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Topic Summary

Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: January 27, 2024, 12:46:10 am »

Success:

https://us.yahoo.com/news/leading-museums-remove-native-displays-183325697.html

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Leading Museums Remove Native Displays Amid New Federal Rules
...
NEW YORK — The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items.

“The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, wrote in a letter to the museum’s staff on Friday morning. “Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”
...
Museums around the country have been covering up displays as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago covered some display cases, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University said it would remove all funerary belongings from exhibition and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.
...
“We’re finally being heard — and it’s not a fight, it’s a conversation,” said Myra Masiel-Zamora, an archaeologist and curator with the Pechanga Band of Indians.
...
“We can say, ‘This needs to come home,’ and I’m hoping there will not be pushback,” Masiel-Zamora said.
...
Much of the holdings of human remains and Native cultural items were collected through practices that are now considered antiquated and even odious, including through donations by grave robbers and archaeological digs that cleared out Indigenous burial grounds.

Woke comments:

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You raid “white” graveyards & you can bet your a.s there would be one group screaming about the violation…

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Native American culture is for Native Americans. It isn’t for Caucasian entertainment or education.

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Oh bummer white man can't display stolen indigenous artifacts anymore..

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I would say the white man had zero respect for the Indians because they tried to wipe them off the earth.
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: August 28, 2023, 05:53:50 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/news/calls-british-museum-return-treasures-131643870.html

Quote
Calls for British Museum to return treasures to China after hundreds of artefacts stolen
...
“We formally request the British Museum to return all Chinese cultural relics acquired through improper channels to China free of charge,” said the nationalist Global Times on Monday, urging the museum to “refrain from adopting a resistant, protracted and perfunctory attitude.”

The renewed calls for the return of the relics come ahead of an expected trip to China by James Cleverly, which would make him the first foreign secretary in five years to visit Beijing.

Earlier this month, the Telegraph disclosed that close to 2,000 objects, worth millions of pounds, were believed to have been stolen or destroyed by a single thief who went undetected by the museum for years, leaving staff shocked at the scale of the losses.
...
However, the full scale of the loss may never be known because of gaps in the museum’s inventory. When a storeroom of 942 uncatalogued items from the 18th century was checked, all but seven were found to be missing.
...
“The huge loopholes in the management and security of cultural objects in the British Museum exposed by this scandal have led to the collapse of a long-standing and widely circulated claim that ‘foreign cultural objects are better protected in the British Museum’,” said the Global Times.

Accusing the UK of a “bloody, ugly and shameful colonial history”, it added that the UK should “pay back its own historical debts and take the initiative to contact and discuss with the countries that have suffered from its colonial infringement on how to return the historical loot as soon as possible”.
...
The British Museum has about 23,000 Chinese objects – including items from the Tang, Shang and Zhou dynasties – making it the biggest collection of Chinese antiquities in the West.
...
According to its website, Chinese objects “have been a part of the British Museum since its establishment based on the collection of Sir Hans Sloane”. Sloane was an 18th century Irish physician.
...
According to the BBC, the hashtag “The British Museum please return Chinese antiquities” topped Weibo’s search chart until noon local time on Monday, and has been viewed more than half a billion times.

One comment saying: “Return the objects to their original owner,” was liked by more than 32,000 times.

Woke comments:

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Not only from China. British looted treasure from all around the world. They are the biggest thief of the world.

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Britain was the biggest bandit in world history. The most obvious robbery was the big emerald gem on top of the crown. Its India's property. But Englandmen have very thick skin to refuse to return it. They don't need to give reason.

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This is what British did all over. British is nothing but thief's through their

History. They take things that don't belong to them and don't want to return to the rightful owners.

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Britain also stole several hundred pieces of artifacts from India and Africa.  They should also return them.

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British Museum should be renamed as World Stolen Artifacts Museum :)

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Never ask a woman her age, a man his income, or a British museum where they got their treasures and artifacts.
Posted by: guest98
« on: August 09, 2023, 02:57:48 pm »

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/yilin-wang-translator-british-museum-settlement-intl-hnk/index.html

British Museum agrees to pay translator whose work it used without permission

Quote

A translator whose work was used by the British Museum without her permission won a victory this week after reaching a settlement with the institution, following two months of negotiations and online campaigning

 The museum came under fire in June after reports emerged that it had used writer Yilin Wang’s translations of 19th century poems by the feminist and revolutionary Qiu Jin for its exhibition “China’s hidden century.”

It had not contacted Wang, who is based in Vancouver, or offered to pay her for the translations, and the exhibition included no credits for her work.

The museum later admitted it had “inadvertently omitted” these steps and apologized, removing Wang’s translations and the original poetry from the exhibition. Those actions irked many observers who argued it should have offered to pay for the translations instead, rather than render the poetry inaccessible to museum-goers.

The settlement, signed by Wang and the museum last Friday, will reinstate the poetry and translations, this time with proper credit and compensation, Wang told CNN in a phone interview. She said this was an important step in recognizing the often invisible, complex work of translators.

One of Wang’s peers had worked to translate the official BTS book, making her well known among the community, which has a long history of banding together to support causes like planting trees in BTS’ honor and donating to movements like Black Lives Matter.

“It really showed me the collective power, as communities coming together to demand accountability from institutions,” she added.



Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: July 27, 2023, 06:25:47 pm »

https://www.yahoo.com/news/crown-jewel-carries-weight-uks-082245574.html

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The star of Britain's crown jewels, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, is back on view after a notable absence from Charles III's coronation that highlighted the nation's awkward ties with its colonial past.
...
The British state-chartered East India Company formally annexed the Kingdom of Punjab in 1849 after winning the Second Anglo-Sikh War, gaining the diamond as part of the resulting peace treaty and giving it to Queen Victoria.

Yet, New Delhi has repeatedly sought its return and foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said last year: "We have been raising this matter from time to time with the UK government and we will continue to explore ways and means for obtaining a satisfactory resolution of the matter."
...
"I don't know what the legal argument would be to say that it should be returned to India, considering that it was gifted to Queen Victoria by the East India Company and was not taken from India by the British," LeVian told AFP at the Tower of London, which his company had taken over for an event.

The East India Company stole it from India! Stolen property should be returned to the victim of theft, not kept by the recipient of the thief's gifting! Why are Westerners so bad at understanding this simple principle?

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/t1853/msg19144/?topicseen#msg19144

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If X steals from Y, then Z inherits the stolen item from X, and Z refuses to return it to Y on the grounds that Z was not the one who personally stole it, what does that tell us about Z?

This isn't even what we were talking about, you are strawmanning me with the backdrop of the random context you inserted.

Back to first link:

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"This diamond wasn't discovered by the Indian government," he added, saying that India didn't exist as a sovereign entity at the time of its discovery.

It doesn't have to be! All we need to prove is that it was stolen from India! Britain admits this in public:

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The diamond's display at the Tower of London now contains a label reading "a symbol of conquest", saying the peace treaty "compelled" the 10-year-old maharaja to "surrender" it.

Woke comments:

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It was mined near Hyderabad's Golconda mines. That's present day India.. no whitewashing around it.

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India should dig up the 1000s of acres of British era graves that are now in prime locations all over the country - Bangalore, Delhi, Lucknow - and auction the land for use for hospitals, parking garages. That alone will be worth 10X more than Kohinoor.
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: July 12, 2023, 09:18:14 pm »

Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: June 24, 2023, 02:34:09 am »

It's OK for translations to be "white":

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/british-museum-apologizes-using-translator-085459451.html

Quote
British Museum apologizes after using translator’s work in China exhibition without pay or acknowledgment
...
The show, which featured 19th century Chinese works including poems by feminist and revolutionary Qiu Jin, didn’t seem to include credits for translators, a friend told Wang. And yet, the Qiu Jin translations seemed to lift directly from Wang’s own work — was she involved in the exhibit?

No, Wang replied: She’d never been contacted by the museum, which used her work without permission, pay or acknowledgment.

It was an “unintentional human error for which the Museum has apologized to Yilin Wang,” it said, adding that it had removed her translations from the exhibition, and offered payment for the duration they were up, as well as for the translations that remain in a printed catalog.

But these measures fall short and the apology rings hollow, Wang told CNN in a phone interview Friday.

She criticized the statement for sounding passive instead of taking proper accountability. And, she said, it neglects to address the larger questions this incident has raised about ethics in academia and what she describes as the frequent erasure of translators — especially women and people of color.
...
when translations are used without credit, it’s this time, effort and knowledge being poached.

“I would urge the British Museum to come negotiate with me in good faith, that they’d be more apologetic,” Wang said, adding: “It’s really important to have discussions about copyright, about crediting translators’ labor, about making sure that this does not happen again and taking steps to correct it properly.”

Radically, the best way to stop it from happening again is for the victims of colonial-era theft to take back their stolen property altogether, and eliminate the bloodlines which stole them. Every day the stolen items continue to be displayed, it's not only the time, effort and knowledge of translations being poached, but also the time, effort and knowledge that went into making the exhibited items themselves!

Why is Wang only complaining about the stolen translations but not about the stolen items themselves?

Woke comments:

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The British have been stealing all over the world for centuries. 

What do you expect?

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The british like to steal.

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The british love to steal.

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CNN uses the word "using" when reporting West stealing
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: May 31, 2023, 04:18:23 am »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElCx5y8j8f0

Woke comments:

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People from India, Nepal, Africa should unite damand back their artifacts facts from colonisers.

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european has no shame

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West - The thief factory...

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Western countries should be punished for stealing the artifacts.

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Britain killed 4 million Indians in Bengal in 1943 by imposing a famine

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Britain took $45 Trillion from India over 200 years of rule
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: May 16, 2023, 06:13:04 pm »

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65614490

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The ruler of Ghana's Asante people has asked the British Museum to return gold items in its collection to his country.

The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, recently met the museum's director Dr Hartwig Fischer for discussions.

The museum's collection includes works taken from the Asante palace in Kumasi during the war with the British of 1874.

The British Museum told the BBC it is "exploring the possibility of lending items" to Ghana.

It's OK for lending to be "white"?

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Ethiopia wants the British Museum to return ceremonial crosses, weapons, jewellery, sacred altar tablets and other items taken from Maqdala in the north of the country during British military action in 1868.

The Nigerian government has also formally asked the museum to return 900 Benin Bronzes.

These beautiful bronze and brass sculptures were created by specialist guilds working for the royal court of the Oba, or King, in Benin City from the 16th Century onwards.

Many were forcibly removed when the British captured the city in 1897.

Ghana's government has set up a Restitution Committee to look at the return of items taken from the Asante Palace which are now in collections around the world.

Nana Oforiatta Ayim, who sits on that committee, told the BBC: "These objects are largely sacred ones and their return is about more than just restitution. It is also about reparation and repair, for the places they were taken from, but also those who did the taking."
...
"At the end of the day, objects like the ones taken in 1874 were taken under horrifically violent circumstances… There needs to be honesty, accountability and action".

Posted by: guest78
« on: December 14, 2022, 12:38:40 pm »

Who Gets to Tell the Story of Ancient Egypt?
Quote
On the eve of the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, some of the country’s artifacts, from the Rosetta Stone to the bust of Nefertiti, remain overseas
Quote
[...]Egypt’s riches have drawn colonizers and foreign treasure hunters since as early as 332 B.C.E., when Alexander the Great founded his namesake city on the delta. Wars with history’s biggest empires—the Romans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Ottomans and finally the British—have filled the 22 centuries since; in 1798, Napoleon also led a comparatively short French invasion that led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which opened Western Europe’s eyes to Egypt and started an undammable flow of ancient heritage leaving the country.

As the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) prepares to open its doors in Giza in 2023, some archaeologists, Egyptologists and museumgoers are calling for Egyptian antiquities to be returned to their homeland. Arriving amid a growing push to decolonize American and European museums, these campaigns ask a crucial question: Who gets to claim these artifacts as their own?

“People were asleep for years, and now they’re awake,” says Egyptologist Zahi Hawass. “I’m sure [Westerners] have nightmares of what happened: taking the history and the heritage of Africa to their countries with no right. There is no right for them to have this heritage in their country at all.”

Egypt and Europe

Even before Alexander the Great, Egypt was known to the Greeks, receiving mentions in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The threads of European colonialism in Egypt have long been intertwined with the region’s cultural heritage: The Romans adopted and absorbed many aspects of ancient Egyptian customs following Octavian’s defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 30 B.C.E., but after the Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century C.E., European contact with Egypt became more sporadic...
Quote
[...]Some of Europe’s best-known museums also got their start around this time, prompting a race among rivals to fill their galleries with the most impressive pieces. The British Museum, founded in London in the 1750s, had artifacts from ancient Egypt in its collection from the start and today houses the largest collection of Egyptian objects outside of Egypt. In the 1820s, Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia bought thousands of historic Egyptian objects now housed in the Neues Museum in Berlin. That same decade, following the translation of the Rosetta Stone, France’s Charles X ordered the creation of an Egyptian museum in the Louvre Palace in Paris, with Champollion as its first director.
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Colonial acquisitions

In the 1850s, the Ottoman-Egyptian government invited Frenchman Auguste Mariette, fresh from an impressive find at the Saqqara necropolis, to become Egypt’s first director of antiquities. The French handed the role down for decades, even maintaining control of the Department of Antiquities following the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Egyptian Egyptologists were categorically excluded from the organization, though pioneers like Ahmed Kamal Pasha battled for a seat at the colonialist-dominated table...
[...]“[The] legal outflow of antiquities from colonized Egypt contrasted with Italy, where few foreigners were allowed even to dig, and Greece, where foreign excavators had to renounce any claim to their finds,” writes Donald Malcolm Reid in Contesting Antiquity in Egypt...
Entire article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-gets-to-tell-the-story-of-ancient-egypt-180981263/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

If westerners were having nightmares about it I'm sure they would have returned everything a long time ago?
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: June 29, 2022, 08:58:28 pm »

Success:

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/germany-ngonnso-statue-cameroon/index.html

Quote
Germany to return stolen Ngonnso' statue to Cameroon

Germany will return a goddess statue that was stolen from Cameroon 120 years ago, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation said on Monday, part of a growing trend to give back artifacts taken during the colonial era.

The female figure, known as Ngonnso', will be returned to the kingdom of Nso' in northwestern Cameroon. It was taken by colonial officer Kurt von Pavel and donated to Berlin's Ethnological Museum in 1903.

Next, all descendants of von Pavel (and all other colonial officers) should be prohibited from reproducing.

Quote
The foundation also announced that it will return 23 pieces to Namibia and is planning an agreement to repatriate objects to Tanzania.
...
But its museums still host many famous artifacts, such as parts of Iraq's Babylon gate, which is on display at Berlin's Pergamon Museum.
'

Related:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/cameroon/
Posted by: rp
« on: May 05, 2022, 08:47:00 am »

It's ok to be a "White" archaeologist:
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-tourist-accused-of-smuggling-artifacts-in-iraq-faces-death-penalty-1234627261/
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A British tourist could face the death penalty in Iraq after being accused of smuggling artifacts out of the country.

Jim Fitton, a former geologist, collected stone fragments and shards of broken pottery as souvenirs during an archaeological tour of Eridu, an ancient Sumerian city in southern Iraq. He was arrested at the airport on March 20 after the baggage belonging to the tour group was searched. A German tourist who was also part of the tour was apprehended at the airport.

Under Iraqi law, the intentional international export of any items determined to be cultural heritage is “punishable with execution”.

But wait, it gets worse:
Quote
Fitton’s family members, who live in Malaysia, told the BBC that the fragments were “in the open, unguarded and with no signage warning against removal”. The tour leaders also collected shards and encouraged the tourists to do the same, the family said.

Translation: it's ok to be to be "White"
Quote
The Fittons are now petitioning the British government to intervene in the trial, which is set to begin May 7.  Fitton’s lawyer has drafted a proposal for the case to be dropped, the family told the BBC, however the plan needs the endorsement of the British Foreign Office to be presented to a high-ranking judiciary in Iraq.
**** you.
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: January 07, 2022, 08:39:38 pm »

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.

What all the Western colonial powers used to do is what Israel is still doing to this day.

Steinhardt was previously covered here:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/jews-have-nothing-in-common-with-us!/msg10206/#msg10206

Posted by: guest55
« on: December 16, 2021, 08:48:52 pm »

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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBCzVxFcaKg
Posted by: Zea_mays
« on: December 16, 2021, 07:27:00 pm »

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.
https://apnews.com/article/science-travel-lifestyle-museums-united-nations-e434fb4f2cd88c02169682436897ae54
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: December 05, 2021, 03:43:13 am »