The modern Acropolis Museum with its glass walls giving way to view of the Acropolis and glass floor showcasing excavations underneath the building.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece. The breathtaking museum was created to house every artifact found on the Acropolis and on the surrounding slopes, and it lies over the ruins of a part of Roman and early Byzantine Athens. The building was created to replace the former museum, in part to persuade the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.
The Acropolis Museum is a truly impressive institution for many reasons, one being that many of the rooms of the museum afford views of the Acropolis. Incredibly, the dimensions of the Parthenon were incorporated into the museum’s structure. The top floor has the same cardinal orientation of the ancient temple on the Acropolis. The spacing of the columns of the Parthenon Hall is identical to the ancient temple, and the use of glass walls on all four exterior walls allows natural light to cascade over the Parthenon marbles as they do on the ancient temple. The 48 columns in the Parthenon Hall mark the outline of the ancient temple and form a colonnade for the long-awaited display of the relocated marbles.
Viewing artifacts from ancient Athens is incredible in the “New” Acropolis Museum (the name used for the museum when it was first opened a decade ago). However, even viewing the Parthenon Marbles in the original Acropolis Museum was incredible because Athens is their home. When I visited Greece for the first time (in 2006), I was enthralled. While in law school, I had read about the repatriation demands for the Parthenon Marbles, and I felt that the marbles ruthlessly hacked off the Acropolis should be returned to Greece. This fight is one of the reasons why I am an art and cultural heritage attorney. Reading about the debate convinced me that the Parthenon Marbles should be returned to their rightful home in Greece.
The debate concerning the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to Greece is perhaps the most famous controversy over repatriation. The debate is a complex one that involves both legal and ethical considerations. The British Museum hides behind the assertion that the statute of limitations has expired for making a demand (although there was no international court in which to demand repatriation). The British institution also puts forth an emotionally charged argument that returning the marbles to Greece would lead to wide-scale returns that would tragically empty the world’s great encyclopedic museums. Neither of these arguments are valid: the passage of time is no excuse to hold these marbles captive; and the fear of returning stolen items to their homes does not justify their continued presence in London.
I had an opinion about the Parthenon Marbles prior to visiting Greece- the objects should be returned to Athens. However, visiting the Mediterranean nation reinforced my view. I became passionate about the return of the marbles after walking up the slopes of Athens to the Acropolis, viewing the marbles at the former museum, and then at the state-of-the-art Acropolis Museum with views of the most important site of Ancient Athens and perhaps the best known temple in the world.
Sadly, the marbles displayed in the British Museum can never be presented in the same dynamic context as in the Acropolis Museum. The Parthenon Marbles are now thousands of miles away from home, housed in a generic museum room, without a single window. The marbles are divorced from any of their original context while in London.
The Parthenon Marbles are not merely remnants of the past, but they are symbols of Ancient Athens and the modern nation of the Hellenic Republic. Amineddoleh & Associates LLC has the honor of representing the Greek Ministry of Culture in a pending litigation concerning a Corinthian bronze. And I personally have had the honor or presenting arguments in favor of the Marbles’ repatriation in various news outlets and conferences, either as a writer, participant or contributor. For links to some of these discussions, and for additional information about the Acropolis Museum, please visit the following: Forbes editorial, NY Times editorial, Hyperallergic editorial, Third Colloquy on the Return of the Parthenon Sculptures, and this blog.
Karen Zraick at the NY Times reported on looted antiquities that are being sold on Facebook. The problem is broader than just Facebook because looting networks sell their illicit wares through many online outlets. The internet is an appealing place for these illegal sales because buyers and sellers may easily remain anonymous. The sales also aren’t as widely publicized as in other marketplaces. And making it even more challenging is that communications move from these online marketplaces to encrypted channels like Whatsapp. Zraick references the important research and publications of Dr. Amr Al-Azm and Katie Paul. The two colleagues have called upon Facebook and other social media sites to handle looted goods more responsibly.
The discussions concerning illegal sales on social media sites illustrate the much larger issue of shutting down the looted antiquities market. Items illicitly removed from the ground are often difficult to trace. Unlike fine art, newly discovered antiquities have not seen the light of day for centuries. Fine art objects can often be traced back to their creator through examining prior sales and transactions. It is not the same with looted antiquities. Without a clear record of their discovery and removal, it may be difficult to determine from where these stolen objects were found. This problem is compounded by the fact that looters and their networks intentionally conceal this information to avoid penalties from law enforcement agencies.
It is necessary for online providers to ensure that they are not providing the black market with an unregulated marketplace in which to sell stolen cultural heritage.
Our founder, Leila A. Amineddoleh, is honored to be speaking at the Victoria & Albert Museum later this month. As part of the Culture in Crisis series, Leila’s lecture, Protecting Cultural Heritage: Theft, Looting and the Law, will examine the history of antiquities looting, repatriation cases, and due diligence for art acquisitions. Tickets to the public are free, and are available on the museum’s website.
The V&A is a unique cultural institution. It traces its roots to the Museum of Manufactures in 1852, and the current building had its foundation stone laid by Queen Victoria in 1899. With a collection spanning 5,000 years of art, it is the world’s largest museum of applied and decorative arts and design, as well as sculpture, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects.
Our founder, Leila Amineddoleh, worked as a cultural heritage law expert with the Manhattan DA’s Office in furtherance of the repatriation of a looted coffin from Egypt. Yesterday it was announced that the Metropolitan Museum of Art would return the exquisite coffin to Egypt. The prized golden-sheathed artifact was featured in an exhibition, “Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin,” that opened last year. The 1st BC century coffin was inscribed for Nedjemankh, a high-ranking priest of the ram-headed god Heryshef of Herakleopolis. The museum featured the coffin as the highlight of an exhibition, set to close on April 21. However, it was closed earlier this week after the museum agreed to repatriate the object after learning that it was looted from Egypt in 2011.
The museum purchased the item for $3.95 million from Parisian art dealer Christophe Kunicki in 2017. The coffin was accompanied by false provenance information suggesting that the item was legally exported. But in reality, the work was recently looted and smuggled out of the Middle Eastern country in contravention of its cultural heritage laws.
The museum publicly announced the high-profile repatriation and stated that it will review its acquisition program to prevent such occurrences in the future. In 2017, the Manhattan DA’s Office formed the nation’s first antiquities trafficking unit. Ms. Amineddoleh is proud to consult with the trafficking unit as a cultural heritage law expert. Led by Matthew Bogdanos, the unit has facilitated a number of repatriations from the Metropolitan Museum of Art within the past few years, including the return of an Etruscan vessel and a marble bull’s head from Lebanon.
The importance of cataloging art has been recognized by government agencies, academics, art preservation organizations, art market professionals, and art collectors. Its significance is recognized for various reasons. First, maintaining a record of art and archaeology adds to the historical information available to the public. This record contributes to our understanding the state of preservation and authenticity of sites and objects. Second, these records assist in developing the provenance (ownership history) of objects. In the instance that a work of fine art is stolen, ownership can be proven and the work can be traced by to the rightful owner. This record also prevents the sale and misattribution of forged works. And in the instance that an object or piece of an historical site was illicitly removed, a catalog can be used to pinpoint the provenience (find spot) of a piece or demonstrate the time of its removal. (This is important in terms of patrimony laws and international laws regulating antiquities.) Finally, a catalog assists in developing the historic significance of sites and objects and provides a deeper understanding of how these sites evolved over time and objects were purchased by collectors.
The ease with which fine art may be cataloged is starkly different than the way in which antiquities are recorded. Historical pieces may not have been discovered through government-sanctioned excavations. Objects looted from the ground have no paper trail. They may have gone unseen for perhaps millennia, making it impossible to catalog them prior to excavation. Needless to say, people involved in the trafficking of looted antiquities do not maintain an honest or accurate account of an object’s removal. Some dealers intentionally attach false information about these objects to avoid repatriation demands from governments.
However, objects that are legally uncovered or removed during official excavations are accurately recorded. Photographic records of sites provide us with a great deal of information about legal excavations, illicit treasure hunting, and a site’s transformation over time. In some cases, sites have been strictly protected while surrounding landscapes have changed (for example, the area surrounding Colosseum has dramatically changed over the past century). In other cases, sites have been destroyed.
Throughout the history of archaeology, the visual record of sites has included archaeological drawings and, more recently, photography. On view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a fantastic exhibition that provides a glimpse at photographic archives, particularly in regions that have been heavily looted or destroyed by conflict. In Monumental Journey: Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey, an incredible collection of images from the Middle East are on view, including an extension collection of images from Syria, Egypt, and the Israel. The exhibition presents images from Girault’s three-year photographic expedition through the Eastern Mediterranean.
Wall text: “The renowned square minaret of the Umayyad Mosque (seen in the center of the larger image) collapsed in 2013 as conflict intensified during the Syrian Civil War”
Some of the most powerful images in the exhibition include photographs from Syria. They are intriguing not just for their beauty and intricacies, but because it is no longer possible to see those places. In two images, the city of Aleppo is majestically laid out across landscapes that includes arches, minarets, and beautiful ruins. Sadly, that cityscape no longer exists because it was heavily destroyed during the nation’s ongoing civil war. The Met provides background for these photos by stating that the city was once one of the most important trading cities in the Levant, and that the recognizable minaret of the Umayyad Mosque was obliterated in 2013 during conflict.
Similarly, the exhibit includes a photograph of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity and Convents. The city was damaged by earthquakes in the 19th century, and the church was later looted and fell into disrepair. The church now appears on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. Girault’s photograph is an escape to another time and an opportunity to view the site prior to its plunder.
Interestingly, the exhibition notes that Girault was also a collector of antiquities, and the exhibit includes an Egyptian stela that was acquired by the photographer during his travels. Sadly, the exhibition notes that travelers amassed antiquities collections by purchasing archaeological treasures by local authorities.
