Remains pillaged in colonial era for ‘scientific’ experiments are DNA matched to Tanzanian descendants
Researchers in Berlin have identified living relatives of people whose remains were stolen from Tanzania and taken to Germany for “scientific” experiments during the colonial era.
Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History has been carrying out research since 2017 on about 1,100 skulls taken from what was then known as German East Africa.
Continue reading...Former head of V&A has suggested Parthenon marbles could be shared with Greece
A former head of the V&A Museum, who previously suggested the Parthenon marbles could be shared with Greece, has been put forward as the interim director of the British Museum.
Sir Mark Jones will replace Hartwig Fischer, who quit after it emerged thousands of objects had been stolen from the museum’s collection. A police investigation is under way regarding the reported thefts.
Continue reading...Warrant issued in investigation into smuggling of antiquities looted from Turkey and trafficked through US
A headless bronze statue believed to depict the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius has been seized from the Cleveland Museum of Art by New York authorities investigating antiquities looted from Turkey.
A warrant signed by a judge in Manhattan on 14 August ordered the seizure of the statue, which the museum acquired in 1986 and had been a highlight of its collection of ancient Roman art.
Continue reading...Fischer to step down after blunders prompt international embarrassment and questions about systemic failures
The head of the British Museum has resigned and his deputy has stepped back over its handling of the suspected widespread theft of artefacts following a string of blunders that have prompted international embarrassment and questions about systemic failures.
Hartwig Fischer said on Friday he accepted responsibility for the museum’s failure to properly respond to warnings about the suspected thefts of thousands of objects in 2021.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Sir Henry Parkes memorial school of arts – home of the 1889 Tenterfield oration – to close in a fortnight
The first museum included on the National Trust register will close its doors at the end of the month, leaving its century-old artefacts of federation locked behind glass until further notice.
The Sir Henry Parkes memorial school of arts is the site of the five-time premier’s famous Tenterfield oration in 1889, regarded as the first direct appeal to the public for an Australian nation-state to unite the colonies.
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Continue reading...Historic and contemporary pieces interrogate city and university’s connections to colonialism
An exhibition by the Fitzwilliam Museum will explore Cambridge’s connections to enslavement and exploitation for the first time, both in the university and the city.
Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance features works made in west Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Europe, and interrogates the ways Atlantic enslavement and the Black Atlantic shaped the University of Cambridge’s collections.
Continue reading...Warring factions urged to preserve heritage after video clip appears to show fighters raiding Khartoum museum
Heritage officials in Sudan have pleaded with warring factions to preserve tens of thousands of historical artefacts threatened by fighting in the capital, Khartoum, that is in its eighth week.
A video clip circulating on social media on Friday appeared to show fighters from the Rapid Support Forces entering the bioarchaeology lab of the National Museum in Khartoum and opening storage containers containing mummies and other remains.
Continue reading...Leading art museums are reassessing their works after a Belgian journalist traced how a fascist sympathiser acquired a Jewish dealer’s collection
In August 1940, Samuel Hartveld and his wife, Clara Meiboom, boarded the SS Exeter ocean liner in Lisbon, bound for New York. Aged 62, Hartveld, a successful Jewish art dealer, left a world behind. The couple had fled their home city of Antwerp not long before the Nazi invasion of Belgium in May 1940, parting with their 23-year-old son, Adelin, who had decided to join the resistance.
Hartveld also said goodbye to a flourishing gallery in a fine art deco building in the Flemish capital, a rich library and more than 60 paintings. The couple survived the war, but Adelin was killed in January 1942. Hartveld was never reunited with his paintings, which were snapped up at a bargain-basement price by a Nazi sympathiser and today are scattered throughout galleries in north-western Europe, including Tate Britain.
Continue reading...Far-right mayor claimed Lima institution peddled false narrative of 1980-2000 conflict in which guerrillas and army killed 70,000
It was supposed to be a museum of memories: a place of dialogue and reconciliation where Peruvians could commemorate the victims of a brutal internecine conflict which killed tens of thousands of people in the 1980s and 1990s.
Since its controversial inception in 2015, the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion has received about 60,000 visitors a year.
Continue reading...Galleria dell’Accademia director issues invitation in wake of incident that forced principal to resign after parents’ complaints
The Florence museum which houses Michelangelo’s David has invited the board of a Florida Christian charter school to visit, after the school’s principal was forced to resign following parent complaints that pupils were shown an image of the nude sculpture in a class.
Hope Carrasquilla resigned as principal of the Tallahassee Classical school last week, after the school board told her to quit or be fired. Carrasquilla’s exit came after three parents complained about a lesson on David, with one parent claiming the 16th century Renaissance masterpiece was pornographic.
Continue reading...Exclusive: 15-metre-long work made up of 650,000 Lego bricks to form part of artist’s biggest UK show in eight years
Claude Monet’s monumental triptych, Water Lilies 1914 -26, which depicts nature’s tranquil beauty as part of the French impressionist’s world-famous series, will take on new meaning in a giant recreation by artist and activist Ai Weiwei in his new London exhibition.
Monet’s brushstrokes in his water and reflection landscapes are replaced by about 650,000 studs of Lego bricks, in 22 vivid colours, in the 15-metre-long work at the centre of Weiwei’s biggest UK show in eight years, opening next month.
Continue reading...Perfect storm of Covid, Brexit, energy prices and cost of living crisis blamed for disappointing figures
Visitor numbers at the UK’s leading attractions are still almost a quarter lower than before the pandemic, thanks to a perfect storm of Covid, Brexit, energy prices and the wider financial crisis, according to the sector’s trade body.
Figures published on Friday by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions show that while the number of visits to its sites rose by 69% in 2022 compared with the year before, this was still 23% lower than in 2019.
Continue reading...The technique – known as proteomics – could bring new insights into the past two million years of humanity’s history
Tiny traces of protein lingering in the bones and teeth of ancient humans could soon transform scientists’ efforts to unravel the secrets of the evolution of our species.
Researchers believe a new technique – known as proteomics – could allow them to identify the proteins from which our predecessors’ bodies were constructed and bring new insights into the past 2 million years of humanity’s history.
Continue reading...The designer of the glasshouses at Kew Gardens fell out of favour – but supporters of a new museum hope to change all that
One major name is missing from the line-up of great British architects that students learn have shaped the way that Britain looks. And it is a name with quite a ring to it: Decimus Burton.
Now members of the Decimus Burton Society believe they are about to put that right by establishing this Victorian classical revivalist’s place alongside better known titans such as Christopher Wren, John Nash and Edwin Lutyens. A new museum celebrating his achievements is on the drawing board and awaits approval this spring.
Continue reading...Revised Treasure Act for England, Wales and Northern Ireland will broaden legal definition of treasure
A rise in the number of detectorists unearthing historical artefacts has prompted an effort to broaden the legal definition of treasure to help museums to acquire important items.
The heritage minister, Stephen Parkinson, said some items had been lost into private ownership rather than displayed publicly in museums, due to the wording of the Treasure Act 1996.
Continue reading...‘It’s time for a whole host of other perspectives,’ says museum’s director after £15m redevelopment
After 18 months of closure and a £15m redevelopment, Manchester Museum will reopen to the public on Saturday.
Alongside the existing collection of about 4.5m objects, from mounted mammals to botanical specimens and fossils, visitors will also be able to explore new spaces and hear diverse, untold stories.
Continue reading...Buxton Museum returned entire collection of Native American and First Nation artefacts to their original communities
When Taa.uu ‘Yuuwans Nika Collison first opened the email from Buxton Museum, she was, she says, “sort of in shock”.
Collison is a member of the Haida nation, the Indigenous inhabitants of a remote archipelago called Haida Gwaii off the very far north-west coast of Canada. For 25 years she and others had been lobbying museums and collectors around the world to return items made by her people back to their homeland, often with very little success. Here was a curator from a small town in Derbyshire she had never heard of, saying it had some Haida items in its collection, and it wanted to send them back.
Continue reading...Unknown patterns found on ceramics from Josephine Willis, which collided with steamer in 1856
The wreck of a mid-19th century sailing ship transporting British people to New Zealand and with a cargo of exceptionally rare ceramics onboard has been listed for protection 167 years after it sank off the Kent coast.
The Josephine Willis wooden packet boat, built in Limehouse and launched in 1854 by HH Willis & Co, foundered four miles (6.4km) south of Folkestone harbour following a collision with the steamer Mangerton on 3 February 1856, with the loss of 70 lives including Captain Edward Canney. The ship lies in two parts on the seabed, 23 metres deep.
Continue reading...Brussels exhibition is latest EU effort to appeal to the public by seeking to explain its work
There is a virtual reality plane trip, a quiz, a presentation from the world’s “most powerful woman”, and a souvenir photo: it is all part of the offer at one of the latest tourist attractions to arrive in Brussels – the European Commission exhibition centre.
Experience Europe, which has been open just under a year, seeks to explain the work of the commission, which proposes and enforces EU law, and for many is the epitome of “Brussels”. It is the latest example of how the bloc is trying to appeal to the public. Stung by criticism of being an elite project with bamboozling and opaque processes, the EU has sharpened up communication efforts in the last 15 years. The European parliament opened a visitors’ centre, the Parlamentarium, in 2011, followed by a museum dedicated to European history in 2017.
Continue reading...Museum of London Docklands appeals for missing pieces whose influential creators have been overlooked
Wanted: David Bowie’s dress, Greta Garbo’s hats and the shirts worn by Sean Connery in his first role as James Bond.
They are iconic items of 20th-century clothing – but their whereabouts is unknown. Now the Museum of London Docklands has made a public appeal for help locating these and other garments before a big exhibition scheduled for later this year.
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