--- Indigo Nights <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Deb, I don't want to get into the politics of it all here, but we, as
> Americans, have no room to talk about deception.

Indy, this isn't about America, WMD or the war in general. It's about museum
professionals deliberately lying about stolen artifacts. It's outside of the
realm of America or Iraq. It affects the international museum community as a
whole.

It's one thing to protect artifacts in a crisis situation. I fully applaud the
Baghdad museum for going to the measures it did to protect its collection. I
think it also served as a wake-up call for everyone to think about disaster
plans and how museum collections can be protected.

But it is an entirely different issue to continue to lie about stolen artifacts
when you know that International resources are being used to find them. These
stolen artifact lists have been circulated to law enforcement agencies around
the world. The museum and its staff have gotten international attention and
sympathy over their lost treasures.

How does it look when the list of hundreds of thousands of "stolen" artifacts
turns out to be a fraction of that amount? How much worse is it when the
museum's own people lied about the whereabouts of said artifacts which weren't
stolen after all? Not only does it damage the credibility of the museum, but it
will hurt other museums down the road.

Instead of the international community jumping to help a museum that has been
robbed or looted, I'm sure the next response will be "Are you sure you didn't
hide them and forget where you put them?" I'm sure international agencies won't
be as quick to put their resources and manpower to work until it is clear that
the artifacts were indeed stolen. This kind of delay can loose objects forever
or make them much harder to find.

Again, if a museum professional falsified research or misrepresented facts in
an exhibit, we'd be livid and that person would probably never work in the
museum field again. But I find it hypocritical that museum professionals are
not responding to the Baghdad museum incident or willing to excuse the staff
for what they did because of the politics of the war in general.

Deb

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com

=========================================================
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).