http://www.museum-security.org/
http://www.museum-security.org/disclaimer.html
April 25, 2002
CONTENTS
_______________________________________
- query: security issue outside museum (Tom Meighan)
- Afghanistan: Art Finds Refuge In Switzerland While Awaiting Return
Home
- Saga of Sotheby's fallen chief to be a book, movie
- School Returns Cambodia Sculptures
- The Hermitage in St Petersburg hit by thefts
- Why precious ruins are being ruined; Lecturer warns history is
being lost as nation squanders fantastic archaeological heritage
- Cambodian Archaeologists Appeal for End to Illicit Excavations
___________________________________________
From: "Tom Meighan" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Trouble
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 11:16:44 -0700
I am having a lot of problems around the gallery with skateboarders,
mountain bikes, etc etc, which also attract various other problems
such as drug use. This is causing us serious security and safety
concerns as they skateboard and cycle down the cafe steps, on the
plaza and generally anywhere else they can.
I have used security staff but as you all know this is not very cost
effective and I am now looking at other various ideas such as fences,
handrails etc. We thought of speed bumps also, but as well as not
looking good I feel that they would use them as jumping obstacles.
I am looking for ideas which others may be using, to help eradicate
this problem once and for all.
Please contact me with your thoughts.
Cheers
Tom Meighan
Security and Visitor Services Manager
Vancouver Art Gallery
[log in to unmask]
tel: (604) 662-4713
___________________________________________
Afghanistan: Art Finds Refuge In Switzerland While Awaiting Return
Home
By Charles Recknagel
Afghanistan's National Museum in Kabul is in ruins, with most of its
artifacts destroyed by the Taliban or looted during factional
fighting. But some of the museum's archaeological and historical
treasures have been preserved, thanks to individuals who smuggled
them out of the country to safety. Some of the rescued artifacts are
now housed in a small village in the Swiss Alps until they can be
returned home.
Prague, 23 April 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Twenty-three years of war have seen
Afghanistan's archaeological and artistic heritage subjected to every
attack imaginable.
Throughout the conflicts, which include the 1979 to 1989 Soviet-
Afghan war and decades of subsequent factional fighting, pilferers
have taken advantage of the chaos to loot archaeological sites and
museums. "The New York Times" recently reported that, by some
estimates, 70 percent of the collection at the National Museum in
Kabul was plundered for sale on the international market. Most
recently, during the Taliban era, the destruction of many forms of
art became the goal of the country's rulers themselves. The
fundamentalist militia regarded depictions of human and animal forms
as blasphemous attempts to imitate God's creation, and destroyed
artwork with such representations. The most famous art victims of the
Taliban's five-year rule, which ended late last year, were the 1,000-
year-old giant Buddhas in Afghanistan's central Bamiyan Province. But
the militia also ransacked the remaining collections in Kabul's
National Museum, which had spanned thousands of years -- from the
artifacts of early cave-dwellers to artwork reflecting the country's
Greek, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic influences. Paintings in Kabul's
national art gallery suffered the same fate. Still, despite the best
efforts of the Taliban and of art thieves, some antiquities did
survive, thanks to curators and others who risked their lives to hide
artwork or send it out of the country to safety. The same people
preserved crates of smashed statuary in hopes that one day the
priceless works could be reassembled.
Some of the rescued artwork has found a sanctuary at an Afghan
"museum-in-exile" in a small village in the Swiss Alps. The museum --
in the village of Bubendorf, near Basel -- was founded by a Swiss
architect who has turned his home into a safe-haven for Afghanistan's
antiquities. RFE/RL recently spoke with the museum's creator, Paul
Bucherer-Dietschi, about how he became involved in the effort.
Bucherer-Dietschi said he was asked to provide a safe haven for the
artwork by people whom he first met in Afghanistan in the 1960s, when
he was a student there. Many of his colleagues later assumed
responsible posts in Afghan society and tried to use their positions
to protect the country's artwork from devastation. He says the art
rescuers at first hoped to export large quantities of endangered
material legally from Afghanistan to Switzerland. But the effort was
stymied by legal restrictions on sending art abroad, limiting
rescuers to sending out what they could by stealth. "We were not able
to take out [much] of this material from Kabul and from Afghanistan
because we had no legal basis for their export. So, most of the
material which was there and should have been rescued was destroyed
by the Taliban. So, what we have here in the museum is not so much
the high-value, historic archaeological antiquities, but much more
items of recent Afghan history of the last 150 years." Bucherer-
Dietschi says his museum now houses up to 3,000 artifacts, most
smuggled out during the 1990s. By contrast, what little remains in
Kabul's National Museum today is principally folk art and old guns,
plus boxes of broken statuary. There are also several important
collections of Afghan antiquities in Western capitals, principally in
Paris, due to past foreign archaeological expeditions.
As rescued art has arrived in Bubendorf, Bucherer-Dietschi's house
has been enlarged and fitted with sophisticated security and
environmental controls. Financing for the project comes from the
Swiss government, the Basel regional government, and from private
donors.
Bucherer-Dietschi says that in its early days, the Bubendorf museum --
whose full title is the Afghanistan Museum of Switzerland --
received pledges of support from both the anti-Taliban Northern
Alliance and some elements of the Taliban regime in Kabul. Prior to
the Taliban's collapse in November following U.S.-led bombing, the
museum received visits from former Northern Alliance political head
Burhanuddin Rabbani (also ex-president of Afghanistan) and from a top
adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. "On the side of the
Taliban, as well as the Northern Alliance side, there were Afghan
patriots who did see what would happen to the Afghan cultural
heritage if they did not do their best to protect it." The Taliban
visits came before the militia decided during its last years in power
to step up the destruction of antiquities it considered un-Islamic.
Bucherer-Dietschi believes that decision was taken under the rising
influence of Al-Qaeda. Today, the museum-in-exile has the backing of
Afghanistan's interim government, as well as international agencies
charged with reconstructing the country. Last year, the UN education
and culture agency, UNESCO, designated Bucherer-Dietschi's house as a
repository that could keep -- but not buy -- artifacts in trust until
the National Museum in Kabul can house them again. The Kabul museum
currently needs extensive renovations before it can again accommodate
an art collection securely. As the Bubendorf collection awaits its
return to Afghanistan, it is receiving up to 200 visitors a week,
most of whom learn about its existence through word-of-mouth. The
museum has no budget for publicity and is staffed by volunteers.
Bucherer-Dietschi's main partner at the museum is Zemaray Hakimi, an
Afghan construction engineer who has been living in Switzerland as a
refugee since 1996.
Those who visit the museum find several exquisite artifacts dating
back to 1,500 B.C. Among the objects on display is a 3,500-year-old
stone statue of a man and a bronze object dating from the same era
that was probably used to imprint bread loaves. The Bubendorf museum
also houses a 14,000-volume library and serves as an informal
research institute for students of Afghan culture.
http://www.rferl.org/
_____________________________________________________
Saga of Sotheby's fallen chief to be a book, movie
BY JENNIFER DIXON
Knight Ridder Newspapers
NEW YORK - KRT NEWSFEATURES
(KRT) - A. Alfred Taubman may find greater celebrity as a convicted
felon than he ever did as a multimillionaire businessman, shopping
mall developer and philanthropist.
A New York writer and a Los Angeles movie producer are chronicling
Taubman's fall from grace last year, when a jury in New York found
him guilty of cheating the wealthy customers of his storied auction
house, Sotheby's.
more:
http://www.ledger-
enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/3128397.htm
_________________________________________________
School Returns Cambodia Sculptures
Thu Apr 25, 7:13 AM ET
HONOLULU (AP) - Two ancient sculptures stolen from a temple in
Cambodia during the civil unrest of the 1970s and donated to the
Honolulu Academy of Arts are back in their homeland.
The 9th century, 15-inch stone head of Shiva and a 12th century, 19-
inch head of a demon were flown from Honolulu on Tuesday and are
expected to be presented during ceremonies Friday in Phnom Penh.
After reading an article in a 1996 publication on looting in the
Angkor area of Cambodia and extensive research, the academy confirmed
that the two sculptures were among those stolen, according to a
statement.
George Ellis, director of the academy, and a group of about 25
academy officials and members accompanied the artifacts on the
Cambodia flight.
In a letter to Ellis, Princess Norodom Buppha Devi, Cambodia's
minister of culture and fine arts, expressed "profound gratitude and
appreciation" for the "noble gesture" of returning the artifacts.
__________________________________________________
Art 'stolen to order' in Russia
The Hermitage in St Petersburg has been hit by thefts
Art and antiques have become the latest target for organised crime in
Russia, according to the country's head of criminal police, Vladimir
Gordyenko.
Russian police are currently looking for 40,000 stolen works of art
and among the missing works are two sculptures by 19th-Century French
artist Auguste Rodin.
Also popular among art thieves are the works of early 20th Century
Russian avant-garde painters such as Kasimir Malevich and Marc
Chagal.
'Organised gangs
Mr Gordyenko said that works of art were increasingly being stolen to
order and that organised criminal gangs were often fulfilling orders
placed by rich art lovers and dealers, often from abroad. These gangs
often
included former museum and library employees, or even artists, he
added. The alert comes only months after police recovered five stolen
paintings worth Ł1.4m in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.
The
paintings, all by well-known 18th and 19th-Century Russian artists
were stolen from Tashkent Fine Arts Museum in October. They were
recovered in January an unrelated police raid in the Uzbek capital.
In March 2001 Jean-Leon Gerome's 1876 painting Harem Bath was stolen
from one of the world's great art collections, the Hermitage in St
Petersburg.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
___________________________________________________
Why precious ruins are being ruined
Lecturer warns history is being lost as nation squanders fantastic
archaeological heritage
Nayla Assaf
Daily Star staff
Lebanon has a far higher concentration of archaeological gems than
most other countries, but a large majority remains untapped and
neglected, according to Antoine Khoury Harb from the Lebanese
Heritage
Foundation. “Many sights which are crucial to the heritage of the
region remain absolutely unknown by most Lebanese,” Harb said during
a lecture given at the Lebanese American University’s (LAU) Irwin
Hall on
Tuesday evening. During the lecture, hosted by LAU’s Center for
Lebanese Heritage, Harb brought before the 300-strong crowd a
fascinating collection of slides and excavation memoirs. These
attested to the
presence of widely unknown temples, but also to the reality of how
little is known about Lebanese heritage. “I was once removing the
stones blocking the way to a stone-age tomb in the Bekaa when an old
woman
came at me screaming with a stick in her hand,” he recounted before
the picture of the tomb.
“I told her I was an archaeologist seeking to peek through the tomb …
She laughed and said: ‘That’s not a tomb. You’re not very smart, are
you? That’s a chicken shack, and I thought you were out to steal my
chicken.’” Harb tried to squeeze much precious information into his
hour-long lecture on the country’s temples and necropolises. But the
most staggering insight was in his wide collection of before-and-
after slides,
taken through years of field journeys exploring the archaeological
history of the country. A temple transformed into a neighborhood
football field, another into a garbage dump, yet another into a
kitchen such were the
fates of many a famous site he showed. Others attested to the
plundering and scavenging of sites, which is contributing to the ruin
of cultural heritage locally and worldwide. The Antelias cave, for
example, was a
significant world prehistoric site where remains of an early homo
sapiens called “Antelian Man” were discovered. The cave was destroyed
in 1893 when it was quarried.
Harb also showed pictures of the Adloun cave, a prominent prehistoric
burial place enclosing precious information. Twenty years on, it is
seen surrounded by cement houses with cars parked by its entrance and
laundry hanging in between. “People have to understand that those
sites are a wealth, not only a moral one but a financial one,” he
said, alluding to the prospects they might yield if well managed. The
reason behind
this neglect, Harb said, is the lack of funding allocated by the
government for archaeology. “They only have about 14 archaeologists
to manage all the resources,” he said. “Imagine having only two
archaeologists to
manage an area as vast and rich as the South.” Showing the picture of
Neolithic houses abandoned to soil degradation in Jbeil, Harb said
with anger: “This is Jbeil, one of the most important cities in the
world, and
this is one of the earliest houses in the world and it’s being left
to disappear.”
Jbeil’s history and significance is extraordinary to the extent that
the fortress, the most locally renowned landmark, is “almost
worthless in comparison to other landmarks there,” Harb said. The
small port city has
some of the world’s earliest cities and alphabets. Harb also showed
examples of recurrent features in temples here, including the double
columns at the entrance of a temple and also the triad, which
symbolizes the
concept of life by embodying the father, the mother and the son.
Another frequent feature is the building of temples over water
springs, and having water flow out of them. This is seen in scores of
temples of all periods
throughout Lebanon, such as Afqa and Temnine, whose facade was blown
out a few years ago by scavengers searching for gold. Harb also
showed Baalbek from a very new angle, highlighting the fact that the
most
important feature in the temples, the tri-lithon the three largest
stone construction blocks in the world are virtually ignored by
most visitors. Harb ended his lecture by stopping short of Tyre: He
said the city, recently
named as a world heritage landmark, is in such a bad state that he
did not have sufficient time to even broach the subject.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
________________________________________________
Cambodian Archaeologists Appeal for End to Illicit Excavations
PHNOM PENH, Apr 25, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) --
Cambodian archaeologists, at a conference on Cambodian cultural
heritage held here Thursday night, appealed for putting an end to the
illicit excavations and looting of cultural artifacts At the
conference which was
hosted by the UNESCO (the U.N. Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization) office in Cambodia., Dougald O'Reilly, lecturer at the
faculty of archaeology of the Royal University of Fine Arts, said
that they found
a unique iron age cemetery at Phnom Snay in Banteay Meanchey
province, northwestern Cambodia, in a scientific excavation in 2001.
He said that this pre-historic archaeological site can be considered
as one of the most important yet discovered in the country as it
contains precious evidence enabling Cambodians to gain understanding
on the origins and development of the ancient Khmer Empire. This
excavation has also revealed nine pre-historic burials and over 300
artifacts including ceramic vessels, glass beads, grinding stones,
iron tools and weapons, which are vital information on the pre-
Angkorian civilization, he said.
He noted that unfortunately, the site has continuously suffered from
a wide-scale looting and systematic illicit excavations which led to
the loss of a major portion of the site and the destruction of a
substantial part of culturally significant artifacts. The
archaeologists at the meeting asked related departments to adopt firm
and urgent measures to protect relevant archaeological sites in the
country from illegal excavations.
http://library.northernlight.com/
________________________________________________
---------
http://www.museum-security.org/
The Museum Security Network is a not-for-profit free service.
subscribe:
http://www.museum-security.org/formengl.html
Robert Burke Memorial Award for Museum Security Network
http://www.museum-security.org/award.html
---------------
=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:
The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).
If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).
|
