Cairo Geniza at Cambridge University

Edgar Asher, Cairo Geniza at Cambridge University' Ashernet Dec 29, 2016

An exhibition at Cambridge University featuring a fraction of ancient Jewish manuscripts that are part of the unique collection known as the Cairo Geniza will open in April, 2017. Titled “Discarded History,” the exhibit displays a small percentage of 300,000 manuscripts originally found in the geniza, or storeroom, of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat. Some documents date back over 1,000 years.[...] Schechter received permission to examine the contents of the geniza and to take whatever he liked. As he later said, “I liked it all.” Schechter subsequently removed most of the manuscripts from the Ben Ezra Synagogue geniza and brought them back to Cambridge. As he began to evaluate hundreds of items, he realized that this collection of documents was an unprecedented window on Jewish life.[...] The religious and civil documents discovered in the Cairo Geniza provide scholars with copious pieces of information that, when they are all itemized and collated, will be a window on Jewish secular and religious life over the past 10 centuries.

The collection was taken in 1896, in 2016 its full cataloguing is still being referred to in the future tense. Maybe instead of throwing resources at displaying the 'trophies', the institution housing them should pull their finger out and get them properly analysed at last. Too many institutions are sitting on material they have taken for themselves but have not the resources to process properlyn in good time.

'Keeping Their Marbles' reviewed

Pretty scathing review of Tiffany Jenkins, Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums…and Why They Should Stay There (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. ix, 369. ISBN 9780199657599) by Johanna Hanink, Brown University in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.12.06.

Despite the sensationalistic claims made in the introduction and in the splashy marketing material, Keeping Their Marbles contributes almost nothing to (and arguably even sets back) the broader, evolving, and ever more sophisticated conversation about critical heritage studies, which should be a matter of concern to everyone who reads BMCR. The book is a diatribe—and not a very well-researched, well-documented, or well-written one—that has been dressed, advertised, and reviewed as an authoritative monograph issued by one of our field’s flagship presses.

Th review itself is a nicely-written piece. I have not read the book.

Give us back the Venus de Milo, Greeks tell Louvre

In a fresh claim of cultural restitution, Greece launched an unprecedented bid yesterday to win back the Venus de Milo from the Louvre. Gerasimos Damoulakis, mayor of the island of Milos, in the southeast Aegean Sea, where the marble masterpiece was unearthed in 1820, is campaigning to collect one million signatures for a petition in advance of the 200th anniversary of the statue’s discovery. The petition will be presented to the European Union and the Louvre in a bid to bring the statue back to its homeland. “The claim itself isn’t new,” Mr Damoulakis said. “There’s not a Greek out there who hasn’t wondered why Greece’s finest piece of antiquity is sitting in France rather than in its birthplace. (Anthee Carassava, 'Give us back the Venus de Milo, Greeks tell Louvre' the Times, November 30 2016).

OK, so why is it?

Vignette: From Milos

British Museum Fouls Up

The piece itself,
one of a pair

Martin Bailey, 'Benin bronze, sold off by British Museum in 1950, returns to market' Art Newspaper  28 October 2016

A Benin bronze sold off by the British Museum for around £200 in the 1950s came back on the market at Quinn’s Auction Galleries in Falls Church, Virginia on 1 October [...] but failed to find a buyer. The 16th-century plaque [...] was among 500 objects offered from the collection of the New York-based African-American artist, collector, dealer and musician Merton Simpson, who died three years ago. [...] the British Museum acquired 203 bronzes [...]  In 1950, the museum’s keeper of ethnography, Hermann Braunholtz, suggested to the trustees that 30 plaques were “duplicate specimens” and that 10 should be sold to Nigeria for a planned museum in Lagos. Later that year, four further plaques were sold to the London dealer Sydney Burney for a total of £876; three others went in 1952 to the New York dealer John Klejman for £450 in a exchange deal. The British Museum would later much regret these sell-offs. In 2002, Nigel Barley, the museum’s Africa curator, described them as “a curse”, since the plaques had been designed to be displayed as pairs.

They SOLD the plaques to Nigeria? How utterly crass.Now, what was that we were hearing about the 'legal impediments' to deaccessing the Parthenon marbles from the national collection? Is it the case that as far as Bloomsbury Trustees are concerned they only apply to the sparkling white marbles of the supreme White European civilizations, but not the 'savage art' of the brown-skinned folk?

Now, what is Quinn's going to do with the unsold Benin bronze?  The decent thing?

Broken Hill skull,

Zambia is requesting the return of the Broken Hill skull, the 1st Homo rhodesiensis, found in 1921. It's in the Natural History Museum in London.

Ashley Dickerson, 'Broken Hill: Whose skull is it anyway?' What’s On Africa August 22, 2013

Polynesian sculpture of A’a

The sculpture of A'a in the British Museum was probably originally carved to serve as a reliquary for the bones of A’a Carbon dating of the most important surviving Polynesian wooden sculpture has revealed that it is older than once thought (Martin Bailey Polynesian sculpture admired by Picasso and Henry Moore far older than previously thought  The Art Newspaper 15th August 2016)

Sculpture of A’a  (Image: © The Trustees
of the British Museum)

The British Museum’s Polynesian sculpture of A’a is much older than previously thought.  [...] it is probable that the tree from which it was carved was felled in around 1505. This would make A’a the earliest dated wooden sculpture from Polynesia. Named after a key god of the island of Rurutu, the sculpture is a carved man-like figure 1.2m tall. Thirty small figures emerge out of his skin. His feet are missing, probably because they rotted away at some point. The penis, which was once erect, has been broken off, perhaps by Christian missionaries. [...]  Some of Rurutu’s chiefs had converted to Christianity, and to demonstrate their new allegiance they sent a boat with pagan idols to the island of Ra’iatea, 560km to the north, where the London Missionary Society had set up a base. [...] A’a was saved and sent to Britain, where it was displayed in the London Missionary Society’s museum. In 1890 the society lent A’a to the British Museum and ownership was transferred in 1911. 

This is a fluff piece intended to show the benefits of having things like this in a London Museum. Furthermore western culture can lay a claim on it:

A’a has long been admired by Western artists. Henry Moore was first struck by the sculpture when he saw it in the 1920s. For his 80th birthday, in 1978, the British Museum presented him with a cast. From this, he commissioned a bronze copy, which he kept in the entrance hall to his Hertfordshire home, Hoglands, where it remains on view.  In 1950 Picasso saw a cast of A’a on a visit to the studio of the English surrealist, Roland Penrose. Picasso was so enchanted that he arranged to have a bronze cast. This stood prominently in his studio in the Villa La Californie in Cannes, close to his easel.

Which I guess makes it OK to have the coffin of somebody else's "key god" in your gallery of trophy art.

Benin wants Expatriated Cultural Property Back

Authorities in Benin have made a formal request to France to officially return its cultural property. It seems that some 5000 pieces of Beninese arts are in the French museums, very many of these in the Paris Quai-Branly Museum.

For the first time, authorities in Benin have made a formal request to its former colonial master, France, to officially return its cultural property. [...] Today, growing tourism has become one of the top priorities of Benin’s government. According to government figures, the tourism sector contributes only to 2.5% to the GDP, despite its potential. This low contribution, has been linked to the absence of a relevant strategies for the development of the sector as viable to the economy, lower valuation of tourist sites and the lack of promotion of tourism sites both on national and international levels. The government has thus created an agency to promote Benin’s cultural heritage and development of tourism which is viewed as a step towards making the sector a strong pillar for economic development.

Benin is not the only country to have its cultural heritage removed, 90% of major pieces of African classic art are out of Africa according to the France Info journal.

Easter Island statue in London

There are some 4000 items of cultural property taken from Easter Island inthe past and now wscattered in foreign collections across the world. One of them in London is attracting some attention (AFP, 'Chilean filmmakers demand British repatriation of Easter Island statue' August 12, 2016).

Chilean filmmakers have launched a campaign for Britain to return a giant statue they say was stolen from the mystical Easter Island. Hoa Haka Nana'ia - meaning "hidden or stolen friend" in the island's native language - is one of the star exhibits in London's British Museum, seen by tourists from around the world. But campaigners say it belongs along with other sacred sculptures on the remote Chilean island in the Pacific, from where it was taken a century ago. The London moai, as the famous Easter Island Statues are known locally, stands 2.5 meters high and weighs about four tonnes. It is thought to have been sculpted around the 13th century. Like other moai, it was believed to be inhabited by a "mana," or spirit, that protected local tribes. A new documentary about the statues says that "one way to recover the mana to restore wellbeing to the island is to bring the spirit of the Moai Hoa Kaka Nana'ia back to its native land." 

There is a petition in progress urging the Chilean government to make a formal demand for the moai's return. 

Iran to Reclaim Achaemenid Tablets from US after 80 Years

'Iran to Reclaim Achaemenid Tablets from US after 80 Years' Irn Front Page 1st August 22, 2016

Iranian Vice President Massoud Soltanifar announced that the Achaemenid tablets kept in the US will be repatriated to the country after 80 years  [...]  the Persepolis Collection [...] includes about 3,000 clay tablets and fragments that Iran loaned to the University of Chicago Oriental Institute for research, translation and cataloguing some 80 years ago.  “The study on tablets in Chicago was supposed to take only three years,” he regretted. 

Families of American victims injured in a Hamas suicide bombing in Israel in 1997 have accused Iran of involvement in the incident, and thus expect compensation from Iran and tried to get a court to seize the artefacts so they could sell them to raise the money.

More on the proposed Parthenon Sculptures (return to Greece) bill

'More on the proposed Parthenon Sculptures (return to Greece) bill', Elginism July 27, 2016,
Further coverage of the parliamentary bill tabled on the bicentenary of the legal handover of Elgin's sculptures to the British Museum. Do the right thing...

Parthenon Sculptures (Return to Greece) Bill presented to UK Parliament

Parthenon Sculptures (Return to Greece) Bill presented to UK Parliament

Universal Museums and the National and Colonial Interests they Represent

Canadian classicist Dimitri Nakassis ('Against the universal museum' Aegean prehistory May 10, 2016) eloquently addresses the arguments for the universal museum as represented by James Cuno and Tiffany Jenkins that the  'Universal Museum' saves antiquities from nationalism by putting them into a global context. This is aped by collectors to support their own acquisitive activities. Nakassis finds the whole structure of the argument flawed:

My suspicion with this argument is simply that while it is happy to criticize others, it does not engage in a self-critique. That is to say, the politics of the universal museum are not something that is interesting to those who make these arguments. Indeed, the politics and the history are actively white-washed. [...] Indeed, it seems odd to argue that universal museums like the British Museum are somehow immune from the charge of nationalism. [...] It’s not like the British government is immune from the nationalistic desire to keep cherished artifacts from leaving the country – as this government ban from the sale of the dagger and robes of T.E. Lawrence abroad shows. Or see this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Where is the criticism of the petty nationalism that seeks to deny Kelly Clarkson ownership of a ring owned by Jane Austen? The UK’s Culture minister Ed Vaizey said of the export ban that it “provides us with a ‘last chance’ to save treasures like these for the nation so they can be enjoyed by all of us.” (Emphasis mine). It’s worth noting that British nationalism, or American nationalism, is never flagged as a problem by those discussing repatriation and the proper home for material culture. Instead, the nationalism problem is always framed as Us against Them.

This comes out most clearly in the writings of US private collectors that clearly see themselves as a elite placed by Divine Favour over the "natives" of the states from which they wish to wrest collectable trophies. Nakassis  points out how the narratives used as case studies often oppose allegedly homogeneous national groups "The Greeks. The Turks. The Egyptians. The Nigerians" with the other protagonists in this drama who:

have names, identities, carefully thought out opinions. Thus the discussion is structured to oppose the museum curators with academic credentials and carefully thought-out opinions to anonymous groups who apparently all think alike along narrow nationalistic lines. Finally, we are told that these parochial, nationalistic museums that want their treasures back reproduce an ethos that “resurrects racial ways of thinking” (Jenkins). Indeed, we are told that “far from tearing down walls between people, these institutions erect new ones.” This is the ultimate twist of the knife: the victims of imperialism and colonialism are now accused of “racial ways of thinking” whereas the poor, downtrodden curators of the noble universal museum (the real victims in all of this!) don’t see race [...]. Instead, these brave men and women only see the grand sweep of the history of humankind. Yet neither do they see, for they choose not to see, their own past or for that matter their own present.

Send the looted Vigango Home

The Mijikenda live in the lands stretching across the border between Kenya (Coast Province, Kwale district, south of Mombasa), and Tanzania (Northeast coast, Tanga area). Some Mijikenda groups worship their ancestors through the construction of wooden memorial statues called vigango (singular: kikango), they believe that vigango bring luck and prosperity to the whole community, particularly to the family of the man being honored, and that vigango are living objects—that they are material manifestations of the souls of departed and honored elders.  Stephen E. Nash discusses what foreign dealers and collectors have led to ('The Right to Own Living Memorials', Sapiens 29th Apr 2016).

In the early 1980s, American art dealers seeking to grow their businesses “discovered” vigango. They began to sell them as art objects, ignoring their living, protective value to the Mijikenda. Unemployed young Mijikenda and other men in Kenya and Tanzania were hired by art dealers to steal sacred vigango, selling them to middlemen for as little as $7 each. Once vigango reached the art market in Mombasa or Nairobi, they often fetched a price of several hundred dollars. When art dealerships in the United States obtained them, they typically sold for a few thousand dollars each. Today, prices of up to $15,000 for a single kikango are common at auction houses in the United States. Who profits? Not the men who perpetrated the theft or the source community that suffered the loss. Profits accrue up the chain of possession.

Collectors of looted art are the real looters. They create a market for these pieces of worked wood.

A 'Must-read' on Repatriation

Tiffany Jenkins, 'Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums - And Why They Should Stay There ', OUP Oxford – 1 Feb 2016

 In Keeping Their Marbles, Tiffany Jenkins [...]  investigates why repatriation claims have soared in recent decades and demonstrates how it is the guilt and insecurity of the museums themselves that have stoked the demands for return. Contrary to the arguments of campaigners, she shows that sending artefacts back will not achieve the desired social change nor repair the wounds of history. Instead, this ground-breaking book makes the case for museums as centres of knowledge, demonstrating that no object has a single home and no one culture owns culture.

In his review of the book James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust says:

The question of how best to protect the world's cultural heritage, and what role museums, nations states, and international bodies play in doing so, or in not doing so, is a vexed one. And in the time of IS, it is an urgent one. Tiffany Jenkins sets out a clear, compelling, and at times controversial case for, and sometimes against, museums as repositories and interpreters of the past in a time of nation building. She argues that we are asking too much of our museums, that we want them to serve narrow ideological purposes of cultural and political identity. There is much to agree with in this argument, and of course, much with which to disagree. That's what makes this book a must-read.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to my readers. Not everybody however can be happy about the status quo concerning cultural heritage. Will 2016 see any major changes?

Iyad El-Baghdadi ‏@iyad_elbaghdadi 17 godzin temu Iraqi man cries bitterly at the British Museum when he sees his country's cultural heritage on display.

How would you feel if this happened to your heritage? See my little-visited blog "Britain's Scattered Heritage" making this point, and think about it for a moment or two.