As previously mentioned, I’m going to drop the ball and NOT attend this week’s major contemporary art sales, even though all other eyes will be anxiously upon them to assess the health of the market. I may try to weigh in with some quick art-market quips (or even analysis), but I need to keep my eye on another ball this week—my invitation, extended by Professor Richard Leventhal, to give two talks at the University of Pennsylvania (to an undergraduate class and to a workshop for graduate students and professors), both on cultural property issues.
Since I’ve prepared certain materials for my captive academic audience, I thought I’d also share them with my faithful readers.
So here’s the series of links I was asked to prepare, to a selection of my own mainstream-media and blog writings about cultural property issues. I’ll post later my other U. Penn handout—a list of links to recent repatriation agreements, museum antiquities acquisition policies, and U.S. State Department actions designed to help protect other nations’ cultural heritage.
The CultureGrrl Reader on Cultural Property
Wall Street Journal:
Truth in Booty: Coming—and Staying—Clean
A Betrayal of Trust: At the New York Public Library, It’s Sell Now, Raise Money Later
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled By Wal-Mart Heiress
CultureGrrl:
Rosetta Stone: Why the British Museum Distrusts Hawass
MacGregor Considers Egypt’s Rosetta Stone Loan Request
Italy/Princeton Antiquities Deal: Reasons for Give-Backs Hide Behind Wall of “Confidentiality”
Acropolis Acrimony: MacGregor Condescends to the Greeks
The Broader Significance of the Maier Massacre and the Stieglitz Egress
What’s Missing from the Getty/Italy Accord
Perot’s Magna Carta Up for Grabs
The Met to Monteleone: Drop Your Chariot Claim and We’ll Host a Celebratory Event
Should the “Getty Bronze” Go Back to Italy?
Rethinking Antiquities
Rethinking Antiquities (again)
China’s Ironhanded Cultural Patrimony Request
And while we’re on the topic, let’s add this Associated Press piece about Italy’s latest repatriation coup, which involves a dealer, Jerome Eisenberg of New York’s Royal Athena-Galleries. CultureGrrl readers may remember Eisenberg from this post detailing his allegation that the Metropolitan Museum’s Etruscan chariot is “a pastiche of ancient and modern elements” and this post about two objects returned by Eisenberg to Italy.