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The Benevento Missal is to be returned to Italy, as a result of a claim submitted following an investigation by The Art Newspaper. On 23 March the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel recommended that the British Library should restitute the 12th century manuscript to Benevento cathedral. This will be the first time that a UK national institution has returned an artwork or manuscript looted during the Nazi era. A change in the law will be required, since the British Library is legally barred from deaccessioning the manuscript. The Art Newspaper heard rumours about the questionable status of the Benevento Missal in...

Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, "I could do that," but a graffiti artist has gone one step further. A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" smuggled in his own picture of a soup can and hung it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed. The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day. The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was an oil painting, 61centimetres...

OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 5 - Even as the presidential campaign remains steeped in a debate about John Kerry's military service in Vietnam, another highly charged dispute over the Vietnam War has been resolved - albeit imperfectly - between Vietnamese-Americans and a prominent museum here. An exhibit, "What's Going On? California in the Era of Vietnam," opened late last month at the Oakland Museum of California and is scheduled to run through February before traveling to Los Angeles and Chicago. Five years in the making, it tells the wartime story of California during the 1960's and 70's, ripping at wounds among...

What’s THE biggest media myth to come out of the Iraq? War and its messy aftermath? Forget Maureen Dowd’s attempt to trash George W. Bush by altering the president’s words. That kind of "journalism" has become just standard operating procedure at the New York Times. (" All the News Fit to Distort") No, for sheer, long-lasting stamina, we nominate the urban legend about the pillaging of Baghdad’s archaeological museum. Remember how it was supposed to have been emptied by looters? It was THE RAPE OF CIVILIZATION! The anguished comments from distinguished archaeologists sounded more like tabloid headlines. The Death of...

PARIS For almost half a century, Europe overlooked the art treasures that were looted from Jewish homes by the Nazis and were never returned. Then, as mid-20th-century European history resurfaced in the 1990s, the political climate changed. Suddenly, missing art became a moral issue and red-faced governments, museums and auction houses hurriedly promised to make amends. In the glare of publicity, no one wanted to be seen profiting from the Holocaust. Yet, despite all the headlines, relatively little of this looted art has so far been restituted. True, it represents only a small proportion of what the Nazis stole from...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - It was a great legend while it lasted, but DNA testing has finally ended a century-old story of the Hawaiian arrow carved from the bone of British explorer Captain James Cook who died in the Sandwich Islands in 1779. "There is no Cook in the Australian Museum," museum collection manager Jude Philp said on Thursday in announcing the DNA evidence that the arrow was not made from Cook's bone. But that will not stop the museum from continuing to display the arrow in its exhibition, "Uncovered: Treasures of the Australian Museum," which does include a feather cape...

It came from outer space and we don't care, say museums Giles Tremlett in Madrid Saturday January 24, 2004 The Guardian (UK) A home was yesterday being sought for two fragments of rock from outer space which fell to earth in Spain two weeks ago and which museums there have turned down. The meteor fragments were found by a Spanish journalist, Abel Tarilonte, after a flaming ball of rock was seen shooting across the skies of northern and central Spain. Villagers in the mountains of northern Spain reported hearing and feeling explosions after the bright white fireball passed overhead on...

<p>Slavery is one of the thorniest of issues -- and rightly so. Even today, with the War between the States seemingly part of ancient history, many black Americans face insurmountable challenges when they try to trace their family history. It is difficult to move forward when you do not know where you have been. Our troubled school system doesn't help, since it even fails to teach the basic reading and writing skills that children need to advance into high school. Suffice it to say, while public schools are doing a shameful job, the D.C. Lottery is doing its part to impart American history.</p>

CAMP THUNDER, Iraq — Sgt. Kurt Smith is spending his time in Iraq as a full-time medic and part-time historian. Many of the weapons that his unit, the 4th Armored Division’s 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, have confiscated belong in museums rather than their arms room, he said. There are two 1917 Webley revolvers, World War I-era British Enfield rifles, World War II-era German Mauser rifles, Russian PPKs and British submachine guns. “I’m a weapons enthusiast,” said Smith. “My dad was a weapons collector and he passed on some weapons to me and my brother.” For the past few...

Egypt demands return of ancient Rosetta StoneJuly 21 2003Egypt is demanding that the 2000-year-old Rosetta Stone be returned to Cairo and has threatened to pursue its claim "aggressively" if the British Museum does not agree to give it back. The stone, which became the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, was found by Napoleon's army in 1799 in the Nile delta, but has been in Britain for 200 years. "If the British want to be remembered, if they want to restore their reputation, they should volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is the icon of our Egyptian identity," said...

Egypt demands return of the Rosetta Stone By Charlotte Edwardes and Catherine Milner (Filed: 20/07/2003) Egypt is demanding that the Rosetta Stone, a 2,000-year-old relic and one of the British Museum's most important exhibits, should be returned to Cairo. The stone, which became the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, was found by Napoleon's army in 1799 in the Nile delta, but has been in Britain for the past 200 years. It forms the centrepiece of the British Museum's Egyptology collection and is seen by millions of visitors each year. Now, in an echo of the campaign by Athens for...

<p>The National Endowment for the Humanities will be doling out $500,000 in grants to restore Iraq's cultural heritage, the federal agency announced yesterday.</p> <p>Beginning Aug. 1, the agency will receive proposals for projects that can last for up to two years. Known as "Recovering Iraq's Past," the initiative is geared toward shoring up collections in Iraq's archives, libraries and museums. Projects may start as soon as Jan. 1.</p>

Looters are systematically stripping many of Iraq's 10,000 archaeological sites and should be shot on sight by coalition forces, an expert said yesterday. Gangs of up to 400 people are stealing antiquities for the international market and some sites have been largely destroyed, said Elizabeth Stone, an American archaeology professor. "I would like to see helicopters flying over there shooting bullets so that people know there is a real price to looting this stuff," said Prof Stone, of Stony Brook University, New York. "You have got to kill some people to stop this." Prof Stone, who has been at the...

In the old times there were two suns above the Earth. Unfortunately one got broken to pieces; the pieces dropped into the ocean that now casts bits of "the solar stone" ashore. People call these pieces amber. It is a nice legend about amber; it slightly reminds of the story of creation, loss and restoration of the famous amber chamber in Tsarskoye Selo. One woman from the Russian city of Rostov was one of the first people who believed that the amber chamber could be restored. What is more, she made first considerable contribution into the reconstruction process. In 1976,...

Egypt to Put Ancient Mummified Pets on Show CAIRO (Reuters) - Ancient Egyptians loved their pets so much they even wanted to take them into the after life. Mummified cats, dogs, monkeys and even crocodiles -- lovingly preserved in the same way as the pharaohs -- will be on display later this month in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told Reuters Television that ancient Egyptians were not only pet lovers who wanted to preserve animals for life after death, but also held some animal forms as sacred. "The ancient Egyptians worshipped the god Thoth, the...

Ever wanted to know what happened to that Stealth Fighter that was shot down over Serbia in 1999? Well, here ya go... http://airliners.net/open.file?id=378442

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE-- The scene was like a midnight ceremony on the tarmac of some distant military air base: Surrounded by floodlit fighter jets, 16 Air Force crewmembers clad in desert camouflage stood on a temporary stage and presented symbols of war to Air Force officials. In fact, the ceremony took place Tuesday afternoon inside the new addition of the Air Force Museum. Painted flat black, the high, hangar-like ceiling of the Kettering Cold War Gallery gave a sense of infinite space above suspended spotlights that illuminated museum aircraft. Under one pool of light was the stage, with a...

One of the highlights of the Cape Fear Museum's exhibit, "What So Proudly We Hailed," is the Second National Confederate Flag, mostly white with a rebel battle flag in reversed colors stitched into the canton, or field. The flag was made by Wilmington women and given to Col. William Lamb, commander of Fort Fisher, after his men rebuffed a Union attack on the fort around Christmas 1864. It was waving over Fort Fisher on Jan. 15, 1865, when the Yankees made their final, decisive assault on the fort, combining a "shock and awe" naval bombardment &#8211; the largest ever at...

The Real Museum LootersBy Keith LockitchAynRand.org | May 13, 2003 Initial reports of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum sparked a frenzy of outrage. Denied their desert quagmire, their civilian massacres, their oil-fire eco-disaster, and their inflamed "Arab street," leftists all but leaped at the opportunity to denounce our armed forces—with some even urging that our soldiers be prosecuted for war crimes for their alleged failure to prevent the looting.It turns out, though, that our troops were not standing "idly by" but were being fired at from the museum complex. And the number of missing artifacts—initially assumed to be...

The Non-Pillage of BaghdadBy Wall Street Journal EditorialThe Wall Street Journal | May 7, 2003 "It is very common for the first information following a crisis to be wrong, and when I say wrong, I mean wrong."So spoke Ronald Noble, the Secretary General of Interpol, at a conference yesterday in Lyon, France, devoted to the recovery of stolen Iraqi artifacts. The context for Mr. Noble's remarks is the incredible reduction in the estimate of the number of artworks lost in the ransacking of Baghdad's National Museum.The claims have gone from 170,000 items first reported to the 30 to 40 that...