Theft of Bronze Age gold artefacts from UK museum sparks fresh concerns about lack of government investment in sector by Joe Ware #TheArtNewspaper
“The theft of a Bronze Age gold torc and bracelet from a UK institution has sparked calls for greater government investment in the museum sector.
Police are yet to make arrests and are appealing for information to track down two thieves who broke into the Ely Museum, Cambridgeshire, on 7 May and escaped on electric scooters.
With gold prices hitting a record high in recent months experts are worried that the precious artefacts, worth £220,000 in their current form, might be melted down for their scrap metal value.”
Huge Soviet-era monument taken down in Kyiv as Ukraine continues 'derussification' #TheArtNewspaper
“A Soviet-era monument believed to glorify Ukraine’s ties to Russia is being dismantled on orders of the Kyiv city government in the latest stage of derussification following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kyiv’s Department of Territorial Control announced the start of the monument’s removal in a Facebook post on 30 April, stressing its massive size: “The sculptural composition is large, consists of about 20 elements weighing between 6,000kg and 7,000kg each. Due to the complexity of the design, dismantling may take a few days.””
"Getty Museum restitutes ancient bronze head to Turkey" by Elena Goukassian #TheArtNewspaper
"Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum will return an ancient bronze sculpture of a young man’s head to Turkey after an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office revealed that it had been looted in the 1960s.
Head From a Statue of a Youth (1st century BC-1st century AD), a bronze head with curly hair and light stubble on the chin, is believed to have been created as a separate cast from the rest of a now-lost life-size body that has never been identified. Researchers know the figure was once whole, because the neck has “evidence of ancient joins on the interior along the break”, according to a press release
, and the eyes—now mere holes in the metal—were “once inlaid with an unknown material”."
Is there such a thing as negative cultural heritage? The surprising answer is yes. We usually think of cultural heritage as something positive, but it is not always positive for everyone.
THE ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF HERITAGE AND POLITICS by Bozoğlu, Gönül; Campbell, Gary; Smith, Laurajane; Whitehead, Christopher (editors) #Routledge#Books
I am reading this book. Very interesting, but very expensive (cheaper ebook version).
"The Routledge International Handbook of Heritage and Politics surveys the intersection of heritage and politics today and helps elucidate the political implications of heritage practices. It explicitly addresses the political and analyses tensions and struggles over the distribution of power."
"The Aruba Collection (Coleccion Aruba) is the documentary heritage portal for the island nation of Aruba, and is the result of the cooperation of Aruba's documentary heritage institutions".
Buried: how we choose to remember the transatlantic slave trade – documentary #TheGuardian
"The remote island of St Helena, a British overseas territory, is best known for Napoleon's tomb – the island's biggest tourist attraction. However, while overseeing the construction of a long-awaited airport on the island, Annina van Neel learns that the remains of thousands of formerly enslaved Africans have been uncovered, unearthing one of the most significant physical remaining traces of the transatlantic slave trade in the world."
Sudan: UNESCO calls for the protection of the World Heritage Site of the Island of Meroe
"UNESCO is deeply concerned about recent reports of military activities on the Island of Meroe, in Sudan, whose archaeological sites are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Organization calls on parties not to target or use these sites for military purposes."
"Following reports indicating military activities in this area, UNESCO calls on all concerned parties to fully respect international law, including the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which stipulates that cultural property must neither be targeted nor used for military purposes, and is following the evolving situation very closely."
Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024 (A Preliminary Report from Librarians and Archivists with Palestine).
"The destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza impoverishes the collective identity of the Palestinian people, irrevocably denies them their history, and violates their sovereignty. In this report, we offer a partial list of archives, libraries, and museums in Gaza that have been destroyed, damaged, or looted by Israeli armed forces
since October 7, 2023."
"We compile and offer this information with the understanding that the erasure
of Palestinian culture and history has long been an Israeli tactic of war and occupation, a means to further limit the self-determination of the Palestinian people."
EMPIRES OF LIES? THE POLITICAL USES OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN WAR by Nour A. Munawar (2023) #Article#OpenAccess
"This article investigates how cultural memory has been manipulated in the war in Ukraine, and in the previously occupied Crimea. We argue that cultural heritage, memory, and museum collections have been removed and/or repurposed to legitimise the current invasion by linking it to a grand narrative of Russian power and the recovery of ancestral lands. We present case studies from the annexation of Crimea (2014), the war in Ukraine (2022 -), and make a brief comparison with the armed conflict in Syria (2011 – 2022)."
Does LACMA Have a Looted Art Problem? by Gary Baum #ARTNews
"Activists and scholars believe such sacred objects lose their meaning when displayed in glass cases, separated from their cultural context. They also believe many of LACMA’s Nepalese holdings could have been illegally removed from their land of origin. In a few cases, they wield smoking-gun documentation of objects purportedly in-situ back in Nepal. In general, they note that the country allowed foreign visitors only beginning in the early 1950s, after the fall of the authoritarian Rana dynasty; soon after, the government banned the export of culturally significant historic and artistic objects".
"The conservation and restoration of negative heritage", an article that Ruth Taberner and I have published, about the problem of preserving (or not) the most contested heritage (in Spanish). #OpenAccess#GeConservación#Article
It is often asked to what extent it makes sense to restore a legacy that is extremely negative and harmful to a significant part of society and that has no other significant values that would provide an incentive for its restoration. In some cases many pieces have been destroyed as Nazi and communist sculptures. In Spain a project was presented to melt down the equestrian sculpture of Franco that was originally in the Plaza de España in Ferrol (La Coruña).
IMPERMANENCE. Exploring continuous change across cultures. Edited by Haidy Geismar, Ton Otto, and Cameron David Warner #UCLPress (2022) #OpenAccess#Books
"Nothing lasts forever. This common experience is the source of much anxiety but also hope. The concept of impermanence or continuous change opens up a range of timely questions and discussions that speak to globally shared experiences of transformation and concerns for the future. Impermanence engages with an emergent body of social theory emphasizing flux and transformation, and brings this into a dialogue with other traditions of thought and practice, notably Buddhism that has sustained a long-lasting and sophisticated meditation on impermanence."
"This book brings together prominent scholars in the fields of international cultural heritage law and heritage studies to scrutinise the various branches of international law and governance dealing with heritage destruction from human rights perspectives, both in times of armed conflict as well as in peace."
"Chapters deal with high profile cases from Europe, North Africa, The Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, with a substantial afterword on heritage destruction in Ukraine."
WIDESCALE DESTRUCTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN GAZA by Geraldine Kendall Adams #MuseumsAssociation
"As of 25 January, Unesco says it has verified damage to 22 sites in Gaza since the war began, including five religious sites, 10 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, two depositories of moveable cultural property, one monument, one museum and three archaeological sites.
Other media reports suggest that the destruction may be more extensive. Earlier this month, several news agencies reported that Israeli forces had demolished the main buildings of Al-Israa University, south of Gaza City, including a museum housing around 3,000 objects of art, archaeological artefacts, specimens, materials and instruments."
Diese Woche haben wir Nina Rastinger (Austrian Centre for #DigitalHumanities and #CulturalHeritage) zu Gast, die aus ihrem Projekt berichten wird, in dem sie sich mit der automatisierten Erschließung & Auswertung einer ganz besonderen Textsorte beschäftigt: Listen wie bspw. Tauf- oder Heiratslisten in historischen Zeitungen (1600-1850).
"The Contested Histories Initiative seeks practical remedies to contestations over historical markers in public spaces as part of broader efforts to create more inclusive and equitable societies, particularly for and with communities that have been marginalised or disenfranchised due to race, ethnicity, gender, or other affiliations."
An example:
VICTORY MONUMENT (Bolzano, Italy): "The Victory Monument in Bolzano was erected on the orders of Benito Mussolini in 1928. Since then, it has been at the symbolic centre of ethnic clashes between the German- and Italian-speaking communities, as well as a symbol of the unresolved legacy of Italian Fascism".
"Modernist heritage and memory politics in Spain: shifting values for the adaptive reuse of Seville’s former police headquarters" by Plácido González Martínez (2023). #OpenAccess
"This study aimed to explore the important factors determining the conservation and adaptive reuse of Seville’s former police headquarters, whose significance can be divided into aesthetic and political factors. Both factors follow dominant discourses that ultimately rely on a top-down perspective of heritage identification, documentation, conservation and management. Further explorations of the building’s public value will show to what extent these official discourses and public opinion may have aligned or not and may constitute a reference for future decision-making processes".
HERITAGE, MEMORY AND CONFLICT (HMC) "is an international, peer-reviewed, diamond open access journal that critically analyses the tangible and intangible remnants, traces and spaces of the past in the present, as well as the remaking of pasts into heritage and memory, including processes of appropriations and restitutions, significations and musealization and mediatisation. This interdisciplinary journal addresses the dynamics of memory and forgetting, as well as the politics of trauma, mourning and reconciliation, identity, nationalism and ethnicity, heritage preservation and restoration, material culture, conservation and management, conflict archaeology, dark tourism, diaspora and postcolonial memory, terrorscapes, migration, borders, and the mediated re-enactments of conflicted pasts".
"Colonial statues in post-colonial Africa: a multidimentional heritage" by Sophia Labadi (2023).
"Is history being destroyed when colonial statues are removed from public space? This paper has explained that history is often being made when they are removed. Indeed, the hidden motivations for the construction and/or upkeep of these statues can then be revealed, along with their entangled colonial or racist legacies. Besides, their removals can aid in rectifying history, exposing in some cases the Eurocentrism of public spaces, and European epistemic domination. Such removal makes space for the erection of memorials for local heroes, who might have played more significant roles than colonial or racist figures".
"The project ‘The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ will show the importance of medieval reading culture as a European movement by bringing together (digitised) manuscripts produced between c. 500 and c. 1550 from across Europe, unlocking their educational potential by curational and editorial enrichment, using innovative ways for displaying and handling digital objects in an educational context."