial
times - is on display at a museum in Munich.
But not everyone agrees that the Tangue should be immediately
returned. Princess Marilyn Douala Bell is an artist and founder
of an art center in Douala. Even though her great-grandfather
was executed in 1914 for resisting German rule, Marilyn thinks
Cameroon is not ready to receive the artefact.
Others in Douala also claim to be the rightful owners of the
Tangue. At least one more descendant of a Douala King has made
a claim on the artifact. For Marilyn this is a source of
concern. She wants the tangue to be returned but fears the
conditions are currently not right.[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWwe1jRbHWo
#Post#: 6842--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: June 1, 2021, 10:11 pm
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Success!
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ9OupxS4Pc
#Post#: 7815--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: Zea_mays Date: July 31, 2021, 10:21 pm
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[quote] A 3,500-year-old clay tablet purchased by the Hobby
Lobby arts and crafts chain for $1.6 million has been forfeited
to the United States.
The tablet was illegally transported to the U.S. in 2003 and
2014.
In a complaint filed in May 2020, prosecutors said the
5-by-6-inch tablet is considered the property of the Iraqi
government and should be returned.
[...]
The tablet, which bears a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh, a
Sumerian poem considered one of the world’s oldest works,
originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and was illegally
transported to the U.S. in 2003 and 2014.
A false provenance letter was used to sell the tablet several
times before Hobby Lobby purchased the item from a London-based
auction house in 2014.[/quote]
HTML https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/hobby-lobbys-gilgamesh-tablet-has-been-forfeited-to-the-us-.html
Previously, in 2015:
[quote]On Tuesday morning, the Daily Beast reported that Hobby
Lobby’s C.E.O. Steve Green, whose company successfully
challenged Obamacare’s contraception mandate on the grounds that
it violated the owning family’s religious beliefs, was being
investigated for the allegedly illicit importation of
biblical-era Assyrian and Babylonian artifacts into the United
States.
The four-year investigation involves nearly 300 “small clay
tablets” from what’s now modern-day Iraq and Syria, bound for
the Museum of the Bible, a multi-million-dollar complex in
Washington, D.C. and scheduled to open in 2017, largely financed
by the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby and is worth an
estimated $4.5 billion. But when the family tried to get the
collections through U.S. Customs—having declared them, according
to the Daily Beast, as “hand-crafted clay tiles” worth a
collective $300—their actions triggered an F.B.I. inquiry. To
date, the investigation is still ongoing, while a representative
from the Museum of the Bible characterized the investigation as
a problem spawned from “incomplete paperwork”.
[...]
Last February, the United Nations adopted a resolution stating
that its members would seek to prevent terrorist groups,
including ISIS, from profiting off these sales. According to
Col. Matt Bogdanos, a single, four-inch cylinder seal from
ancient Babylonia can sell for nearly $250,000 alone, and the
U.N. ambassador from Iraq, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, estimated that
ISIS earns more than $100 million per year antiquities
trading.[/quote]
HTML https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/hobby-lobby-ceo-antiquities-terrorism
#Post#: 9011--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 24, 2021, 3:04 am
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b0EsDGsLAw
#Post#: 9196--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: October 4, 2021, 1:56 am
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfCHdIbtNC0
#Post#: 9731--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: November 10, 2021, 9:12 pm
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HTML https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/10/royal-british-columbia-museum-closes-indigenous-galleries
[quote]Canadian museum closes Indigenous galleries to begin ‘the
process of decolonisation’
The Royal British Columbia Museum will overhaul an entire floor
of exhibits devoted to Indigenous and First Nations groups
...
The First Peoples Gallery is a conglomeration of many stories
about Indigenous peoples, some in partnership with Indigenous
peoples & others done expressly without consent. What exists is
an incoherent gallery that is reflective of the colonial posture
of the province itself.
Take this cradleboard for instance, which is part of the
museum's 'Living Languages' display.
“The museum claims that the object was ‘donated’ in 1929,”
Sebastian said. “That was when Ktunaxa children were forced to
attend residential school, when we could not hire lawyers, our
cultural practices were outlawed, we could not vote and required
the Indian agent's permission to leave the rez.”
The museum, one of Canada’s oldest, is situated in central
Victoria on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen (Songhees
and Xwsepsum Nations). It was founded in 1886 and today contains
more than 7 million objects, including natural history
specimens, works by First Nations groups and archaeological
artefacts, as well as the British Columbia Archives collection
of historical documents.[/quote]
How many objects will be returned to their owners?
#Post#: 10003--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: December 5, 2021, 3:43 am
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Minor success:
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l52SOOew5JY
#Post#: 10130--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: Zea_mays Date: December 16, 2021, 7:27 pm
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[quote]A small clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and bearing a
portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh that was looted from an Iraqi
museum 30 years ago and recently recovered from the United
States formally returned to Iraq on Tuesday.
The $1.7 million cuneiform tablet, known as the Gilgamesh Dream
Tablet, is one of the world’s oldest surviving works of
literature and one of the oldest religious texts. It was found
in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the
library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal.
The tablet was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf
War. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United
States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on
display in its Museum of the Bible in Washington.
Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations seized the
tablet from the museum in September 2019. A federal judge in New
York approved the forfeiture of the tablet in July this year.
On Tuesday, the tablet was handed over to Iraqi authorities in a
ceremony at Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the presence
of UNESCO officials as well as Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad
Hussein and Hassan Nadhem, Iraq’s minister of culture, tourism
and antiquities.
“We were able to recover about 17,926 artifacts from several
countries, namely America, Britain, Italy, Japan and the
Netherlands,” Hussein said. [/quote]
HTML https://apnews.com/article/science-travel-lifestyle-museums-united-nations-e434fb4f2cd88c02169682436897ae54
#Post#: 10145--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: guest55 Date: December 16, 2021, 8:48 pm
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Dark secrets of German museums | DW Documentary
[quote]For centuries, Europeans lusted after exotic treasures
from all over the world. Millions of objects were stored away by
German museums during the colonial era. That’s left a cultural
vacuum in former colonial countries.
Today, the restitution of these objects to their cultures of
origin does happen - but it is the exception, rather than the
rule. According to Bénédicte Savoy, a critic of Berlin's
Humboldt Forum museum, most institutions are still
stone-walling. "Their greatest fear is arousing desire. They
don’t want to give things back. So they keep quiet."
Sealed off from the public, artifacts stored by German museums
are often treated with neglect. Berlin's new Humboldt Forum
won’t change that. There, some 10,000 artifacts are planned for
public display. But the entire collection is one million objects
strong. This means that the vast majority of artifacts continue
to be stored in a facility in the suburb of Dahlem, which
suffers from flooding, dampness, and infestations of vermin.
Indeed, many museums do not even know how many cultural
artifacts they possess. Munich's Fünf Kontinente Museum has
records of just 57,000 of its estimated 160,000 pieces, while
Hamburg's MARKK, formerly the Museum of Ethnology, has no idea
which objects are in which boxes following roof damage and the
disposal of asbestos.
The Netherlands and France have undertaken the complete
digitization of global artifacts. But in Germany, budget and
staff shortages are standing in the way. When will indigenous
communities be able to finally look at their own cultural relics
held in Germany? And how well equipped are ethnological museums
to make such heritage available to the cultures that created it?
The documentary takes a critical look at the situation, making
it clear that the problems are not the fault of often
extremely-dedicated museum staff. There are structural problems,
and solving them will require increased resources, research, and
transparency.
#documentary #museums #Germany #dwdocumentary [/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBCzVxFcaKg
#Post#: 10434--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: January 7, 2022, 8:39 pm
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HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/billionaires-looted-art-still-display-060904083.html
[quote]Billionaire's looted art still on display at Israel
Museum
...
JERUSALEM (AP) — One of the Israel Museum’s biggest patrons,
American billionaire Michael Steinhardt, approached the flagship
Israeli art institution in 2007 with an artifact he had recently
bought: a 2,200-year-old Greek text carved into limestone.
But shortly after it went on display, an expert noticed
something odd — two chunks of text found a year earlier during a
dig near Jerusalem fit the limestone slab like a jigsaw puzzle.
It soon became clear that Steinhardt’s tablet came from the same
cave where the other fragments were excavated.
...
Museums worldwide are facing greater scrutiny over the
provenance — or chain of ownership — of their art, particularly
those looted from conflict zones or illegally plundered from
archaeological sites. There are growing calls for such items to
be returned to their countries of origin.
...
In addition to the Heliodorus Stele and two of the ancient
masks, at least one other Steinhardt-owned artifact in the
Israel Museum is of uncertain provenance: a 2,800-year-old
inscription on black volcanic stone. The museum’s display states
the origin as Moab, an ancient kingdom in modern-day Jordan.
How it got to Jerusalem remains unclear.
...
The Israel Museum declined interview requests and refused to
show the artifact’s documentation.
...
Israel has a legal antiquities market run by some 55 licensed
dealers. They are allowed to sell items discovered before 1978,
when a law took effect making all newfound artifacts state
property.
This market has provided an outlet for the laundering of
smuggled and plundered antiquities from around the Middle East
that are given fabricated documentation by dealers in Israel.
...
Morag Kersel, archaeology professor at DePaul University in
Illinois, said the wanton plunder of archaeological sites across
the Middle East ultimately “is all demand driven.”
“Looters do this because there’s someone like Steinhardt who’s
willing to pay money and buy things that come straight out of
the ground,” she said.
Under the deal, the Manhattan District Attorney seized 180 of
Steinhardt’s artifacts and will repatriate them to their
respective countries. Steinhardt also agreed to a lifetime ban
from acquiring antiquities — though it is unclear how that ban
will be enforced.
Steinhardt, 81, is a longtime patron of the Israel Museum and
many other Israeli institutions, including a natural history
museum at Tel Aviv University bearing his name. Since 2001, his
family foundation has donated over $6.6 million to the Israel
Museum, according to partial U.S. tax filings.
...
The DA began investigating Steinhardt’s massive antiquities
collection in 2017 after he loaned a Bull’s Head sculpture to
the Metropolitan Museum of Art that had been plundered from a
site in Lebanon.
The DA says the three items at the Israel Museum are
“effectively seized in place,” and has opened talks with Israel
to coordinate the return of 28 additional items. It said
Steinhardt “has been unable to locate” the final nine items
traced to Israel.
Of those 40 artifacts, more than half are believed to have been
plundered from West Bank sites, according to court documents. An
additional nine artifacts from Jordan, many sold to Steinhardt
through Israel’s licensed antiquities market, are also being
repatriated.
...
For now, the plundered artifacts in the museum still bear
Steinhardt’s name.[/quote]
What all the Western colonial powers used to do is what Israel
is still doing to this day.
Steinhardt was previously covered here:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/jews-have-nothing-in-common-with-us!/msg10206/#msg10206
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