It took a while, but the May 2009 issue of UNESCO’s Museum International, containing proceedings from last year’s Athens International Conference on Return of Cultural Objects, is now online. Individual articles, including mine, may be accessed by non-subscribers for a fee.
Here’s the free abstract describing my contribution: Art History Meets Archaeology: Considering Cultural Context in American Museums. The piece discusses some of the best and worst practices of American museums in their public displays of “orphaned objects”—the many works in their antiquities collections for which the original archaeological context is unknown. And here’s more information about the contents of the May issue.
Due to space restrictions, my published comments are considerably shorter than my Athens speech on this topic, which was (in the great tradition of CultureGrrl irreverent photo essays) amply illustrated with PowerPoint images. The editing has sacrificed some of the logic and flow of the full version.
Instead of paying a fee to access the truncated article online, why not just access me (also for a fee) to provide the full, illustrated (and updated) lecture in person? You can initiate this process by clicking the “Contact Me” link in CultureGrrl‘s middle column.
Speaking of fees, many (belated) thanks to CultureGrrl Donors 42 (my second REPEAT benefactor) from Louisiana and 43 from Illinois.