Category archives: Ethics

As a follow-up to David Gill and Lee Rosenbaum’s recent posts on the Brooklyn Museum, here’s a perhaps slightly clearer photo of a prominently placed information panel in the galleries that explains to visitors the museum’s acquistion policy and its development over the course of the 20th century. This sort of transparency in museum practice […]

A while back I wrote some thoughts about the display of repatriated artefacts in Greek and Egyptian museums. When I visited the Athens National Museum last week to see the Praxiteles exhibition, I noticed another example, this time a Macedonian gold wreath that had recently been returned from the Getty. Interestingly, the day of return […]

Discussions of the ownership (or ‘stewardship’) of archaeological treasures such as the Parthenon sculptures, the Rosetta Stone or the portrait of Nefertiti in Berlin are well-known topics in archaeological ethics (the entire blog Elginism is devoted to these issues and excellently covers news stories related to them, for the other side of the coin see […]

I’ve been following the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek case and the Danish failure to help the Italian investigators in the major Hecht-Medici trial over the smuggling and sale of illegal antiquities. Not much has happened while I’ve been away, except for continued accusations by various opposition politicians that the Danish Ministry of Justice has failed its […]

Fakes in the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Historie, Brussels. Photo: TMK, July 2006. It’s not all museums that are courageous enough or even willing to stand by the fakes in their collections. The Brussels archaeological museum is a wonderful exception to the rule. Here, the “fakes” acquired over the years as genuine antiques are exhibited […]

The Copenhagen Glyptotek case made the frontpage of Information the other day. The recent developments have been more concerned with the domestic handling of the case rather than talks with Italy. Over a period of five years, the Danish Ministry of Justice has refused to co-operate with the Italian investigators in the Hecht-Medici trial for […]

Note anything new and out of the ordinary on this webpage from the Metropolitan Museum of Art presenting the famous krater painted by Euphronios and colloquially known as the Million Dollar Vase? Well, after the recent deal between the museum and the Italian authorities, it now clearly states that the vase is “lent by the […]

Many people are familiar with the widespread availability of antiquities in Rome and Athens as late as the 1960s. Archaeologists and art historians working in the Mediterranean during this time often have private collections. A while ago I found a remarkable article that more than anything is testimony to this ‘innocent’ era of collecting – […]

First part of an absolutely brilliant programme last night on Danish television (DR2): “Kraniet fra Katyn” (“The Skull from Katyn”). Katyn is the site of the mass graves of thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians that were systematically executed in 1940 by the Soviet occupying forces. The mass graves were subsequently discovered by the Nazis […]