The world’s most disputed antiquities: a top 5 list

by Melanie Renzulli on



New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Tuesday that it would return 19 Egyptian antiquities that have lived at the museum for most of the last century. These artifacts, excavated from the 14th century B.C. tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (King Tut), include a sphinx bracelet, a small bronze dog, and a broad collar with beads, among other bits and pieces. Zahi Hawass, the former Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, argued for the artifacts’ return in November 2010, claiming that the artifacts had been removed from the tomb illegally in the 1920s. But, the instability in Egypt during and following that country’s revolution this year has delayed the repatriation of King Tut’s belongings.

One of the biggest arguments in the art world is the repatriation of objects, particularly antiquities. On one side of the debate are art scholars who feel that ancient objects should remain in the care of their current (usually Western) museums or locations. The other side argues that antiquities should be returned to the countries from which they were removed because they were taken during times of war and colonization or were stolen and sold through the highly lucrative art black market.

It’s true that a great many antiquities and works of art we enjoy at museums today may have been acquired through looting or other unsavory practices. Here are five of the most famous works of art that have been repatriated or are the focus of an ongoing battle for ownership.1) Elgin Marbles
Where are they now? The British Museum, London
Where were they? The Parthenon, Athens, Greece
The Elgin Marbles, pictured in the featured image above, are synonymous with the repatriation debate. Also known as the Parthenon Marbles, these remarkable marble carvings once fronted the Parthenon and other buildings on Athens‘ ancient Acropolis. They were removed – some say vandalized – by Lord Elgin, former Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in the late 18th century and sold in 1816 to London‘s British Museum, where they have lived ever since. Authorities in Greece have been trying for decades to have the marbles returned to Athens where they can be reunited with other Greek antiquities in the Acropolis Museum.

2) Obelisk of Aksum
Where is it now? Aksum, Ethiopia
Where was it? Rome, Italy
One of the first, high-profile repatriations of an antiquity was the return by Italy of the Obelisk of Aksum (or Axum) to Ethiopia. Pillaged by Mussolini’s troops in 1937, the 1,700-year old obelisk stood for years in the center of a traffic circle in Rome until 2005 when the government of Italy agreed to its return. The Obelisk of Aksum now resides with objects of a similar era at the Aksum World Heritage site in northern Ethiopia.

3) Objects from King Tut’s Tomb
Where are they now? The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Where are they headed? Giza, Egypt
As described in the intro, these priceless objects from King Tut’s tomb are set to be returned to Egypt next week. Egypt plans to install these objects at the new Grand Egyptian Museum, currently under construction and slated to open in 2012

4) Dea Morgantina (Aphrodite)
Where is it now? Aidone, Sicily
Where was it? Getty Museum, Los Angeles
The investigative reporting of two L.A. Times journalists was responsible for the recent repatriation of the Dea Morgantina, an ancient Aphrodite sculpture that had been a prized possession of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum, which takes a look at the repatriation debate and the flourishing arts black market, led the Getty Museum to return the stolen statue to its rightful home. The Aphrodite was inaugurated at the Archeological Museum of Morgantina in Sicily in early May 2011.

5) Hattuşa Sphinx
Where is it now? Istanbul, Turkey
Where was it? Berlin, Germany
Just last week, an ancient sphinx returned home to Turkey after years spent in Berlin‘s Pergamon Museum. One of a pair of sphinxes that stood in the ancient Hittite capital of Hattuşa, the sphinx will be restored at the Istanbul Archeological Museum before being returned to its ancient home approximately 150 miles northeast of Ankara.

[Flickr image via telemax]

70s Pothead Aesthetics, Meet Austrian Art

by Pam Mandel on

“I am going to take you to see the ugliest church you have ever seen,” said Barbara. We’d been having a long lunch in her garden in the Graz suburb of Hitzendorf. The church was just a few kilometers away in the village of Thal, a place that has the dubious distinction of being Arnold Schwarzenegger’s home town. There were four of us, Barbara, her daughter Anna, my husband Julius, and me. We got into Anna’s car and about 20 minutes later, we parked next to a green temporary structure that had the words “Arnold Schwarzenegger Exhibit” stenciled on the windows in matching grass green.

A paved pathway led to the entrance to the chapel. Five bridesmaids in wine colored dresses stood in the doorway looking sticky and annoyed with the heat. A wedding party was ending; there were glasses of beer on a picnic table and kids running in circles. There was an odd vibe to the event; the Austrians stood at high tables set up on the church patio while the others – Czech, we surmised, after a survey of license plates – sat on benches under a sprawling chestnut tree. The bride and groom were nowhere to be seen, but a 1970 GTO with a spray of white roses on the hood awaited their getaway. Already, it was kind of a weird scene.

We slid past the bridesmaids who continued to glare towards the patio. The little side chapel was quite traditional; wooden pews and a somewhat austere altar, a crucifixion on the back wall. But the main church, well, it was as though Liberace had found Catholicism and liked it. It was like being inside an oyster, all irregular and curved and lavender and blue and pearly. Mirrors studded with Swarovski crystal reflected sunlight in to the body of church. The pews were sculpted plastic, the floor set with river rock. Overhead, stripes, lots and lots of stripes, and the altar? A series of thick glass panels. Vegas. I thought. Any minute, Sigfried and Roy will make a tiger appear from this altar.

Barbara was right, the place was a freaking eyesore.The church was a collaboration between the architect Manfred Fuchsbilder and the artist Ernst Fuchs. Fuchs, the child of a Jewish father and Christian mother, survived WWII through a loophole – by filing for divorce, Fuchs’ mother was able to recover her son from a transit camp for “mixed race” children. Fuchs’ father fled to Shanghai. Fuchs was baptized and raised a Christian in Vienna. He went on to study art and founded the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.

The Fuchs-Kirche, as it’s called locally, was built in the early 90s, but stylistically, it appeared to stand firmly in the pot-smoking late 60s or early 70s years of black light Grateful Dead posters and tie dye peasant skirts. To my California educated eyes, Fantastic Realism has a haze of purple smoke hanging over it.

Take the work of Arik Brauer, a musician, architect, and painter who has something of the Dutch master Bruegel about his work, but Bruegel after he’s smoked a bowl of the Santa Cruz’s finest weed. This isn’t to dismiss his art; I liked the exhibition of his paintings I saw in Vienna a few years back. But there’s no denying the psychedelic color or the landscapes that look like the ground might be moving.

There’s also the work of Friendensreich Hundertwasser. Hundertwasser was another “mixed race” kid of pre-war Vienna, another survivor. In his art, Hundertwasser used fully saturated color, those same irregular surfaces I walked over in the Fuchs-Kirche, and a lot of highly glazed tile.

Seeing Hundertwasser’s work always left me feeling happy, a little off balance, and probably hungry, I don’t quite remember. His buildings suggest how Lego might behave if it was cuddly, with snap on onion domes and relaxed rectangles, all in bright colors with fat outlines. The Hundertwasser Museum is one of my favorite places in Vienna, not just because it houses his art – and that of his artistic soul mates – but because the building itself is a joyful mess of stacked color and shape. It laughs out loud around the neighbor buildings who don’t understand what’s so funny – expect for the Hundertwasser house, nearby, she might have baked the brownies and is totally in on the joke.

On a rainy day in July, with a car full of Austrian in-laws, I made another trip to another weird site in Austria, this one designed by Andre Heller. Heller, a Viennese Jew, was born post war to more privilege than his artistic predecessors. But he seems to have picked up the aesthetic created by the Fantastic Realists and dragged it firmly into, oh, let’s say 1978, a few years after Dark Side of the Moon was released.

Heller’s not responsible for the entire stoner feel of Swarovski’s Kristalwelt, a museum/garden/shopping extravaganza near Innsbruck. He’s just on the hook for the parts that made me wonder exactly how much laser Floyd he’d watched. He created the mirror lined dome which surely needs a warning for those with a tendency towards migraines. He also engineered an enormous button accordion that breathes in and out. Brian Eno created some – not all – of the ambient sound in Kristalwelt, but that doesn’t help modernize it, it just makes me wonder who left the Zeppelin vinyl in the car on a hot day.

I couldn’t wait to get out of Kristalwelt and back into the pouring rain. I wanted an espresso and some fresh air. The crush of the crowd, the constantly changing light, and the aggressive surreal weirdness of the place was freaking me out. This modern flavor of Fantastic Realism gave me a headache with none of the happy buzz I’d received from the more organic crops of the founding school. Everything was too hard, too sparkly, too blinky.

We drove for about 45 minutes before stopping at a traditional Tyrolean restaurant. With my belly full of food and the cover of a soft gray sky, the day became a lot more mellow. I slept it off in the car on the drive back home.

Pam Mandel’s transportation to Austria was provided by Austria Tourism. You’ve probably guessed that her opinions are very much her own.

Arnold Schwarzenegger museum opens in Austria

by Sean McLachlan on

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s childhood home has opened as a museum in Thal, Austria.

Arnie grew up in modest circumstances–his home didn’t have running water or electricity. Despite these limitations, he started pumping up at an early age and his bedroom displays some of his exercise equipment. This dedication eventually led him to becoming Mr. Universe. There are also mementos from his movie career like Conan’s sword and a couple of statues from the Terminator movies. Another section documents his time as governor of California.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum has already received a visit from the man himself, who gave it his approval. The BBC website has a short video walk-through of some of the displays.

If you’re passing through Austria, Thal is just outside the city of Graz. Please visit the museum and send us some photos!

[Photo courtesy U.S. Navy]

Tudor House Museum reopens in Southampton

by Sean McLachlan on


It’s the quintessential style of English architecture. Tudor buildings simply ooze a sense of history and charm.

The only problem is, they’re a real pain to keep in shape. That’s what the curators of the Tudor House and Garden in Southampton, England, found out during their nine-year restoration. The house, shown above, dates back to the 1490s and while it was obviously well built, five centuries had taken its toll. The house was beginning to shift, threatening to destabilize the whole structure.

Now the whole building has been given a makeover and equipped with state-of-the-art interactive displays to explain what daily life was like back then. The museum reopens today.

If Southampton is not on your itinerary, London has a good Tudor building as well. Prince Henry’s Room, shown to the left, is also being remodeled and will open sometime this year. Built in 1610, it’s a miracle this place is still around. It survived the Great Fire of 1666 and the Luftwaffe during World War Two. It makes for a nice picture if you’re passing along Fleet Street. The restoration crew let me take a peek inside and I can tell you the interior is as attractive as the exterior. We’ll be sure to cover it when it finally reopens.

[Photo of Southampton house courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Photo of Prince Henry’s Room courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

London’s surgery museums are frightening and fascinating

by Sean McLachlan on


Ah, the good old days! Everything was so simple a hundred years ago, so stress free. No television, no Britney Spears, no threat of global warming or nuclear war. Life was better then.

Rubbish.

Cities choked on coal smoke, people starved on the streets, terrorists blew up innocent people, and the medicine, well. . .

While London has dozens of museums that can tell you about the past, two museums in particular tell you about the hard facts of life more than any other. The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret and the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons give you eye-popping tours through the “good” old days of surgery and medicine.

The Old Operating Theatre is exactly that, Britain’s only intact 19th century operating theatre. Dating to the days before anesthetic and before surgeon’s thought it might be help to wash their hands, it’s a sobering reminder of what our great-great-grandparents had to endure when they got sick. The theatre was in use from 1821 to 1862 and survived only because it got sealed off and forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1957.

The theatre was where surgeons and medical students watched the best doctors of the day cut off limbs, trepan skulls, and perform other operations. Beside the operating theatre, there is a large space reserved for displays of early medical techniques and instruments. Behold the glorious cervical dilator, a multipronged monstrosity that did just what it promised! Or the bone saw, which in the hands of a skilled surgeon could cut through a leg in less than a minute. Or the leeches, which were actually quite effective at getting rid of bruises by sucking the blood out of you.

%Gallery-128964%But it’s not all horror tales. These were primitive days, to be sure, yet doctors really did try to help their patients and herbal medicine was quite advanced. Also, there were innovative minds like Dr. Joseph Lister, who realized that disinfectant could help reduce fatalities after surgery, and Nurse Florence Nightingale, who made huge advances in hospital cleanliness to make patients healthier and happier.

The museum chronicles the efforts of doctors, nurses, apothecaries, and midwives. It’s literally crammed with artifacts and displays and an interested visitor can easily spend a couple of hours here.

An equally fascinating and full museum is the Hunterian Museum. Located in the Royal College of Surgeons, it houses a huge collection of preserved human and animal specimens. If you’ve ever wanted to know what a hernia looks like from the inside, this is where to find out. You can also see the large intestine of a crocodile, Charles Babbage’s brain, an artificially deformed skull from ancient Egypt, and the bones of the Irish giant Charles Byrne.

The main draw are the medical specimens of almost every imaginable malady. To actually see what so many people get is a revealing experience. Upstairs are displays of the history of surgical techniques. Unlike the Old Operating Theatre, this museum takes you right up to the modern day and there are some graphic films of operations such as the removal of a brain tumor and an enlarged prostate. Much of this museum is not for the faint of heart, but while I was watching the brain surgery in horrified fascination one brave little ten-year-old girl plopped down next to me and sat through the whole thing. I warned her off the stereoscopic views of First World War facial injuries, though.

While the “eewww, gross” element to both of these museums is certainly present, they are both very well presented and worth the time of any visitor who wants to learn more about issues that will, sadly, affect them sooner or later. It’s strange that these two museums aren’t better known. I highly recommend them both.