Archive for the 'Newsletter' Category

Timothy Potts will start as director of the Getty Museum in September.

Over the last five years, the J. Paul Getty Museum has earned a reputation as a leading reformer on a topic that has embroiled American museums in scandal for the past decade: the acquisition of recently looted antiquities.

After evidence of the museum’s longtime participation in the illicit trade was uncovered by Italian and Greek investigators, the Getty agreed to return 49 of its most prized pieces of ancient art, cultivated collaborative relationships with those countries and adopted a strict acquisition policy, setting a standard that has been adopted by museums across the country.

But come September, when Timothy Potts starts as director of the Getty Museum with Getty Trust CEO James Cuno as his boss, the institution will be led by two men who opposed the adoption of some of those reforms.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

By Patricia Cohen from The New York Times

About 600 people, including the country’s first black president, gathered on the National Mall on Wednesday morning for a moment nearly a century in the making: the groundbreaking for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“It is real. It is real,” Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, a hero of the civil rights movement, said of this latest Smithsonian museum, which is being built next to the Washington Monument and near the site of former slave pens.

A national African-American museum was first proposed by black Civil War veterans nearly 100 years ago, and Mr. Lewis began sponsoring bills to make that dream a reality in 1987, soon after he was elected to Congress. President George W. Bush signed the legislation into law in 2003, after it won support from conservative Republicans like Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, then a senator, who was among those attending on Wednesday.

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Photo by: Anthony O'Neil

From The Economist

When Sir Terence Conran opened the Design Museum in Shad Thames in London in 1989, he was told no one would make the trek across the river. Back then it was “an area nobody would go to”, still home to wharfs and disused factories, he said. Now it’s a different story. With the advent of the Tate Modern in 2000, and the various redevelopments of South Bank, you can’t cross a bridge without hitting a new cultural landmark. And now the Design Museum has run out of space.

This week plans were unveiled for a bigger space. With help from Deyan Sudjic, the museum’s director, Sir Terence is once again launching the museum in a relatively culturally sparse (albeit well-heeled) area. The new museum will be in what was the Commonwealth Institute on High Street Kensington. An anomaly on a British high street, this huge Grade II* listed structure from the 1960s, with its extravagant copper roof, has lain untouched for ten years, and has been the cause of quiet consternation among city councillors. Inside, it still welcomes visitors with photos of children from around the Commonwealth and a mural of the globe; a large gate at the front prevents people from sleeping rough in the disused courtyard. Futuristic and retro at once, it is a building Sir Terence believes “altered the way many architects thought about design.”

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Jan. 21, 2012: An artifact returned by Italy to Libya, known as the Head Domitilla, which was stolen from Sabratha, Libya in 1990, is seen on display during Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's visit to Tripoli, Libya.

From the Associate Press

Italy has returned to Libyathe head of a 2,000 year-old statue that was smuggled out of the country in the 1960s.

Prime Minister Mario Monti gave the sculpted head of Domitilla Minor, the daughter of Roman emperor Vespasian, to Libyan authorities during his trip to Tripoli on Saturday.

The sculpture was taken from Libya’s northwestern city of Sabratha in the 1960s, and recently auctioned at Christie’s.

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Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's Auction House, stands next to a model of the Titanic, during a press conference and preview of Titanic artifacts on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012 in New York. The complete collection of artifacts recovered from the wreck site of the RMS Titanic will be auctioned by Guernsey's Auction House in April. Photo by Bebeto Matthews from The AP

By Kelly Shiers from The Herald News

The sale of more than 5,000 artifacts salvaged from the world’s most famous shipwreck is causing concerns for a local museum official.

Concerns serious enough the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic will never consider hosting the Titanic relics — even as a temporary exhibit.

“No maritime museum in the world that is part of the (International Congress of Maritime Museums) would display any of these items,” the museum’s registrar Lynn-Marie Richard said in a recent interview.

The recovered objects from the ship are set to be sold to the highest bidder, almost a century after the unsinkable vessel sank after hitting an iceberg, taking more than 1,500 passengers and crew to an icy grave in the North Atlantic.

The New York City auction has captured worldwide attention. Its very existence possible only after years of legal wrangling that now allows RMS Titanic Inc. to sell the incredible collection including a mesh purse, sunglasses, a bronze cherub that once adorned the ocean liner’s grand staircase, china and jewelry.

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