The year is 1938, officials are going thought all your family's precious artifacts, taking them without your consent just because you are Jewish. This was the reality for Maria Altman and her family in Austria, now under Nazi Germany's control. The Nazi officials take family heirlooms, that are worth thousands, a diamond necklace that once belonged to Maria's aunt, a pair of diamond earrings that also belong to Maria's aunt, and paintings. One of these paintings would start a long legal battle to recover, the painting was simply know as Lady in Gold. But in reality it was a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bawerm, Maria's aunt.…
The art work in the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum got stolen, it only took a whole two minutes for the criminal to steal the art work. It has been missing for twenty-five years. The stolen works are valued at 500 million dollars, making this robbery the largest theft in the American history. The whole stolen art took 2 whole decades to gather hundreds of investigate documents and photos of the missing art work.…
When considering cultures in collision a museum is a fine example of a clash of positives and negatives. This can be a troubling idea for the curators and visitors of museums because their collective pursuit of further cultural knowledge is often pure. However, in constructing a museum more often than not items of important significance are transplanted from their original location to be viewed and studied by a foreign people in a foreign land. The concept of the “rightful owners” of history and artifacts is a complicated one that leads to many cultural collisions. This is because multiple cultures often lay claim to the same artifacts leading to conflict among the claimants. With all of these ideas in mind the process of selecting a piece of art from the Cornell Fine Arts Museum for analysis became far more difficult. In examining the thought-provoking piece Lonesome George by Juan Travieso a warning message is telegraphed loud and clear.…
In the article “Who Owns the Past” in passage three, paragraph fifteen, sentence two, states “But these laws rest on a couple of highly debatable assumptions; artifacts should remain in whatever country they were found, and that the best way to protect archaeological sites is to restrict the international trade in antiquities.” This shows that if an artifact is found in a country, it does not leave; whoever finds it will probably keep it or give it to a museum so it can be presented to everyone. In conclusion museums keep artifacts that belong to other people; but the people should get them…
The punishment for stealing items from a Temple or Palace carried a much harsher punishment than thefts from other places; “if any one steal cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pit or a goat, if it belong to a god or the court, the thief shall pay thirtyfold;” however the same theft from a freed man is to be fined only tenfold. And along the same line, if some one steals a water-wheel from a field, he must pay only five shekels. The value of a waterwheel from this time is unknown; however, the preponderance of information is that it would be only tenfold its value, though a farmer’s loss cost the same as a temple or palace’s cost for the same item.…
The laws state that a piece of art that is found belongs to the country from which it was found, so the artwork that is smuggled out is often illegally sold. The evidence provided in this article helps make its argument strong. For example, the article talks about the sculpture of Hercules, and how the upper half was in a museum in Boston while the bottom half was dug up in Turkey, and the upper half of the sculpture was then believed to have belonged to Turkey (Art and The Truth: The Getty Kouros and Provenance). This proves that sometimes art truly does get stolen and smuggled out of its country of…
The article, written by a reporter(Tom Mashburg), was actually about the stolen artwork from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The masterpiece was called " Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the sea of Galilee. The painting was very expensive in a drastic time. It was the biggest news and still now, that the theft manage to steel it in a museum so easily. Also at it's 25 anniversary ever since it was gone.…
As known in the Isabella Gardner Museum, a very cherished institution. Over $500 million of dollars in art has been stolen from there, and authorities have had difficulties in finding the paintings and the thefts, because as said in paragraph twenty three that "many people in possession of the WPA don't know that they don't have legitimate claim on the paintings, they may have found them at the grandparent's house and they try selling them to dealers or auction houses but what they really don't know is that the government has full custody of the paintings".…
A thief stealing a simple purse is nothing short of a petty crime, and for the same thief to plan an elaborate bank heist would at the very least be a respectable effort, but what of a thief who is capable of stealing, for all intents and purposes, an immovable object? Absurd… perhaps, but that is essentially what the Czechoslovakian con-man Victor Lustig accomplished by fraudulently selling the one and only Eiffel Tower; to elaborate, Lustig did not physically take the famous tower, rather he managed to sell it off through the use of a considerably clever plan. Thanks to his cunning, forgery and impersonation, and general deceit, this brilliant con-man managed to succeed in the unthinkable act of selling the Eiffel Tower, and it is for that reason that Victor Lustig, is one of, if not…
In this response paper I seek to analyze the ethical, legal, and museological issues that surround the Teotihuacan Mural Gallery from the de Young Museum. The gallery is inside the Art of Americas section of the museum on the ground floor. A simple room, the Teotihuacan Mural Gallery is a dim lit space dim lit space that has large mural fragments along the walls, a bench in the center of the room, and a display stand featuring small fragment pieces. A placard on the wall pays respect and expresses gratitude to Harald Wagner, a Pre-Colombian art collector who gifted the collection to the de Young Museum and mentions the great efforts put into displaying these Mexican national treasurers.…
Although only briefly mentioned in the reading it is very well known that looting in Iraq is something prevalent. After the fall of it government many historical sites were left open to looting and a large number of citizens took advantage of that. After realizing what was happening the UNESCO listed Iraq as in need of emergency action in order to protect their cultural heritage. Although this has been brought to worldwide attention looting continues. The looting not only removes artifacts from Iraq, but also damages digging sites and temples. The damage that is being done to the sites can compromise and future digging that can be done. Dates will harder to retrieve, any previous work done will be ruined, artifacts will be harder to place since…
When it comes to ancient art, it is immensely difficult to state that antiquities belong to a certain group of people or the world. In a contemporary example, antiquities have been cheaply smuggled by Westerners from Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, and sold in the black market for millions of dollars. Due to the lack of international laws protecting the ancient arts, smugglers can hardly be classified as heroic or villainous people, thus raising several attitudes towards the entitlement of the ancient arts.…
It seems as though we have become an easier target to reach. We, as Americans, pride ourselves on being the greatest. However, it seems as though this hasn't stopped people from easily snatching up priceless artwork that we own. In the 40s—and later the 90s in Boston,—artwork stored in the Midwest was stolen, and many worked to try to recover it. We seem to have not gotten very far, though. In 1942, the Library of Congress lost some of Walt Whitman's valuable poetry. They sent it to a guarded facility in the Midwest, where it was stored inside of sealed containers. This, however, hasn't stopped the master thief from snatching up ten of the notebooks. A similar incident happened in Boston, Massachusetts in the 90s, where a reporter by the name…
Smoke filters through tree branches, enveloping the forest canopy in a thick cloud of toxicity, as caustic apparatuses below cut into the earth and slash through trees, destroying fragile ecosystems and cultural sites. America is facing a crisis; our land is not only rich with biodiversity, but with natural resources that attract big oil, timber and natural gas corporations. These corporations don’t give thought to preserving land and preventing the extinction of countless species, but only care about making a profit through draining environments of their resources. This corporate greed has been a constant threat to the wellbeing of the environment, but as of recently, the GOP has encouraged drilling and timbering through their efforts to…
What amazes me even more then these messes being displayed in national art galleries is that people actually go and see them. Whenever you go to the city you see people go in the art gallery. It is classified as a good thing to do in the city. You spend all that time and effort getting into the city to be confronted by drawings that 3 year olds have done with their eyes closed. Quite honestly I would rather spend the effort and time on one of those new family packs on McDonalds. You would have more entertainment watching the coke in those oversized cups bubble when you blow into the straws.…